Values-Led, Purpose-Driven … and Data-Focused

June 5, 2025

This is part of a series featuring Albemarle experts who lead the world in transforming essential resources into critical ingredients for powering everyday life. 

Customers rely on Albemarle for a range of products, but they also rely on our data. 

This data-fueled cooperation appears in our new sustainability report, which is called “Values-Led, Purpose-Driven.” Companies are under increasing pressure to measure and report the entire scope of their carbon footprint and water usage, which includes data from their suppliers. 

Consider our work with Kraton, a maker of specialty polymers and biobased chemicals. Kraton's value proposition to customers includes a promise of sustainable solutions, one company official said in this video. He said Albemarle’s good record contributes to Kraton’s good record. 

That’s where Karen Shulman and Steven van Vegten play a role. 

Both are senior managers with Albemarle’s sustainability team. Van Vegten is based in Holland, where he started in 2008 as a technologist in the Amsterdam plant and subsequently held commercial functions for the Catalysts business. He sought a role on the sustainability team that gives him more of a sense of purpose.  

Shulman is based in the U.S. She has long worked in the sustainability field, driven by her strong belief that businesses should make the world better. She joined Albemarle in 2022 because of the essential role the company plays in decarbonization. 

Today, Van Vegten and his team collect, review and consolidate environmental data across Albemarle’s operations worldwide. Together with Shulman and her team, they share Albemarle’s sustainability initiatives with key stakeholders, such as customers, investors and the community. 

Their work is making a difference. It helped Albemarle earn a gold medal from EcoVadis, a leading provider of business sustainability ratings. Of the more than 150,000 companies evaluated, Albemarle ranked in the 95^th percentile.  

Albemarle also improved its grade from the CDP (formerly Carbon Disclosure Project), an international nonprofit that helps companies measure, manage and share environmental performance. 

Part of this forecasting includes developing a long-term strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While Albemarle continues to work toward its goals for the next five years, there’s also a new outline for reducing carbon emissions beyond 2030. It maps hotspots where emissions occur and identifies a range of interventions, from relying on electrification and renewable energy to developing new technology. 

The sustainability team’s efforts are producing measurable results. Albemarle is now: 

• Using renewable energy sources for 24% of its electricity consumption, up from 16% the previous year. That includes transitioning to 100% renewable electricity at facilities in Chile and Kings Mountain, N.C. 
• On track on track to reduce freshwater usage intensity (the amount of water per ton of product) by 25% by 2030 at operations in Chile and Jordan. Notably, the Chile sites have already achieved this goal. 
• Expanding the development of externally verified Product Carbon Footprints to include additional bromine and lithium products from locations in the US, Jordan and China.  

While those statistics and recognition from EcoVadis and CDP are rewarding, Van Vegten and Shulman say there are other moments that make them prouder. 

It’s when they explain to their children how their jobs make a difference. 

Watch our 2024 Sustainability Report highlights video below, and read the full report here.