Strategy
Owens Corning aspires to be a net positive company through:
- Operations sustainability;
- Product and supply chain sustainability;
- Innovation and collaboration to deliver energy efficiency and durable material solutions at scale; and
- Employee safety, health and engagement and community vitality.
Net Positive Aspiration
The purpose of Owens Corning is stated as “our people and products make the world a better place.” While this might sound like a tag line, it is actually the ‘math’ behind our aspiration to be a net-positive company – a company where our handprint, or the positive impacts of our people and products, far outweighs our footprint, or the negative impacts.
Owens Corning has been committed to creating a positive impact by setting goals, measuring, reducing and reporting our footprint for many years. But footprint reduction is not enough to solve today’s issues of energy use, greenhouse gas emissions and other natural resource consumption or social impacts. The next few decades are key, as the global population is expected to reach nine billion people by the year 2050, all of whom will require food, water, sanitation, shelter, education, and healthcare. To build a better world, we must change the way we live and work.
Discovering our Footprint and Handprint
Handprints are positive impacts that a company causes to happen relative to business as usual as opposed to footprints, which are the measure of our negative impact on the world. The scope of footprinting for a company is the life-cycle impacts of the products that a company manufactures, including the company’s operations. The scope of handprinting includes reductions to our footprint, but can also include changes it influences in the consumption and impacts of others, such as our employees, our suppliers and in our community.
Handprinting uses life cycle thinking, measuring not only the impact of our own operations, but also those of our suppliers and the people that touch our products or interact with our company. It creates new opportunities for us and our stakeholders to positively impact our environment, support community vitality and engage our employees.
Ultimately, the goal is to have our handprint overcome our footprint to be a net positive company through the products we make and actions we take to boost energy efficiency in houses and commercial buildings, transportation and renewable energy as well as our community involvement and investment in employees and stakeholders.
Building Science
By developing innovative products, forging partnerships, and serving as advocate and educator, we are improving the way people design and construct today’s buildings, as well as how they live and work in them. Our work in this area includes several strategies:
- Partnering and collaborating with builders, contractors, architects, and homeowners to understand their needs and adopt better building products and systems, based on building science;
- Developing, through science and technology, innovative building products and systems to improve energy efficiency, durability, and occupant comfort;
- Supporting building code compliance and advocating for code improvements; and
- Sharing our building science expertise across the building industry.
Supply Chain Sustainability
Owens Corning is dedicated to being a solid corporate citizen around the world, and to upholding the highest standards possible in how we conduct ourselves and transact our day-to-day business. We know that maintaining a strong and positive reputation as a company is premised on earning it each and every day around the globe.
We believe companies in our supply chain are as important to our business as our own production operations. As a result, we consider it a business imperative to work with and nurture relationships with suppliers to assure they are dedicated to upholding high standards in how they run their companies.
To this end, we have created the Owens Corning Supplier Code of Conduct, which outlines the various sets of expectations we have of each one of our suppliers, sets forth key principles we expect our suppliers to embrace, and will act prospectively as a reference for us in our sourcing selection processes. We recognize our top suppliers through an annual Supplier of the Year award, which rewards extraordinary results across all aspects of the customer-supplier partnership.
To learn about supplier assessment and the results of our supplier survey, see our latest Sustainability Report (PDF) .
Supplier Code of Conduct PDF | 419 KB
Conflict Minerals and Human Rights
- California Transparency in Supply Chains Act of 2010 (SB 657) Effective January 1, 2012, this law requires manufacturers and retailers doing business in the State of California to disclose information regarding their efforts to eradicate slavery and human trafficking from their direct supply chains. Owens Corning is doing this through its sustainable supply chain process.
- U.K. Modern Slavery Act of 2015 Effective October 15, 2015, this law requires companies doing business in the U.K with a financial turnover of £36 million annuals to disclose their business operations and supply chains are slavery free via a “slavery and human trafficking statement.”
- Slavery and Human Trafficking Statement