Dow-Union Carbide merger

[ttweed@wildrockies.org (Tony Tweedale)]

I ain't no expert, but it seems w/ large, horizontally integrated
conglomerates, the feds would find it easier to order the spin-off of a
couple or 3 major units (e.g. PVC?, or any other large chemical market that
is still only a minor fraction of revenues) to justify approving the
merger.  We may not only have too keep being poisoned, but pay more for the
privelege. Is America great, or what?

I see the Sun 18 July (p.1 of Money & Bus. sectn.) _NYT_  had a good,
comprehensive piece by Barnaby Feder on the P2 (pollution prevention)
efforts at Dow Midland.  Initiated by NRDC's Linda Greer & a Dow manager in
DC, the effort has some excellent elements that mirror the P2 agreement our
group reached in a (mandatory)consent decree w/ our local kraft P&P
mill--independent experts & certification, openess.  In addition, the
agreement there brings in local enviros (Diane Herbert,  Mary Sinclair,
Terry Miller, Anne Hunt, Tracey Easthope), who name which chemicals are
targeted (largely chlorinated) and who set the reduction goals (whereas we
made Smurfit-Stone quantify their material & energy inputs & outputs and
their ES&H (env, health & safety) costs, so that they'd better see where
they simultaneously waste money & waste waste--ie where P2 will pay off
(and so also cause management to buy-in.  Companies love to put everything
but the most direct costs of production, incl. ES&H, which can be 5-10% of
total costs, into the black box called overhead, where they're never
managed (what's measured gets managed, & waste ain't waste 'till it's
wasted).  At Midland, managers present their P2 plans to the enviros & the
outside experts before implementation for review, ditto for progress
reports.  An impressive degree of involvement for a chemical company,
traditionally about the most claustrophobic of all.

Turns out Dow makes a filler material for foods, time-release drugs and
construction material that is made w/ toluene & ethene chloroethane!!  The
article has great examples of the amazingly stupid, even arrogant, ways
this big company wastes money &waste waste (it's gotta be a cultural thing,
'cause management is perhaps 80% cost management).  Dow was ignoring the
conditions causing premature dimerization (incipent polymerization) of
styrene & butadiene, which then caused a lot of eqpmnt downtime & cleaning
expense.  Fix? Lower the T.  Transfering vinylidine chloride to a storage
tank 2x/day instead of once prevented it from filling up so much that a lot
of the vaopor was routed to an incinerator.  Duuuuuuh.  This sorta thing
has gotta come from not caring ("managing") about your (you, the product
manager & team) product.  Arrogant chemical company managers think they
know everything about getting the product out the door on time & w/ high
quality, but our competitors know TQM (total quality mngmnt) is a lot more
than that.  Saving money is synonimous to reducing waste (emissions).
Again, this has gotta be cultural--somehow wastes are uninportant and 'to
be gotten rid of, as they are bad for my product'?.

well, I know that arguing for this kind of efficiency might make the
chlorine, etc users stronger when we badly need to practically eliminate
organo-chlorine and other toxins.  But while I don't buy into the simple
utilitarian argument ("better to operate clean than dirty, and maybe
magically they'll decide to disinvest from chlorine"), I do think that
there's a false equivalency in that logic.  The incipient Clean Production
movement, which is solidly into the nitty-gritty and reality of the
economics & politics of the question recognizes (I think) that the two are
somewhat interdependent--cleaning up production (& incr. savings) of your
existing processes leads management to clean production values, and wanting
to go to the next step.  If society keeps pushing to internalize to the
producer externalized costs, comapnies may begin to switch feedstocks.  Man
has proved he can build vibrant economies based on about any activity, and
todays mad, deep-rooted consumerism is not necessary, though it's deeply
ingrained .  These are not well developed arguments of mine.  There
certainly are a lot of dangers in utilizing the subtle, complicated world
of molecular biology & genetics to generate revenues and shreholder
returns, but I'd hazard a guess the petrochemical age will substantially
turn into the genetic economy anyway.  I see it happening big-time in EPA
pesticide new & re-registrations.  The ultimate answer is to run our
economy w/ enuf attention to the details of the ecologic web that supports
man's activity ...not a task the Ugly American is well suited to...

Tony Tweedale

Causality is a concept not subject to empirical demonstration. -David Hume
(1711-'76)

Temperate but endangered planet.  Enjoys weather, northern lights,
continental drift.  Seeks caring relationship with intelligent life form.
      -Friends of the Earth