There's just the hint of a smile on Paul Tebo's face. He's just got back the translations of DuPont's corporate-wide environmental motto, 'the goal is zero.' And in Russian, it's been rendered as 'the goal is nothing.'

This is the more light-hearted side of running a global corporate sustainability program. Tebo, vice president for safety, health, environment at the Wilmington, Delaware-based US science giant, is the driving force behind the attempt to steer DuPont onto a sustainable trajectory. It's no mean challenge.

DuPont has come a long way from its 1802 origins as a black powder manufacturer on the banks of the Brandywine River. In 1902 it deserted gunpowder in favor of diversified chemicals and synthetic fibers, carving out a position for itself as a worldclass specialty chemicals producer. In 1999, the company transformed again, divesting itself of Conoco, its $21bn oil and gas interest and acquiring Pioneer Hi-bred International, a leading seed producer, in keeping with its ambition to wed "modern biology" with chemistry to create a company based on "integrated science."

This history has left DuPont with a sizeable environmental legacy. Its Old Economy businesses have been resource- and energy-intensive and a bias for chemistry has led to its fair share of Superfund remediation sites and liabilities. Hazardous waste, while dramatically reduced, remains an issue, as does its controversial use of deep well injection disposal-the bane of US environmentalists.

The company has been roundly criticised, moreover, for its foot-dragging over the phasing out of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Jack Doyle, in his 1991 book, Hold the Applause, characterised the company's position as one of: "First deny, then delay." Although public pressure-and incontrovertible science-finally herded DuPont to the negotiating table to hammer out the 1987 Montreal Protocol, its corporate position could hardly have been described as proactive.

Paul Tebo is changing all that-from within. The past decade has seen him not preaching on the conference circuit, but reaching out to DuPont's plants worldwide to ensure the values of environmental and social stewardship are firmly integrated into each and every business unit. He has committed the company to impressive stretch goals and pioneered cutting edge metrics. He has engaged a wide variety of stakeholders and opened his rather secretive science company up to external concerns. And, critically, he has succeeded in translating the concept of sustainable development into a set of tangible business goals DuPont can implement and Wall Street can understand.

Tebo is a doer and a poor self-promoter-the archetype of the unsung hero. Quizzed about himself, he is coy, self-deprecating. He complains that he works too hard, is too serious, doesn't smile enough. On his desk in Wilmington there's a cardboard cut-out smile on a stick, a gift from his daughter. "She says I should go with the flow"… he shrugs quizzically.

Yet transforming a company the size of DuPont is no laughing matter. Key to this transformation, insists the softly-spoken chemical engineer, is his concept of 'sustainable growth'-and the commitment he is driving through the company's global operations to a goal of zero injuries, illnesses, incidents, wastes and emissions. "The adoption of sustainable growth as our central focus as we enter the 21st century is a critical step towards fundamental and lasting change across global DuPont," Tebo says.

Sustainable growth-namely "creating shareholder and societal value while reducing our environmental footprint along the value chain"-is DuPont's vision of sustainable development and its strategy for integrating the concept into its global businesses. It has Tebo's trademark all over it.

Paul Tebo has had broad experience in many positions within Dupont-including running a couple of billion-dollar global businesses during his 32-year career. This, he maintains, has been invaluable in understanding how to communicate environmental concepts in business terms and integrate sustainable growth concepts into line organisations. And sustainable growth, he argues-as opposed to development-was critical in getting the message across to DuPont colleagues. "Growth was very important. I tried sustainability and the business leaders saw it as status quo. I tried sustainable development and they viewed it as environmental sustainability. I tried sustainable business [but] growth is what organisations want-either you're growing or you're not and not growing is not a very good sit."

He acknowledges the possible contradiction inherent in sustainable growth by referring to former CEO Ed Woolard's use, ten years ago, of 'corporate environmentalism.' "Some people said that was an oxymoron," offers Tebo, "how can you put corporate and the environment together? Sustainable growth is kind of like that."

The secret lies in the type of growth. "It can't be like it has been," he continues. "When you're a large company you can't grow quickly in the old economy way."

Instead his vision of growth is based on the elimination of all wastes and emissions-the 'goal of zero'-and on conservation of energy and natural resources. This is very much a stretch goal for DuPont: they're not anywhere near achieving it yet, but Tebo has the company setting concrete targets to get there. As a result, four company-wide goals have been adopted for 2010: (1) Using 1990 as a base year, a 65 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from global operations; (2) flat total energy use; (3) the sourcing of 10 percent of global energy needs from renewable energy sources, at a cost competitive with the best fossil fuel alternative; and (4) achieving 25 percent of revenues from non-depletable resources.

