How Procter and Gamble achieved zero waste to landfill in 45 factories
(Gillette's World Shaving Headquarters in Boston is one of the factories to have achieved zero waste status. 82% of employees have opted in to the zero waste space programme. Photograph: Dave Walsh. Today Procter and Gamble (P&G) are announcing that 45 of their facilities across the world have now reached zero manufacturing waste to landfill status.)
Globally P&G has already ensured that 99% of all materials entering their plants leave as either finished product or end up being reused, recycled or converted to energy. But in the 45 plants that have achieved zero waste status, through innovative technologies and creative reuses, the company has managed to find ways to divert that remaining 1% from landfills. Better still for the company's bottom-line, they have found ways to convert this waste stream into a new revenue stream.
Much of the success in tackling that 1% of landfill waste is attributed to the company's Global Asset Recovery Purchases (GARP) team which was formed in 2007. The GARP team, which is headed up by Forbes McDougall, do not look at "waste as waste," but as something "that can always be reused for another purpose." So, for example, when they found that after recycling scraps of paper from their Charmin plant in Latin America, they were still left with unusable fibres, they found a way to convert those fibres into low cost roof tiles. Similarly, waste that is left from making shampoo is turned into industrial fertilizer and scraps from feminine care products are turned into pellets that are used to make plastic soles for low cost shoes. The genius behind GARP, says McDougall, is that his team specialise in purchasing and are not an environmental team per se.
"It's very easy to just press the scrap button. But now we tell people 'don't scrap stuff, call GARP.' Purchasing guys are good at finding viable solutions financially, so we treat (handling waste) as a business opportunity. Once you start delivering revenue for the business, then you are everyone's friend."
Repurposing waste also requires innovative (and often simple) uses of technology. McDougall describes how rejected feminine care pads at one of their plants in Budapest, Hungary ended up being diverted from landfills to be used as fuel to make cement. Initially the pads which contained both paper and plastic were sent to the cement plant whole. But they soon discovered that they burned much better and became a better energy source if they were shredded down. So they developed a new shredder and a vacuum that enabled them to separate the paper from the plastic and vacuum off the material as it went along the line. What was once landfilled became a good source of fuel and a good source of revenue for P&G.
One of the sites that has achieved zero waste status is the Gillette Plant in Boston, better known as the World Shaving Headquarters. The no waste philosophy is immediately evident when you enter their office building. At almost every work station there is a small sign saying this is a "zero waste space" meaning that the employee has volunteered to give up their individual bin in favour of using the centralised waste station where the company has found they tend to recycle more and trash less. At each waste station as well as recycling opportunities, there is a compost bin where employees can dispose of any raw or cooked food. Some stations also have a bin for plastic bags. The sustainability team at the site proudly note that 82% of their 1,320 employees opted in to the zero waste space programme.
The same no waste ethos is also highly visible in the employee cafeteria. There are huge signs everywhere encouraging employees to recycle and compost and even better signs explaining exactly what is compostable. All of the packaging for takeaway items is made from either corn or sugar and so ends up back in the compost bin where it is later taken to a local farm along with any food or beverage waste and converted into industrial fertiliser. The same biodegradable material is also being used in packaging for Gillette and other P&G products. The packaging for the Gilette Fusion ProGlide razor is made from a combination of sugarcane, bamboo & bulrush which the company says has led to a 57% reduction in plastic and a 20% reduction in gross weight.
On the manufacturing floor great care is taken to ensure that nothing that has value or can be repurposed ends up being trashed. Under each machine there is a bin to collect any discarded or rejected items.
These pieces of scrap metal or plastic are then transferred to pristine containers where employees are instructed to take care to keep each resource separate. Mixing metals or plastic can cause contamination and will reduce the reuse value. The Site Solution Provider, who handles all the plant's recycling, will then find the appropriate vendor for each specific material stream. Plastic from dispensers is ground up to make new dispensers. Scrap metal is recycled into new metal for marketplace and scrap wood pellets are turned into particle board or biomass fuel chips.
At the manufacturing level, P&G is well on its way to achieving their zero waste to landfill goals in all their plants. More challenging is their long term goal of achieving zero consumer waste as well. Approximately 4.6 billion people around the world are using P&G products. According to Len Sauers, VP of global sustainability, the company is constantly engaged in research to quantify the impact of its products across their life cycle so they can direct their research and development efforts where the impact is.
An obvious high impact area is the energy and water used with cleaning products, so the company has developed both cold water and reduced rinsing detergents to counteract this. For obvious reasons, no date has been set for when the company may achieve their goal of zero consumer waste. "It's a journey," Sauers says, "and the destination keeps on changing."
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P&G has achieved double whammy of zero waste status and increasing revenues with innovative technology and re-use. You have to admit... that's impressive.
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