Owens Corning achieves seven environmental footprint goals

The company also reports its 11th consecutive year of safety improvement, including the introduction of a company-wide policy to eliminate cell phone usage while driving.

"The momentum of our 2012 success is helping us toward our ambitious 2020 goals," said Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer Frank O'Brien-Bernini. "Across our company, these goals inspire innovation, creativity, external collaboration and broad engagement."

Building on the successes of its first 10-year goals, this is the second year the company is reporting against its 2020 goals. Introduced in 2011, the company's 2020 goals were designed to expand the scope and further raise the bar on its commitment to sustainability.

Progress highlights toward the 2020 goals include:

- Completed several greenhouse gas reduction projects while laying the groundwork for many others, including diesel-to-natural gas transportation fuel-switching, fuel cells, waste heat recovery, biomass, solar, and combined heat and power.

- Partnered with The World Resources Institute on its Aqueduct project to conduct a global water stress assessment of Owens Corning's global operations and completed several successful major water use reduction projects in stressed areas.

- Released the first Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) for fiberglass insulation in North America.

- Donated enough insulation and roofing material to reroof 283 homes and insulate more than 1,000 homes for those in need.

- Strengthened our Supplier Code of Conduct (as an integral part of our supplier management program), as well as our Employee Code of Conduct to create explicit expectations relative to sustainability.

- Achieved more than 60 percent shingle recycling availability, allowing our unqualified statement that "Shingles are Recyclable."

- Earned a perfect score of 100 percent on the HRC Corporate Equality Index (each year since 2004) and distributed our own "It Gets Better Project™" video featuring OC employees sharing their stories in support of anti-bullying.

- Achieved listing on the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index for the third consecutive year.

- Achieved our 11th-consecutive year of safety improvement, punctuated by the introduction of a company-wide policy to eliminate cell phone usage while driving.

- Successfully achieved all seven of its first 10-year environmental footprint goals as of year-end 2012.

"Our accomplishments are representative of the progress we have made this past year, but we clearly recognize that we have much more to do on the path to becoming a more sustainable, and preferably, a net-positive company," O'Brien-Bernini said.

"As we move forward, we will continue to shrink our environmental footprint, increase our focus on energy efficiency and durability solutions, expand and streamline our global environmental management systems, better meet the growing demand for transparency in products and increase the level and geographic reach of our community investment activities."

Owens Corning's 2012 Sustainability Report is consistent with Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines known as GRI-G3.1. GRI's Sustainability Reporting Guidelines set a globally applicable framework for reporting the economic, environmental and social dimensions of an organization's activities, products and services.

Owens Corning