The task has been eased, Tebo claims, by DuPont's hallowed tradition of industrial safety, which, he holds, is closely aligned with the basic tenets of sustainable development: "Environmental stewardship was never a hard sell to our businesses and plant sites, it was a natural extension of our safety culture." Likewise the leap to zero. "We talk about zero safety all the time, so why shouldn't we be setting other zero goals?" There was some concern at first: Was it achievable? Would non-achievers be punished? Were there carrots? But this was short-lived (see diagram 1). Tebo put the reward structures in place and it "took off very quickly. People were just ready for that; it was a natural for our culture."

One of DuPont's older, larger plants in Mexico City is already blazing the zero trail and, Tebo says proudly, "is almost at zero in waste and emissions." As a result, when air quality alerts occur and local industry is shut down, DuPont's plant stays open. There is less pollution, better community relations and-compellingly-more productive uptime, going straight to the financial bottom line.

There is no corporate-wide timeframe for achieving the goal of zero; business units set their own rate of progress. But, quips Tebo, "the quicker we get to zero waste, the quicker we'll have 100 percent product. The quicker we get to zero downtime, the quicker we'll be at 100 percent uptime." The logic speaks for itself.

It doesn't stop there. Tebo is pushing for the goal of zero to be extended to what he calls 'value partnerships' with customers and suppliers. And he has another success story to share. In a classic product-to-service shift, DuPont Canada struck a deal with customer Ford to get paid for the number of automobiles painted, rather than gallons of paint. As a result, costs to Ford have been reduced and waste volumes cut. Ford realised cost savings of 35-40 percent while emissions of volatile organic compounds were reduced by 50 percent. For DuPont Canada, meanwhile, the lower volume of paint supplied was offset by improved efficiencies.

Paul Tebo may be fond of his anecdotes, but his concepts repose on some pretty compelling metrics. To drive sustainable growth home to business leaders, he used brainstorming sessions with outsiders to develop a model for integrating environmental and shareholder value. The result: a handy tool for mapping the eco-efficiency of a given product or service and guiding strategic investment and divestment decisions (see diagram 2). Using pounds (lbs) of depletable resources as a surrogate for environmental footprint, DuPont's businesses can now see at a glance how much shareholder value added (SVA) they extract per pound of materials used. The aim, of course, is to raise SVA, while decreasing lb. Tebo is convinced that the metric is "very, very useful."

Nor does it stop at the environment. Tebo is already moving to apply the same methodology to the social bottom line. Again, he claims, this is a natural fit for the company: "We put people first. It comes from our safety culture, which is about improving the quality of life."

It's not such a stretch of the imagination. In Fortune magazine's "most admired" survey for 2000, DuPont ranked second among all companies for social responsibility. And if it isn't the jolliest of corporations to work for (DuPont's 1811 safety rules expressly prohibit "all kind of play or disorderly fun" and, nearly 200 years later, running in the corridors is still expressly forbidden), it can lay claim to having been among the first companies worldwide to institute an employee medical program and to being today a world leader in safety and health.

DuPont's definition of societal value is broad and includes: corporate social responsibility; the application high global standards for business ethics and manufacturing practices; the influence it has on suppliers and customers; the impact it has on important public policy issues; and-significantly-the development of strategies and actions to bring products, technology and services that improve quality of life to a greater percentage of the world's population.

It is this last aspect that is undeniably elegant from a business standpoint, for it addresses in one breath the societal duty to address the unmet needs of people in developing economies and the financial imperative of growing new markets and customers. DuPont is an Old Economy firm, focused on those segments of the market that value high performance products such as specialty chemicals, a strategic position which effectively excludes it from reaching five sixths of the world's population. To do so-namely to grow-it must develop new business models, products and services. And new metrics.

DuPont, Tebo says, takes the highest standards of safety, environmental stewardship, ethics and treatment of people as core values wherever it operates, without exception. To the maximum extent possible, it also takes these core values into joint venture partnerships. The societal value created by taking very high business and manufacturing standards into developing parts of the world, Tebo maintains, itself creates opportunities for business growth. "We're a welcome business partner in many countries in Asia due to our obsession with safety. Wherever we operate in the world, we also actively build local capacity through aid to education and supporting other community priorities. This enhances our right to operate and grow."

In Shanghai, China, for example, the safety and environmental practices used during the construction of DuPont's Lycraâ facility have since been adopted by the Chinese authorities as standards for future construction. The company is also making money-and spreading societal value-by sharing its safety expertise through a $50m consulting business that translates DuPont's know-how to other corporations and organisations. For every injury prevented at DuPont, it calculates the safety business has helped prevent 30 injuries in other companies.

As with the environment, Tebo views social issues through a tightly focused business lens. Corporate social responsibility? That's the right to operate. Influencing customers and suppliers? That's improved efficiency along the value chain. Products and services that make lives better and reach a greater percentage of the world? Expanded markets and new customers. His latest set of metrics builds on SVA per pound to incorporate percentage of the world's population reached (see diagram 3).

