Month: June 2023

Kimberly-Clark today published its annual sustainability report, including an update on the company’s progress toward its 2030 sustainability strategy and goals. The goals address the social and environmental challenges of the next decade with a mission of improving the lives and well-being of 1 billion people in underserved and vulnerable communities around the world – while safeguarding natural systems and reducing the company’s environmental footprint by 50 percent in key areas, including plastics, forests, water and climate.

“I’m proud of what our teams around the world have accomplished in the last year and to be part of a company that has never wavered in providing care for our people, our communities and our planet since it was founded 150 years ago,” said Mike Hsu, Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark. “Our 2030 sustainability goals are critical to our purpose of Better Care for a Better World, and our sights are set on achieving them.”

As Kimberly-Clark looks to the next 150 years, the company is committed to building on its legacy and providing care with the intention to be even better in the areas that deliver value to its stakeholders. It is delivering better products through innovation and the development of more sustainable solutions; supporting a better planet by being stewards of the climate and natural ecosystems; fostering a better workplace by building a culture of integrity and belonging through its commitment to inclusion, equity, diversity, well-being and human rights; and contributing to a better society by partnering with changemakers to help uplift communities.

Key highlights of the company’s 2022 results include:

Better Products: Kimberly-Clark continued to advance more sustainable solutions, including expanding its range of biodegradable baby wipes made with plant-based fibers and investing in reusable period and incontinence products. In addition, the company reached 5.1 percent of recycled content in its plastic packaging, moving Kimberly-Clark closer to its 20 percent recycled content goal for 2025.
 Better Planet: By year-end, Kimberly-Clark achieved an absolute reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of 42 percent and a 9.4 percent energy efficiency improvement versus the 2015 baseline. In addition, the company continued to address water scarcity in water-stressed locations, achieving a 42.1 percent reduction in consumption against its 2015 baseline.

Last year, more than 160 energy conservation initiatives and process and building efficiency improvements were deployed at the company’s manufacturing sites around the world, yielding approximately 36,000 MTCO2e in emissions reductions. Executed by local engineering and process teams, these projects included lighting systems retrofits, installation of heat recovery systems and higher-efficiency electrical motors, control and distribution equipment upgrades, and optimization of compressed air systems, vacuum systems, chillers, and HVAC systems.
 Better Workplace: Leading with inclusion, Kimberly-Clark is building an organization that leverages its diversity as a competitive advantage. The company is a global organization that mirrors the consumers it serves around the world.  

Board of Directors – Six of 12 directors are women, and four are ethnically diverse.  

Executive Leadership Team – 31 percent are women, and 54 percent are people of color.  
 Better Society: Kimberly-Clark’s essential and well-known brands bring its purpose to life through social impact programs designed to enhance the lives of its consumers and communities. The company’s brand-led partnerships with hospitals, educational organizations and nonprofits have helped to advance the well-being of 88.9 million people cumulatively since 2015.

This includes Huggies® Más Abrazos, an educational platform that holds new parents’ and caregivers’ hands as they navigate the unknown, from the first steps of pregnancy through the first years of their child’s life. Through free articles, podcasts and videos, Más Abrazos provides answers about pregnancy, the birthing process, feeding, attachment, child development, health and wellness, and a host of other topics. Expanded to its current robust format in 2022, the platform has reached more than 4.6 million people throughout Latin America.

“We’re committed to making lives better while safeguarding the world’s natural ecosystems and biodiversity. Kimberly-Clark’s purpose aligns our business motivations with our sustainability vision – it’s how we show up every day and do what’s right for both people and planet,” said Lisa Morden, Vice President of Safety, Sustainability and Occupational Health at Kimberly-Clark. “We are proud to partner with global NGOs and international organizations such as World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Plan International, WaterAid and UNICEF to strengthen communities by supporting sustainable practices and reducing barriers that limit accessibility to proper health, hygiene, education and sanitation.”

This year marks 23 years of partnership between Kimberly-Clark, the Kimberly-Clark Foundation and UNICEF. In 2022, Kimberly-Clark expanded its partnership to support UNICEF’s newborn health and early childhood development program in China, with a goal to reach more than 14 million newborns, children, and caregivers. The program will support initiatives to improve maternal and child health and development outcomes by partnering with national health agencies to establish new centers of excellence to train health providers in labor and delivery care, support early childhood development services, enhance trainings through new virtual platforms, and create a comprehensive capacity building strategy.

