Integrating Sustainability into Product and Process Development

DuPont's mission of "sustainable growth", i.e. creating shareholder and societal value while reducing the company's footprint throughout the value chain, challenges engineers to think about technology in new ways. The innovative product and its manufacturing process are still at the core, but the consequences of technology choices on the environmental and societal impacts of both the supply chain upstream and customer applications downstream have to be taken into account as well. Successful new products provide superior functionality and favorable sustainability attributes, such as reduced energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions to the customer. Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), as a holistic approach to evaluate the environmental profile of an entire value chain, enables engineers to integrate sustainability into product and process design from the very beginning, as examples form various DuPont businesses illustrate.