Twelve Chinese Enterprises Release Responsible Care Reports         

Twelve petrochemical enterprises of China such as Juhua Group Corporation, Hebei Shenghua Chemical Industry Co., Ltd., Wengfu Group, Yantai Wanhua Polyurethanes Co., Ltd. have released the annual reports (2008) of responsible care in Beijing on October 13th, 2009, which is the first time any companies have done so in the petrochemical industry in China.
    Wishes, strategies and achievements made by the enterprises are covered in the reports. Most of the enterprises attach great importance to safety, environmental protection, and occupational health, while some of them put forward advanced responsible care philosophies, for example, Jiangsu Huachang Chemical Co., Ltd. and Shandong Hengyuan Petrochemical Company Limited proposed that they will publicize the company's information to the surrounding communities for collecting issues they are concerning about. Besides, Sinochem International Corporation suggested that the Regulation on Product Safety should be integrated into EHS (environment, health and safety) systems and management objectives should be clearly worked out. As for information disclosure, some enterprises provided quantitative data. For example, Yankuang Lunan Fertilizer Plant in Shandong province stated that its discharge of carbon dioxide was reduced by 6 400 tons every year through developing industrial chains of fine chemicals. Nevertheless, gaps still exist between the responsible care reports of Chinese chemical enterprises and those of multinational firms, and the most obvious one lies in data disclosure, especially the quantified achievements due to responsible care. In addition, standards adopted in EHS (environmental, health and safety) management are characterized by a lack of transparency.
   According to the data provided by China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Association (CPCIA), 53 large and medium-sized petrochemical enterprises and chemical industrial parks in China have promised to implement responsible care since the association began to promote the responsible care concept in petrochemical industry in 2002. Moreover, some environmental protection departments of local governments are going to promote this concept in the petrochemical industrial parks.

Problems: not evenly and deeply implemented    

According to Zhou Zhuye, vice chairman of CPCIA, although China's petrochemical industry has made great achievements in responsible care, there are actually three main problems. The first problem lies in the disparate development of enterprises that some enterprises play a role model, as well as helping to spread the philosophy and practice of responsible care to suppliers or customers, while some others cannot even behave as required by laws or regulations. Secondly, responsible care is not promoted comprehensively. The concept of responsible care has passed through many difficulties in its promotion since its initiation in 2002, and still there are no specialized and universalized standards or evaluation system yet. At present, self-evaluation is mostly employed by enterprises with no evaluation index or participation of third parties. Thirdly, it is difficult for the petrochemical industry to conquer the problems of high temperature and high pressure in the hard control processes. China is now witnessing rapid economic development, but enterprises here still find it difficult to catch up in responsible care with DuPont, a multinational company that has been developing for more than 100 years.
   According to Gu Juesheng, senior technical adviser of CPCIA, China's chemical industries are characterized by lots of small-scaled enterprises, with small and medium-sized enterprises especially predominate. They usually have some financial and talent constraints, but the petrochemical industry of China cannot move ahead as required by responsible care without the participation of these small and medium-sized enterprises. In addition, it is necessary to gain the support of government to promote responsible care based on the national conditions in China, so policies should be made by the government to encourage enterprises to conduct responsible care.

Plans:

According to Zhou Zhuye, China should build up special responsible care with Chinese characteristics for the promotion of responsible care based on national conditions. Enterprises should not only strengthen the promotion and training in the operation of responsible care, but also handle it together with the present crisis. In addition, assessment standards and evaluation modes of responsible care should be specialized, programmed and universalized as soon as possible, and certification of evaluation by third parties should be introduced.