As chairman of the American Chemistry Council (ACC) board of directors and co-chair of ACC's Sustainability Committee, Chemours President and CEO Mark Vergnano is bringing a unique vision of future sustainability to the forefront of the chemical industry.
Mark Vergnano, President and CEO, Chemours
"We try to think of ourselves as a different kind of chemistry company," Vergnano said. "No one else has the goals that we've set. All our goals are important, but there are three that are very unique compared to other folks out there: The first is that we want to be a company where women make up 50 percent of our employee population by 2030. That's a challenge inside the chemical industry, but at the same time, we think it could be a competitive advantage for us.
"The second goal is eliminating all our wastes - plural -- in both air and water, and the third is to be carbon-positive by 2050. We're not aware of anyone else in our industry who has said they were going to do that. So we think of those goals as our 'North Star' in terms of how we're operating the company and how we make decisions every day. They're challenging but motivating goals for our entire organization."
Vergnano attributes the boldness of his company's corporate responsibility commitment to its unusual history, which combines the agility of a startup with the established reputation of several well-known product lines, such as Ti-Pure™ titanium dioxide, Opteon™ refrigerants and Teflon™ fluoropolymers.
"When we became our own company in 2015, we decided that we wanted to be different," he explained. "We wanted to act like a startup, but the beauty of it is we had a 200-year headstart. We took some things from that history, but we also changed some things as well. Our values as a company are 'customer-centered,' 'refreshing simplicity,' 'collective entrepreneurship,' 'safety obsession' and 'unshakeable integrity.' The integrity and safety are from our legacy, but the other three are really different.
"A lot of companies have 'customer-centered' or 'customer-focused' as one of their values, but the two values that are really unique and drove us to our sustainability goals are 'refreshing simplicity' and 'collective entrepreneurship.' We want to do things as an organization and win together, but at the same time we want everyone to feel like an owner of the company. So when we do something, we do it because everyone believes in it, and that's what drove us to our sustainability goals."
'Game-changing' global leadership
Chemours is a world leader in its three businesses: Titanium Dioxide, Fluoroproducts and Chemical Solutions. Its products include a refrigerant with the lowest global warming potential on the market, which Vergnano called a "game-changer" in the industry "in terms of reducing the carbon footprint of the world," as well as a fluoropolymer instrumental in creating "the 5G world all of us will soon be living in."
"Whether it's our refrigerants or our polymers, these products are really going to help the world be a much better place," he said. "This is a growth path for us for the next decade. Great products like these are what will sustain our success going forward."
Chemours' Chemical Solutions segment is a provider of industrial chemicals used in oil and gas, water treatment, gold mining and other industries. The company offers customized solutions with a range of industrial and specialty chemical products for markets including plastics and coatings, industrial mining and oil refining.
Vergnano said his role as the 2020 chairman of ACC's board of directors has given him new insight into the chemical industry's eagerness to follow the lead of a company like Chemours and strive for ever-higher sustainability goals.
"What we're trying to do with our corporate responsibility commitment marries well with what the industry is trying to do," he explained. "Industry-wide, sustainability is becoming an incredibly important topic because people don't necessarily view chemical and chemistry companies in a positive light. But these are companies that create tremendous value, so we have to find ways to be stewards of the environment.
"Sustainability is top-of-mind not only in what we're trying to accomplish at Chemours, but also in what the industry is trying to accomplish at large -- whether it's managing the issue of plastic waste or water quality for the communities we live and work in. These are going to be overwhelmingly important activities for the industry going forward, and they mirror our corporate responsibility commitments. The reason we've been as aggressive as we have in those commitments is that they're what the world is going to be demanding from companies like us and the industry we are a part of."
A new age for the chemical industry
For 34 years at DuPont, Vergnano worked in research and development, manufacturing, sales, and marketing, gaining new perspectives on the diverse peoples and cultures outside the U.S. by living in different parts of the world. From this wealth of experience, he can say with confidence that the No. 1 challenge facing the industry today is "getting people to understand the value we create, but at the same time making sure we're doing it in a very sustainable way." Notably, he clarified this dual challenge is not "either/or."
"You can absolutely do both. You can be an important supplier of critical materials and operate sustainably," he stressed. "My goal at ACC is to bring sustainability to the forefront of the board, and I think we've been able to do that over the past few years. The legacy I'd like to leave as chairman is to make these issues a top priority for the CEOs of companies that are part of ACC and ensure the council is a driver of sustainability throughout the industry."
Despite recent hardships throughout the industrial supply chain due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Vergnano sees the future of sustainability as uncompromised.
"This is an industry that's incredibly resilient, and the reason for that is it creates critical products that everyone needs," he explained. "In the end, the industry is going to be fine because our way of life requires these raw materials to be produced.
"As we came out of the financial crisis in 2008-2009, we saw the chemical industry respond faster than many other industries. The same thing will happen as we come out of this pandemic because of the critical nature of the products we create and the fact that, if economic stimulus comes into the economy, it usually drives infrastructure, which relies on our industry. We will rebound and bounce back once again."
From a North American perspective in particular, Vergnano said the chemical industry is bound for success in the long run, regardless of temporary setbacks. "The North American chemical industry is even more poised to rebound because of the low-cost feedstocks and labor market we have to pull from," he said. "It's a very responsive industry that we know will do well over time."
A personal calling
Vergnano recounted that, although chemistry has become a personal calling for him, there was a time when the career path before him wasn't clear, so he encourages young people to think outside the box and give the STEM-based industry a shot. In fact, as a freshman in college at the University of Connecticut, he was a liberal arts major until one fateful day when he played basketball with an older man on campus.
"At the time, like most 18-year-olds, I really didn't know what I wanted to do or be," Vergnano admitted. "I was close to floundering because of my indecision, but every day at noon, there was a group of guys who would get together in the fieldhouse and play pickup basketball. One day I was sitting on the bench with this older guy, and he asked me what I was studying. I told him I'd always loved science but couldn't figure out how to aim my studies around it. He told me to come to his office the next week to talk about it. I figured he was just a professor, but when I went to his office, I found out he was the dean of the school of engineering.
"He sat down with me and said, 'Here's the deal: I'm going to let you into the school of engineering, and if you get a 3.5 your first semester, you can stay. Show me you have what it takes to be an engineer.'"
Needless to say, Vergnano met the challenge, and since then, he's never looked back. For him, his once-undirected passion for science became a lifelong vocation.
"That's how I became a chemical engineer," he concluded. "I owe it all to the dean who made it happen for me. I'm big on serendipity because there are opportunities like that all around us that we're not aware of. If I'd never had that conversation, I would not be where I am today."
For more information, visit www.chemours.com or www.americanchemistry.com.
