Nature of Business radio, created and hosted by Chrissy Coughlin, is a weekly show on business and environment.

This week, Nature of Business host Chrissy Coughlin speaks with Charlene Wall Warren, Sustainability Leader North America at BASF. Charlene discusses the ubiquitous nature of BASF's product lines, her role in communicating BASF's commitment to sustainability, as well as BASF's recent involvement in the Sustainability Consortium. She also addresses the critical importance of math and science in today's society, and highlights a very cool partnership between BASF and the Seattle Mariners, her hometown.

Founded in 1865 and headquartered in Germany, BASF is the world's leading chemical company. With roughly 110,000 employees, BASF comprises subsidiaries and joint ventures in more than 80 countries and operates 6 integrated production sites and 390 other production sites in Europe, Asia, Australia, the Americas, and Africa. BASF also serves customers in over 200 countries and supplies products to a wide variety of industries.

Technologies include those that go into automotive, houses, commercial buildings, food, health, nutrition as well as products for solar and wind energy, pharmaceuticals, and many more.

Certainly, the fabric of BASF has evolved from its early days as a producer of chemicals necessary for dye production of soda and acids. With such a global presence, BASF's commitment to resource efficiency and innovation is promising as well as the creation two years ago of Charlene's position, the first of its kind in North America.

In her words, "I have worked at BASF for over 20 years. You always learn new things. I have a chemistry background in Chemical Engineering and have evolved with BASF into a role that is responsible for sustainability across North America. It's a great role. I get to interact with all of our different businesses in all of the different industries and talk to employees and folks outside of the company... and it has several different facets; part of it is to identify new opportunities where we can bring expertise and technologies that foster sustainability in the marketplace and part of it is to inspire and lead within and continuously strive for improvement on the journey to sustainability."

With people like Charlene working so hard on addressing the critical nature of sustainability within such a large company, perhaps BASF should stand for Beyond a Sustainable Future? Just a thought.