Chemical industry is one of the important industries in the world. However, incidents happened due to the release of hazardous materials, toxic and poisonous chemicals in the chemical industries can cause fatal to human and destruction of the environment. Learning from the Bhopal disaster's experience, chemical industries have developed a program - Responsible Care, aiming to regain public trust through improving the environment, health and safety performances. Malaysia has adopted Responsible Care program since 1994 under the stewardship of the Chemical Industries Council of Malaysia (CICM). Six codes of management practices have been developed by the CICM, covering distribution, community awareness and emergency response, pollution prevention, process safety, employee health & safety and product stewardship. It has been more than 20 years since its inception. However, to date, there are only 125 companies have signed the pledge to adopt Responsible Care program. The CICM has also conducted several initiatives to encourage participation of chemical companies to adopt Responsible Care program in Malaysia. Therefore, it is the aim of this paper to review the current status of Responsible Care program in Malaysia and also deliberate the way forward of this program.

Chemical industry is one of the important industries in the world. However, incidents happened due to the release of hazardous materials, toxic and poisonous chemicals in the chemical industries can cause fatal to human and destruction of the environment. Learning from the Bhopal disaster's experience, chemical industries have developed a program - Responsible Care, aiming to regain public trust through improving the environment, health and safety performances. Malaysia has adopted Responsible Care program since 1994 under the stewardship of the Chemical Industries Council of Malaysia (CICM). Six codes of management practices have been developed by the CICM, covering distribution, community awareness and emergency response, pollution prevention, process safety, employee health & safety and product stewardship. It has been more than 20 years since its inception. However, to date, there are only 125 companies have signed the pledge to adopt Responsible Care program. The CICM has also conducted several initiatives to encourage participation of chemical companies to adopt Responsible Care program in Malaysia. Therefore, it is the aim of this paper to review the current status of Responsible Care program in Malaysia and also deliberate the way forward of this program
Responsible Care ; chemical industries ; environment ; health ; safety