Recently China Responsible Care Commending Conference & CPCIF-ICCA HSE Seminar was held. China Crop Protection Industry Association (CCPIA) was awarded CPCIF Best Organizational Unit Award of Responsible Care. Only ten agrochemical organizations in China have received the award.

At the conference, Shirley Xia, deputy secretary general of CCPIA, gave a speech. She pointed out that though China’s agrochemical industry is growing rapidly, it still has not fully gotten rid of the extensive growth pattern featured by high consumption, high emission and low efficiency. To change the situation, CCPIA was one of the earliest organizations to introduce the responsible care idea in the industry. Through persistent publicity and promotion, more and more domestic agrochemical companies have joined the responsible care action. Responsible care has become a government-instructed, industry-promoted and enterprise-executed regulation and a foundation for the survival of an enterprise, from a voluntary action.

In recent years CCPIA has shifted the focus of its work to health, safety and environmental protection. Based on the rich experiences of transnational companies in carrying out responsible care activities for years, CCPIA has been conveying the latest concepts on responsible care on the high level of the industry. With pesticide industry parks as platforms, CCPIA has organized training several times, and through responsible care activities, a large number of medium- and large-sized companies have settled in the parks. CCPIA has carried out the work with cooperative groups of staple varieties. For example, the Working Group for Product Management and Responsible Care of the Paraquat Industry of China is the first large, influential responsible care enterprise group in the history of the Chinese agrochemical industry. The working group has done a lot of fruitful work such as training doctors, opening emergency hot-lines and distributing activated carbon, which has improved the cure rate of paraquat poisoning, helped improve the image of the agrochemical industry in the eyes of the society, communities and the public, and made contributions to the sustainable development of the industry. CCPIA has carried out one-to-one HSE training for companies with such demand and helped enterprises establish HSE management system; has cooperated with universities (jointly cultivating HSE engineering master with Nanjing University of Technology) to cultivate high-level inter-disciplinary HSE talents for the agrochemical industry; has actively organized the agrochemical industry to carry out the responsible care code, issued the HSE Management Regulations of the Pesticide Industry, formulated the Audit Provisions of the HSE Management System for China’s Pesticide Industry, and officially carried out the authentication of HSE compliance enterprises in the industry to further promote the responsible care idea in the industry. Currently two rounds totaling 17 enterprises have received the HSE compliance enterprise certificate.

Some domestic enterprises have seen increased HSE leve. Five agrochemical enterprises including Lianhe Tech, CAC Group, Rainbow Chemical, Nantong Jiangshan and Hailir Group were also awarded “Best Practice Unit of Responsible Care in the National Petroleum and Chemical Industry”.

The challenges on safety and environmental protection faced by the chemical industry are global. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen international cooperation and communication. CCPIA will continue to promote the responsible care work and make contributions to the new image building of the chemical industry.