Two distinct initiatives undertaken in 2017 by Diversey’s Supply Chain team at the company’s Socorro facility in Sao Paulo, Brazil, provided excellent examples of our beliefs that at its core, sustainability equates to the reduction of waste and that reducing waste is not only good for the environment, but makes good business sense.
Last year, the 130-person team applied themselves fully to reducing the amount of chemicals discarded, which aligned with their strategy of reducing the amount of waste disposed. The project focused on reducing production of products with low turnover, finding alternative uses for those products before their expiration, and defining alternative ways to reprocess them.
With assistance from Planning, Procurement, R&D, and Marketing, Supply Chain produced impressive results. Not only did they reduce the costs associated with waste disposal by 17 percent, which generated savings of nearly $75,000 (U.S.), but they also reduced the volume of waste discarded by 38 percent compared to the year before, which equated to a reduction of more than 91,000 tons of waste.
Meanwhile, Supply Chain also turned their attention to reducing the amount of water used in the process of sanitizing the equipment used in production. To complete that task, the team used a Diversey product called Divosan Forte. Previously, it was used in a 0.9 percent dilution, which required that all equipment be rinsed after use. Last year, the team tested a 0.13 percent solution that did not require rinsing except in the pipes where the solution accumulates.
The results were even better than they had been when using the higher dilution rate and also reduced the amount of water used in the sanitation process by approximately 40 percent, saving 20,000 liters of water per sanitation. With 12 sanitations per year, that amounted to a year-over-year saving of 240,000 liters of water.
In short, the initiatives launched by our Socorro Supply Chain team illustrate that imagination, hard work and a commitment to principles of sustainability can produce results that lighten the environmental impact of a company’s operations while simultaneously reducing its operating costs. That, in turn, is a classic example of what we mean by “win/win.”
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Diversey
Published Feb 18, 2019 3pm EST / 12pm PST / 8pm GMT / 9pm CET