SC Johnson’s Progress Protecting the Environment in 2016/17: An Excerpt from Our 2017 Sustainability Report

At SC Johnson, we’re committed to operating in an environmentally responsible manner. That means taking a look at our operations and finding where we can lessen our impact by reducing global manufacturing waste and greenhouse gas emissions, and increasing our use of global energy from renewable sources.

Throughout 2016/17, we continued to make progress on our environmental goals, while pursuing innovative programs to preserve the environment.

For the past 13 years, SC Johnson has used renewable energy sources around the world to power our facilities. Globally, 35% of our energy use in fiscal year 2016/17 came from renewable sources. This includes wind turbines at our largest manufacturing plant in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, and our plant in the Netherlands; solar panels in China; production waste converted into biogas, a fuel source, in Indonesia; and the purchase of renewable energy credits.

In addition, in May 2017, our manufacturing site in Bay City, Michigan, became our third company-owned manufacturing site to run on 100% wind energy for electricity. The Bay City site produces Ziploc® brand bags.

During this fiscal year, we achieved a 55% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, indexed to production, compared to our 2000 baseline.

Based on this and our ongoing use of green energy sources, we were honored to receive a Green Power Leadership Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2016. This Excellence in Green Power Use award recognized our commitment and contribution to helping advance and develop the voluntary green power market in the United States.

Another important measure of our environmental efforts is global waste reduction. Our first objective is to eliminate waste entirely. But, when we can’t, we aim to divert solid and liquid waste from landfills to other sources in environmentally responsible ways.

In 2016/17, six more manufacturing sites joined our growing list of sites that send zero manufacturing waste to landfills, raising the total number to 17 sites. Five of those sites went a step further and sent no waste to landfill at all, including waste from cafeterias and office buildings. Those include Toluca, Mexico; Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam; Rosslyn, South Africa; Kiev, Ukraine; and Nairobi, Kenya. More than a dozen SC Johnson sites now carry the zero overall waste to landfill distinction.

Accomplishing our goal of eliminating landfill waste requires commitment and ingenuity on the part of SC Johnson people around the world. It often begins with creating processes to segregate waste and recyclable materials. Some sites compost food waste to be used for landscaping; at others, wastewater has been treated for use as fertilizer in parks and other natural spaces.

Most important, it's a team effort. We could not achieve the strides that have been made without committed SC Johnson teams working diligently at each site to find innovative waste-reduction solutions.