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SC Johnson Highlights Lower GHGs and Waste, Higher Ingredient Transparency in 2014 Sustainability Report

In its just-released 2014 sustainability report, SC Johnson details progress on its environmental goals — including the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by more than 50 percent and manufacturing waste by 71 percent since 2000 — as well as significant advancements in ingredient transparency through its SC Johnson Greenlist™ process.

By Sustainable Brands | Published 10 years ago | About a 3 minute read

“While there are 4,600 materials we screen for in our product development, the SC Johnson Greenlist™ process is not simply about eliminating the ‘bad,’” says Chairman and CEO Fisk Johnson. “It’s about making it easy for product developers to add in ‘better.’ It’s a systematic, computerized process that helps us continually make better ingredient choices for our products.”

Also, for the first time, SC Johnson has published details from its day-to-day “restricted-use” list for product formulators, and shared key fragrance ingredients eliminated as part of its U.S. and Canada Exclusive Fragrance Palette.

Goals Met Early in Latest Five-Year Environmental Strategy

For more than two decades, SC Johnson has set five-year environmental goals, including the latest set of goals, which targets progress by 2016. This latest report shares that the company has already met two of these 2016 goals:

Smaller Footprint: Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from global manufacturing sites 50.5 percent since 2000 versus a goal of 48 percent.
Less Waste: Reducing global manufacturing waste 71 percent since 2000 versus a goal of 70 percent.

Additionally, as a result of wind, biofuel, cogeneration and solar initiatives around the world, SC Johnson now uses 32.3 percent renewable energy globally, nearing its 2016 goal of 33 percent.

Other progress in the third year of SC Johnson’s five-year strategy includes:

Winning Products: The use of “Better” or “Best” ingredients in products — as measured by the SC Johnson Greenlist™ process — is up 29 percentage points since 2001.
Recycling: The company now has eight zero-landfill manufacturing sites on four continents. SC Johnson defines zero-landfill as eliminating all materials that would be transferred to landfills through reuse and recycling, and, ultimately, without the use of incineration.
Better Lives: SC Johnson extended its partnership with USAID and The Borlaug Institute to help Rwanda pyrethrum farmers boost incomes and standards of living.
Great Workplaces: Safety continues to be a top priority and SC Johnson achieved a 0.38 total incident rate per 200,000 hours worked in 2013/14, well below the industry’s best-in-class rate of 0.50.