Adopting a Sustainable CSR Approach

May 24

In recent years, concepts such as sustainable development, environmental, social, governance (“ESG”), and corporate social responsibility (“CSR”) have shifted how business is conducted and performance evaluated.

CSR is often defined as the economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic expectations that society has of organizations at a given point in time. ESG, on the other hand, refers to the non-financial concerns that companies consider when making key business decisions. Together, these two applications provide the underlying structure for sustainability reporting frameworks.

Driven by increasing needs from key stakeholders and the desire to develop a best-in-class sustainability strategy, PMC has taken several steps to develop an integrated CSR program, taking into account our size, footprint, and role as a vertically-integrated supplier. Over the past ~8 months, we worked with Master’s students from Duke University’s Nicholas School for the Environment to define a 3 year action plan and ultimately the PMC CSR strategy.

This project utilized a materiality assessment to define our CSR pillars. “Materiality” or “material issues” denotes why and how certain issues are important to an organization. So, our near-term goals will focus on environmental footprint tracking and analysis, sustainable raw materials (with emphasis on regenerative agriculture and sustainable codes of conduct), diversity and inclusion, and transparency.

This is the third time PMC has partnered with the Nicholas School, and we are looking forward to tackling our newly-defined CSR goals and building on them in the future.