2008 Sustainability Overview: Designed to Innovate... Sustainably
Investing in Innovation
We invest in innovation to reduce the environmental footprint of our operations, affecting both our facilities and our processes.
Innovating from the ground up
Building sustainable facilities
Our unique system for sustainably designing and building new facilities—exemplified by new facilities like the Beauty Care plant in Lodz, Poland, illustrated below—demonstrates multiple areas of innovation in action.
Before building a new facility, we combine industry knowledge with a proprietary 77-point process to evaluate key sustainability elements. Our analysis rates the facility’s potential impact on CO2, energy, waste, water, and environmental quality. The process covers the five areas shown below, as well as ongoing operations once the facility is built.
- Site
- In choosing a facility’s location, we investigate commuting options, local ecosystems, and ways to use energy efficiently.
- Materials
- We select building materials that minimize environmental impact while maximizing workplace comfort and health. Whenever possible, debris from construction is recycled rather than sent to landfill.
- Lighting
- Along with designing our facilities to make use of natural light, we use low-consumption lighting equipment whenever possible.
- Water
- We make as few man-made changes as possible to a site’s hydrological cycle, often building ponds that collect storm water and lessen discharge flow to local streams.
- Systems
- Our facilities incorporate passive systems when feasible, helping maximize natural elements for ventilation and temperature control. When active systems are required, we favor high-efficiency equipment.
Manufacturing efficiently from the top down
Putting resources to good use
P&G’s investment in innovation goes far beyond our facilities. It also extends to our highly productive use of material resources.
Upfront, we find ways to minimize our inputs, using less raw material for packaging while consuming energy more efficiently. But our output is dramatic as well, with 96% of all materials being converted into finished product.
The waste that is produced—which is mostly non-hazardous—is low. And much of it can be repurposed in useful ways.
Raw Materials,
Packaging and Energy are used in the Manufacturing Process to produce the Finished Product which uses 96.12% of all materials
Waste is repurposed:
2.30%: Recycled/Reused
Examples of recycled waste use:
- Perfume: the sweet smell of re-use
- At our manufacturing site for perfume in Avenel, New Jersey, we developed a new process for blending scrap material for reprocessing as an ingredient for potpourri. As a result, annual generation of scrap waste at the site has dropped from 50,000 kg to zero.
- Paper: a by-product raises the roof
- In some P&G tissue and towel plants, the paper “fines”—a wet by-product of the paper making process—are reclaimed for energy to run the plant. The fines are also used to manufacture housing and roofing tiles.
- Soap: a second chance for suds
- Bubbly wastewater from our shampoo and liquid soap plants has found new life in a secondary market. Today, instead of becoming waste, the mixture is sold and repackaged for use in automatic car washes.
1.58%: Non-Recycled
Examples of non-recycled waste:
- Water Emissions
- Non-Hazardous Solid Waste
- Hazardous Solid Waste
- Air Emissions
