By Dylan Beach
Sustainability Manager, GOJO Industries
This year, as we celebrate the 51st Earth Day, the world is uniting over three days, April 20-22, to focus on actions we all can take to further prevent climate change and environmental destruction. Science tells us that we need to reduce the world's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 50% by 2030 to avert the most significant effects of climate change.
GOJO has recognized our role in creating a healthy future since our founding 75 years ago and puts great effort into understanding and proactively managing the social, environmental, and economic impacts of our business to create sustainable value. Over the years, we have taken action to reduce our contributions to climate change. In this article, we reflect on several of our accomplishments as we prepare to set an ambitious new Sustainable Value strategy.
Actioning on change to reduce climate impact
GOJO has held publicly stated sustainability goals since 2010. From 2010 to 2015, our goal addressing GHG intensity led us to reduce our Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions intensity (kg CO2 equivalent / 1000 product uses) by 46% from a 2010 baseline. Scope 1 emissions are direct emissions from the combustion of fuels on-site, like natural gas to heat a building. Scope 2 emissions are indirect GHG emissions from the consumption of purchased electricity, heat, or steam. The electricity is used on-site, but the emissions occur offsite, typically at a power plant.
We achieved these results by making some major process changes, including adjusting our ingredients and formula mixing process to work at lower temperatures and changing our industrial cleaning processes to use electrolyzed water which cleans at room temperature. Warming our formulations for mixing and heating water for cleaning were the biggest process uses of natural gas in our manufacturing facilities.
In our next set of 5-year goals, we had a goal to power our U.S. distribution operations with renewable energy by 2020. In 2018, we built a 1,800-panel on-site solar array that, combined with renewable electricity present in the Ohio grid mix (only about 4% today), allowed us to achieve this goal early. In 2020, due to the enormous demand we experienced during the pandemic bringing our well-being solutions to people worldwide, our energy demand surpassed the available renewable electricity. Our future planning will include expanding our use of renewable energy.
Because sustainability has become embedded into how we operate, we've installed tens of thousands of LED lights, energy-efficient HVAC systems, heat exchangers, and other equipment and processes to improve energy efficiency. In 2020, during the height of the pandemic, we began to utilize our existing operational footprint to its full capacity, and our GHG intensity was 47% less than it was in 2015 – meaning, per product use, we used almost half as much energy during 2020 to make our products than we did with our smaller footprint in 2015.
Infusing sustainability into our innovations
GOJO team members share a core responsibility we call Sustainable Ways of Working™, which empowers us to understand how we can create Sustainable Value in our roles every day. As we have infused sustainability into our processes over time, we have seen the real benefits in the innovation we bring to the marketplace.
A life-cycle assessment on our touch-free dispensing platforms identified battery waste as the system's largest environmental impact. So in 2017, we launched our most innovative dispenser, the PURELL® ES8 dispensing system, which features the breakthrough ENERGY-ON-THE-REFILL™ technology eliminating the hassle of battery change-outs – representing a 68% reduction in battery waste,* and a 15% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions* when compared to leading touch-free systems on the market.** As ES8 grows as a dispensing system of choice in our markets, so does the emissions reduction impact. With each successive dispenser platform, we look to incorporate the latest technological advancements to increase its sustainable value.
Our commitment to sustainability and climate action is also shown through the third-party certifications of our products, which offer a trusted outside voice to help customers quickly identify a product with higher levels of environmental and/or social performance and products with ingredient safety. In 2020, over 350 global SKUs connected to PURELL® hand sanitizer and PURELL HEALTHY SOAP™† with CLEAN RELEASE™ Technology achieved Cradle to Cradle Certified™ Gold with a Platinum level Material Health rating. ***
The Cradle to Cradle Certified™ Products Program is the world's most advanced standard for safe, circular, and responsible materials and products. To achieve a Gold level rating in the Renewable Energy & Carbon Management category of this certification, the product's final manufacturing stage must use at least 50% renewable energy. Increasingly making our products with renewable, carbon-free energy will help us draw down our carbon emissions in support of a stable climate.
Reaching for new goals
Our most recent set of Sustainable Value Goals ended in 2020. We are diligently working on setting our next Sustainable Value Strategy, long-term goals, and short-term targets. One of the pillars of our new strategy will focus strongly on our value chain climate impact. Like many other companies, we are reckoning with how environmental impacts, like those caused by climate change, disproportionately affect minority and disadvantaged communities. Our next goals will ask us to explore solutions to the most significant environmental tradeoffs created by our business; we will also examine how these solutions promote greater social equity. These will be our most ambitious goals yet, and we are excited to share more later this year.