Opinion: How can I help?

When a crisis situation hits, it tests you.  It somehow bonds you - to your colleagues, your neighbour, your friends and family in other locations, the frontline workers you never met. There is a commonality to the challenge of what can we do to help.   Nothing could be more true of the experience of what it was like to live and work through such a crisis as the COVID-19 pandemic. To be fighting fires as they spring up and deal with whatever situation was brought to you with the combined attitude of doing all you could to try and make it better. 

Now, as the situation ebbs from acute crisis management to the new reality, and we move from “resilience” to “return to work”, I always think it is important to take a moment and reflect on what we have learned so far. 

The power of collaboration

During this time, the entire world has come together, ignoring the typical barriers that normally divide us. We are grateful for the best minds looking for solutions, innovating and selflessly helping and giving. At Dow, our work has been focused on supporting the heroes who are risking their lives to treat the sick, and we are indebted to them and their efforts.  

As a manufacturer of the raw materials behind personal protective equipment, hand sanitizer, disinfectants, IV bags, food ingredients and packaging, we understand our responsibility to support the people and supply chains that are vital to containing COVID-19 and maintaining our collective well-being. Over the past few months we have been part of many stories of solidarity and we are extremely proud of our partners, our customers and our teams for their work done and personal energy committed.

"How can we help?" is the most powerful question
It’s March 2020 and hospitals across Spain struggle to protect their workers. News outlets report unconventional solutions for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) at local hospitals, such as plastic garbage bags for gowns and plastic water bottle cutouts for eye protection. This shortage of PPE leaves not only doctors and nurses, but also other essential workers such as paramedics, ambulance drivers and cleaning staff vulnerable in the midst of the pandemic. In the face of all this, Plasbel and Plastigaur, two Dow partners in Spain, ask the question “How can we help?”. They independently led projects, with the help of product donation from Dow, so both companies were able to produce and distribute over 100,000 body protective coverings for essential workers across Spain.

Working together removes the barrier of distance

There is an ocean and over 9,000km separating Toulouse, France and Santa Fe Springs, USA. But after seeing health workers use trash bags as PPE, that distance melted away to nothing as engineers from Cytec, part of the Solvay group and a Dow partner, brought their minds together to develop an apron prototype in less than 48 hours.

The aprons were engineered in a way so that medical staff could easily pull out them out of the box from the head opening section and start wearing them right away, thus minimizing the risk for contamination and saving precious time. Thousands of these aprons developed with Dow donated materials were distributed to health workers in Europe and the USA.

“It was inspirational to see how a simple question inspired our leaders. "What can we do to help?" kicked off a flurry of conversation and actions,” said Robert Murdock, general manager, Solvay Process Materials . “Within two days we had designs and samples in both Toulouse and Santa Fe Springs, within a week our legal partners in multiple countries provided us a path to proceed and now only a few days later we have delivered thousands of PPE aprons to grateful healthcare and social care workers. The pride on our teammates' faces, from engineering, to production to logistics, has brought a smile to my own. I am so proud of all who have touched this effort; to use their time and talents to make a difference in the battle against COVID-19. It's so very special!”

People are compassionate AND passionate

In Tarragona, Spain, 150 volunteers dedicated 4,250 hours of their time sewing and sealing over 50,000 square meters of polyethylene film donated by Dow’s Pack Studios Tarragona, to be used in the production of protective clothing used as additional PPE. They then distributed them to 14 health centers in the region with a message of solidarity: “Junts es sortirem - Together we will make it.” Volunteers have been pillars of strength and dedication during this crisis, generously giving their time, energy and resources to those in need. We extend our heartfelt thanks to them.

Bigger than all of us

We joined forces with other resin producers in Europe, to donate products to create medical Protective Equipment for local hospitals in the Lyon region of France. The joint effort worked across various industries with Dow’s partner RKW Group developing the PE plastic film and volunteers from a well-established logistics company producing the medical protective clothing and delivering it free of charge to Hospices Civils de Lyon. 

Together we are stronger

This isn’t the only time we stood shoulder-to-shoulder with industry suppliers during this crisis. In Spain, we responded alongside other resin producers to a call for raw material donation by known film converter Armando Alvarez, to produce medical drapes and gowns for hospitals in Madrid and Catalunya.

In Italy, we worked alongside our partner Plastik Textile, a reputed plastic film manufacturer, a high tech fabric manufacturer and their customer, a well-known fashion house, who made a 2 million Euro equivalent donation, to help hospitals in Northern Italy, one of the early epicenters of the COVID-19 crisis.

Keep on learning. Keep on collaborating 

Collaboration is not new to us at Dow as we were working with industry partners to find solutions for everyday problems well before the Covid-19 crisis. But if before we had the luxury of time, the crisis put us all in an accelerated-mode, challenging us to unify teams with the common purpose of finding solutions faster than ever before.

We are grateful to have had partners and employees with the right mind-set, passion and resilience for that. As we see so many regions of the world dealing with the crisis at various stages, it is important to look back and think on the lessons we have learned so far.  We are in awe of the exceptional work using the power of collaboration, and we commit to continue our work with partners and local and international organizations to aid frontline workers and help protect vulnerable populations.

I have worked for Dow for a very long time but during these past months the work with all our partners, our customers and my colleagues has been inspirational – and for this they have my deepest gratitude.