Responsible Care for SMEs

This guidance facilitates the development of universally applicable process safety metrics. It provides the basis for a reporting system that captures safety performance data at global, regional and country level which allows senior management to recognize the actual level of performance and identify trends so that unplanned and undesired process incidents can be avoided, reduced or rectified.

The Cefic RC Self Assessment guidance & questionnaire assist chemical companies assess their performance in Environment, Health, Safety & Security. Each section starts with a key statement which describes the overall goal followed by a series of questions which enable people to think about what they are doing and what they are not doing and how and why they can substantiate their position.

Having completed the self assessment the document then helps people to score the level of implementation in each section and to check the overall score of their company’s implementation of Responsible Care. “Spiders’ web” diagrams help visually present the results.

The Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) Guidelines developed by the International Finance Corporation (member of the world bank group) are technical reference documents with general and industry-specific examples of Good International Industry Practice (GIIP).

When one or more members of the World Bank Group are involved in a project, these EHS Guidelines are applied as required by their respective policies and standards. For 11 different chemical sectors individual guidance documents of 20-30 pages are available.

The Cefic collection of REACH guidelines includes around 60 guidance documents and tools to support companies in the implementation of REACH as well as to enhance harmonisation. Having a harmonised approach, and using standard tools, are key for a successful and efficient implementation of REACH requirements.

Specific libraries provide information to comply with REACH, in particular to develop exposure scenarios.

Many REACH processes are supported by IT tools which Cefic explains on the website.

The Cefic RCMF is based on the Deming Cycle of “Plan, Do, Check and Act” and takes into account the requirements of existing recognised management systems standards such as ISO14001, OHSAS18001, EMAS and ISO9001.

It defines the minimum requirements for Responsible Care that should be considered by the chemical company or site and where appropriate their existing management system can be enhanced to fill any gap.

It helps define policies, objectives, priorities and performance targets.

It is especially useful for companies that have yet to put a management system in place.