COVER STORY
Breaking down the roadblocks to greener business
Rubbermaid Commercial Products (RCP) identifies some of the most common roadblocks to acting more sustainably, and shows how its Sustainability Journey can help businesses become greener whilst protecting their bottom line.
We are in a climate crisis. Our employees, our customers, and our families will all inevitably be affected. Action is needed from all sides, personally and commercially.
Businesses are painfully aware of the part they must play, with 96% feeling the pressure to be greener. However, multiple roadblocks can get in the way of well-meaning business’ best efforts. As of 2019, 41% of organisations still had no internal sustainability initiatives in place.
One MRO business interviewed by RCP explained: “We haven’t set ourselves to any specific targets. We’re mindful we should be doing something about it. Our customers always want to know what are you doing as a business to become more sustainable?”
So, what’s standing in the way? Various factors play their part, including a lack of education on sustainability leading to confusion; fear that being greener makes profits leaner; and a chasm between visibility and substance when it comes to taking action.
As a global leader in the design, manufacturing, and delivery of hand hygiene, cleaning, recycling, and waste management products, RCP has a significant sustainability role in both protecting resources and reducing waste.
RCP’S COMMITMENT TO SUSTAINABILITY
The RCP Sustainability Journey is a commitment to becoming as sustainable as possible, supporting other businesses in taking steps to act sustainably too.
Mapping a path across five key areas – products, certification and innovation, packaging, operations, culture and education – the Sustainability Journey outlines how RCP and other businesses can make incremental gains, helping protect the planet against a backdrop of commercial considerations and challenges.
Creating a transparent conversation around sustainable practices and goals, here RCP identifies some of the most common roadblocks to acting more sustainably and shows how its Sustainability Journey can help businesses be greener, whilst protecting their bottom line.
VISIBILITY VS SUBSTANCE
Market pressures to be ‘greener’ can lead businesses to inadvertently box-tick or ‘greenwash’, making environmental statements with little substance. The key to driving real improvements lies in target setting, then holding your business to account against progress.
RCP is committing to developing and tracking goals specifically related to its product portfolio, operations, packaging, and certification.
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Parent company Newell Brands’ packaging goals, for example, include a 2025 target for 100% of direct-sourced paper-based packaging to come from certified, verified, or recycled sources. This specific goal sits alongside six key sustainability actions for product design, which include ‘system efficiency’, supporting the reduction of resource waste throughout each phase of a product’s lifecycle.
Reducing waste to landfill by 90% is another ambitious Newell Brands 2025 target, which RCP plans to support at its own operations locations.
CONFUSION
A quarter of businesses are unsure of where to focus their sustainability efforts. As one FM contractor interviewed by RCP commented: “There’s no training or comms around sustainability in the business, as far as I know. Any initiatives happen within a small part of the company, perhaps driven by a client.”
Tackling confusion head on, RCP has built a sustainability toolkit, supporting businesses with vital education and a raft of sustainability resources.
Taking just 90 seconds, its recycling audit tool quickly uncovers the savings facilities can make by implementing strategic recycling programmes, and its Love Recycling programme is packed with case studies and advice.
Offering in-depth learning, Love to Learn features free online training modules, designed to help businesses achieve their sustainability goals.
Whether purchasing washroom dispensers or recycling bins, facilities must look beyond initial outlay and consider lifetime costs, because not only is investing in durable products better for the environment, it makes financial sense. As the saying goes: ‘buy cheap, buy twice’.
Developing long-lasting products is central to RCP’s Sustainability Journey, as highly durable products mean less energy-hungry re-manufacture, transport, and storage than lower quality alternative products that frequently need replacing.
When DPD, one of Europe’s leading parcel groups, introduced Slim Jim Recycling Stations across its depot locations, the business benefitted from 27% cost savings of not sending waste to general disposal, meaning they are set to recoup their investment within a year. What’s more, it has taken its recycling efficiency rate to over 90% at sites where the stations have been installed.
Learn more about the path DPD took to see the savings your business could make.
Join the Love Sustainability Journey today. Let’s do this together.
www.rubbermaid.eu/en/ twitter.com/TomoCleaning
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