Sustaining our planet and our business means protecting natural resources, helping our customers meet their sustainability challenges, creating employment opportunities, and working with local communities in areas such as education and safety. It also means balancing economic, environmental and social factors while addressing global challenges. But above all else, it means uniting under a common goal: Improve every life.
Our sustainability goal is to support the growth of communities worldwide while driving a growing business. This means addressing global challenges, including availability and security, raw material scarcity, human health and safety, and education and development. All while keeping our vision in mind.
Like many organisations, we strive to balance the three key pillars of sustainability:
Learn more about how we’re addressing global challenges.
The only thing we like better than a great idea is great results. When it comes to sustainability, excellence lies in the evidence. From cutting green house gas reductions by 57% to using less water and releasing fewer pollutants, our sustainability efforts are paying off. Read more.
Since 1902, 3M has been improving lives. Social and environmental stewardship is central to who we are and is embedded throughout our vision:
With operations in more than 70 countries—and 55,000 products sold across nearly 200 countries—we are intricately woven into the global economy and deeply invested in humanity. No one is ever far from a 3M product, which empowers us to make a difference city by city, village by village and person by person.
Rapid communication advances are quickly merging our world into a global community with shared values. Together, we face uncertainties surrounding energy availability and climate change, water quality and availability, raw material scarcity, education, development, and human health and safety.
It’s clear that these global dynamics are challenging the sustainable growth of future generations, which is why 3M is using its greatest assets—ideas and innovation—to address these challenges.
With industries ranging from healthcare to office supplies, and electronics to automotive, we invent technologies that make daily life easier, safer and more fulfilling. Some of the recent ways in which we’ve applied our ideas and innovation for a more sustainable future include the following:
As we celebrate our accomplishments, we also recognise the magnitude of the global challenges we are all looking to address. This will not be easy, and it will require shifts in how we operate, how we make long-term decisions and how we collaborate. But we firmly believe that by working with our customers and partners, and by empowering people to exercise their own creativity and passion, we can drive the transformational changes necessary for the success of both business and society.
3Mers are a committed team, 89,500 strong, poised to help create a more sustainable future. We intend to do this by designing products that support our customers’ sustainability efforts, embedding sustainable practices across our supply chain, and, perhaps most importantly, joining together with a shared purpose.
I am proud to be a 3Mer committed to this effort and excited about the role 3M can play in helping everyone, everywhere, live a better life.
Inge G. Thulin
Chairman, President and CEO
February 10, 2017
The UK’s largest electricity transmission network operator has specified 3M ACCR (Aluminium Conductor Composite Reinforced) for a major project to replace conductors on a transmission line from Dungeness to Sellindge, Kent, due to its noise reduction properties.
February 10, 2017
A transparent roof canopy made from film cushions extruded from 3M Dyneon Fluoroplastic ETFE is giving visitors to London’s highest all-weather garden a clear view of the City all year round.
February 10, 2017
Billions of individual 3M™ Glass Bubbles have been used to buoy up a pioneering subsea pipeline project.
February 10, 2017
The UK’s largest electricity transmission network operator has specified 3M ACCR (Aluminium Conductor Composite Reinforced) for a major project to replace conductors on a transmission line from Dungeness to Sellindge, Kent, due to its noise reduction properties.
February 10, 2017
A transparent roof canopy made from film cushions extruded from 3M Dyneon Fluoroplastic ETFE is giving visitors to London’s highest all-weather garden a clear view of the City all year round.
February 10, 2017
Billions of individual 3M™ Glass Bubbles have been used to buoy up a pioneering subsea pipeline project.