2021 Owens Corning Sustainability Report | Reducing Our Environmental Footprint | Air Quality Management | 163 SPEAKING OF SUSTAINABILITY Devlin Whiteside Environmental Leader With her background in chemical engineering and environmental consulting, Devlin Whiteside has a long-standing interest in how companies address issues of air quality management. She recalls being particularly fascinated by air dispersion modeling, a computer-based model that predicts how pollutants might disperse into the air and get distributed around the globe. Now, as an environmental lead for our Roofing business, Devlin is a strong proponent for environmental justice, the idea that no population should be disproportionately affected by negative environmental impacts, and all populations should be empowered to make informed decisions and take action. Here, she talks about what environmental justice means for Owens Corning and for herself. Air quality is a global issue — every choice we make impacts the air we breathe. ” “ Photo courtesy of Devlin Whiteside On coming together to deliver effective solutions I’m very proud when we collaborate across different disciplines to solve a problem. In one of our plants, we had an issue with a piece of equipment that was continuing to deviate from our normal operations. To solve that, the leadership team brought together people from operations, the environmental, health, and safety group, and external people with expertise in this piece of equipment. We got them all together, looked at the history of this piece of equipment, looked at the root causes, and came up with real solutions to reduce almost all the problems. It really improved our relationship with regulators because we were able to show that we took it very seriously and that we solved the problem. On the vital importance of air quality management Air quality is a global issue — every choice that every single person makes impacts the quality and the health of the air that we breathe, so no one can run away from their responsibilities. Everyone plays a part, from individuals and their choices to the way industries run their businesses and all around the world. It’s important for Owens Corning to do our part and make sure that we understand that the things that we do affect not only our local community, but our entire globe. And since we are a global company, it makes total sense that we would have global, enterprise-wide goals to make sure that we have consistent awareness and progress and goals to reduce our impacts. On building trust in the context of environmental justice We have to make sure our communities trust that we are a partner in protecting them and the environment. My role is to make sure that we are forthcoming, and part of that is building trust with regulators and providing the community with accurate, truthful, relevant information. This means doing things like reporting when we have deviations, so we can show that we are taking these issues very seriously and that we are putting in the preventive measures and action items to make sure they never happen again. It has been to our benefit to have a good relationship with the community and the regulators — to meet them on a human level and talk to them about what’s actually going on, when we’ve already established that level of trust. And the best way to build any kind of relationship is to be honest and to be clear.