“Our partnership has uplifted millions of lives as we support maternal and child health, as well as empower women and girls with critically important menstrual hygiene education,” said Michael J. Nyenhuis, President and CEO, UNICEF USA. “Kimberly-Clark shares our vision for a world where every child has an opportunity to thrive, and the company continues to be an important partner as UNICEF drives systems change around the globe – positively impacting generations to come.”

Kimberly-Clark’s annual sustainability report and accompanying disclosures demonstrate the company’s progress through stories that highlight its work around the world as well as key data and metrics prepared with reference to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) disclosures. The reporting covers the time frame of Jan. 1, 2022 through Dec. 31, 2022. For more information on the topics in this report, please visit the sustainability page on Kimberly-Clark.com.

UNICEF does not endorse any company, brand, product, or service.

The Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth

While spending time in Nairobi’s Kibera, Africa’s largest informal settlement, entrepreneurs Zahid Mitha and Edoardo Biraghi kept noticing a pattern inside the small retail stores known as dukas. Shoppers often could afford to buy only very small amounts of some essentials — sometimes as little as a cup of washing powder at a time.

But that meant they were actually paying more per cup. As anyone who has ever shopped at warehouse clubs knows, buying in bulk gets you discounts, thanks in large part to less packaging. Buying goods in small, prepackaged containers means paying more.

Mitha, 33, and Biraghi, 34, who for the previous four years had been building internet-enabled dispensing and supply chain tech to distribute condoms and HIV testing kits, thought they knew a way to use technology to eliminate this so-called poverty tax — by helping customers purchase only as much of a good as they needed.

Their company, Novek, is now piloting an Internet of Things-enabled machine that allows Kibera shopkeepers to accurately dispense as little as a few cents’ worth of washing powder into reusable containers and sell it at the same price as if it were being sold in bulk — increasing sales and profit margins for store owners while reducing single-use plastic, a major contributor to water pollution.

“We believe that if we improve both the product small business owners deliver to customers and their incomes, we will ultimately drive economic prosperity for everyone,” Mitha says.

Dubbed the “Silicon Savannah,” Kenya has become a hotbed of innovation as entrepreneurs like Mitha take advantage of its extensive high-speed internet, deep mobile phone penetration, and widely used digital payments infrastructure to develop products and services to strengthen the economy, improve everyday life and create opportunities for more people.

Calculating that Kenyans spend over $300 million a year on washing powder, Mitha says Novek is already drawing interest from multinational consumer-goods companies looking for more reliable and greener ways to reach customers.

By using IoT — which allows machines equipped with sensors and software to use the internet to connect with other devices — manufacturers can track their product from the time it leaves the factory to when it is sold in Kibera’s tin-roofed kiosks, giving them real-time insights into a retailer’s inventory and triggering restocking, which makes the supply chain more resilient. It could help them reduce the plastic used to package tiny quantities of washing powder — which can make up some 20% of the cost — and pass those savings back to low-income consumers through cheaper prices.

Novek has been able to speed up the research and development needed for its detergent dispenser machines so they’re ready for shopkeepers to test thanks to a grant from the Strive Community Innovation Fund, which last year awarded a total of $1 million to eight enterprises focused on creating ways to strengthen small businesses’ digital capabilities. Strive Community is part of a portfolio of programs launched by the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth with Caribou Digital.

Designed to save space in cramped shops while being simple to use, the IoT machines can dispense amounts as small as a few ounces and pull in penny-conscious shoppers. The hope is that by bringing in more customers, the shops will do better and help the whole economy thrive.

For Kibera shopkeeper Brian, the bright yellow dispenser Novek recently installed in his shop is already proving a hit with customers and tripling the amount of detergent he sells each week.

It’s also a way he can help cut down on plastic packaging, which invariably ends up being burnt in Kibera’s massive garbage dumps or clogging its already polluted streams.

“Customers here are attracted by new things in the market, and technology is something that really piques their interest. The more curious they are, the more word spreads,” he says. “They prefer the machine-dispensed soap because it gives them more for their money than the prepackaged sachets.”

Mitha says Novek’s dispensers can eventually be used with many products, such as sugar or honey, in low-income areas around the world.

“The vision here,” he says, “is that this is viable everywhere in the world where people buy small quantities of goods. The scope is global.”

Originally published by The Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth

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