Corinne Faure • Thomas Hillenbrand • Susan Röver

Chemical companies are increasingly being forced to inform producers, finishers, and users of chemical products about the properties of their products. The Internet appears a particularly appropriate communication medium to fulfill these information requirements. In this project, we systematically study the extent to which leading chemical companies are using online communication to raise awareness about environmental issues and answer environment-related questions linked to their activities and products. We analyze the corporate Web sites of 12 leading worldwide chemical companies, distinguishing between two types of online environmental information: (1) corporate information about the company's environmental activities and (2) product-related environmental information. For both of these, we evaluate the Web sites on criteria related to the form and to the content of the information provided.

Our results indicate relatively good (but unequal) practices as far as corporate environmental online communications and relatively poor product-related online environmental information in the chemical industry. Our analysis also allows us to identify the companies with the best online environmental information practices, which can thus serve as orientation for the rest of the industry.