At least one DuPont business unit, Advanced Fibers Systems (AFS), is already applying it. AFS achieved a 37 percent increase in SVA/lb in 1999 versus 1998 and has now set itself the goal of doubling the number of workers protected (from fire, ballistics, cuts) by 2005: in emerging economies, the goal is to increase that number fivefold. "In the developed economy," the AFS Sustainable Growth Report reads, "we protect approximately 5m people and in emerging economies we reach about 700,000 people. Our goal for the next five years is to double our coverage in the developed world and protect five times the existing number in the emerging economies."

Tebo is at pains to stress that his work on societal value is very much work in progress. "We're going to have to be very creative and we'll need lots of help," he admits. But it's a start. In ten years, he hopes to be looking back on some tangible results. The growing pattern of dialogues DuPont is having with stakeholders and thought leaders from around the world is one indicator that it is already reaching for that help in the form of strategic partnerships. And that includes critics. "We need help from a lot of people and the people who tend to be on the leading edge of thought are critics. They can help us a great deal … A lot of the work we've done with the environment we've learned from critics and activists. They've helped us a great deal."

It's early days to judge Paul Tebo on social progress, but he certainly gets full marks for intent. If his vision for DuPont is realised, he will have succeeded in transforming an inefficient, Old Economy megalith into a sleek and value-led provider of solutions for global human needs. And he's the first to admit that's some way off. "[With] sustainable growth, we're just about where we were on the environment about seven years ago … Today shareholder value is clearly written in and-to some extent-footprint reduction, safety and progress on waste and emissions, [but] the societal piece is not because we're only just starting to define it."

The jury is out, moreover, on biotechnology, billed by DuPont as the lynchpin in its vision of a more sustainable future. Sustained public resistance to what the company dubs "modern biology" could derail its lofty plans. To its credit, DuPont has pledged to engage and listen to interested parties and has appointed a global advisory panel to guide its actions in this area. It also publicly advocates informed consumer choice and is open to concept of labeling. Significantly, DuPont has committed to apply the same safety standards to biotechnology as it does to industrial safety-a factor that may lend it credibility in the court of public opinion. Its extensive experience with safety may help inform the company's efforts in what is a contentious and fast-moving field and, hopefully, exert a positive influence on other players.

Over the next five years, Tebo intends to drive home "substantial additional progress" towards DuPont's goal of zero for injuries, illnesses, incidents, waste and emissions. He will put into place systems, processes and programs and keep the company on track to achieve its 2010 energy efficiency, GHG emission reduction, renewable energy and raw material goals. All this while substantially increasing DuPont's shareholder value per pound.

On the social front Tebo anticipates progress too. He speculates that by 2005 DuPont will have further integrated the broader concepts of societal value into several of its businesses and begun pilots to provide products and services to many of the developing regions of the world where it is not currently present. To achieve this, he sees stakeholder partnership-and dialogue-as key. "We need to increase the frequency and diversity of dialogues we have with people around the world," Tebo stresses. "Through this process we will increasingly understand and respond to societal needs and the public will better understand the economic requirements and constraints of a global corporation." The desired outcome: common objectives, trust and partnership.

Tebo is not short on vision. By 2025, he predicts that DuPont will be providing products and services to a much greater percentage of the world, through a combination of chemistry, biotechnology and information technology. The company's environmental footprint will be significantly smaller and it will be well on the way towards a transition to renewable feedstocks and energy. Relationships with society will also have evolved, Tebo wagers. DuPont will have developed extensive and strong partnerships with many groups in the public sector, including a certain reversal of roles, with the company championing the societal values of projects and the public sector providing the local and regional marketing and customer development.

In his vision of the future, financial markets, he is convinced, will strongly reward those companies that have integrated all aspects of sustainable development into their business strategies and actions. "I fully expect that we'll no longer be talking about economic, environmental and societal values as being distinctly different," he ventures, "but see them as integral and interlocking aspects of every business process and activity."

Now, that's not what I call a goal of nothing.

• For integrating the concept of 'sustainable growth' into the core strategic planning process right across the company's global business units.
• For his pioneering efforts to link shareholder value added with improved social and environmental performance, backed up with measurable targets.
• For his groundbreaking work to enhance DuPont's societal value in the South, through new business models, innovative metrics and stakeholder partnerships.

• 1994 Claude Fussler, Dow Europe, Switzerland.
• 1995 Alan Knight, B&Q, UK.
• 1996 Carlos Joly, Storebrand, Norway.
• 1997 Paul Gilding, Ecos, Australia.
• 1998 Lise Kingo, Novo Nordisk, Denmark.
• 1999 Mark Moody-Stuart, Royal Dutch/Shell, UK.