Global Product Strategy

Product stewardship is the industry’s management of the health, safety and environmental aspects of a product throughout its total life cycle, working in cooperation with upstream and downstream users.

In early 2006, the chemical industry, represented by ICCA, introduced an innovative Global Product Strategy (GPS) to enhance stewardship best practices within the industry and throughout the product chain.  The GPS effort is an important pillar of the Responsible Care® program that unites several current stewardship initiatives, builds a foundation for continuous stewardship improvement, fosters greater transparency and marks the first truly global effort to drive product stewardship to a higher level within the industry and with downstream users and customers.   

ICCA’s new Global Product Strategy:

• Sets guidelines for continuously improving product stewardship performance, including greater transparency.
• Facilitates the development and sharing of cutting-edge stewardship management practices.
• Promotes a tiered process for evaluating risk and identifying appropriate risk management actions for chemicals in commerce.
• Calls for measuring industry performance and public reporting.
• Improves product stewardship cooperation with downstream customers of the chemical industry.
• Supports partnerships with intergovernmental organizations and others to enhance product stewardship.
• Enhances outreach and dialogue with customers, the public and other stakeholders.
• Builds a foundation for constructive industry engagement in the public policy process.