Next Steps at Airgas

Airgas has arrived at an important milestone on our sustainability journey. Throughout our three-decade history, we have always focused on compliance and improvements at the local level. Now is the time for evolution and our focus is to create a formal sustainability and corporate responsibility strategy that will guide and drive our efforts across the enterprise.

In 2014, this evolution took root in a big way with the formation of our Airgas Sustainability Committee. The group identified six key areas of focus—energy, emissions/waste, product sourcing, safety, community and talent development—and began working to ensure our activities in these areas are aligned with our business strategies. The committee worked to establish the right company-wide metrics to measure our progress going forward and to identify accountable "owners" in all our business areas who will keep us focused on our goals.

This 2015 report documents some key advances in our company's sustainability journey. It also provides a baseline that we can use to gain momentum as we increase and accelerate our sustainability efforts in the years and decades ahead. The report focuses on the sustainability programs, projects and activities that have the highest current impact today, but there are already many others that are under way or in the works. As our sustainability work continues to evolve and mature in all areas of the organization, our goal is to use the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) G4 guidelines—the international standard for sustainability reporting—as our framework for future reports. Looking ahead to tomorrow, Airgas is committed to developing, expanding and reporting on our sustainability strategy and celebrating our successes.