As we pursue our strategy of Better Care for a Better World, working to protect the environment and ensure the health and safety of our team members remain core to our caring values.
Kimberly-Clark’s Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) performance is a point of pride with our employees, and we remain steadfast in our focus to drive towards zero injury, illness and environment impact, with operating practices designed to reduce risk and the potential for adverse impacts. This includes actively fostering employee engagement, applying EHS performance standards, and driving a consistent and standardized EHS Management System across our facilities.
Our policy requires compliance with applicable EHS laws and regulations. Most importantly, this helps to protect our employees and the environment – but it also reduces the risk to our business—by helping the company avoid fines, penalties, legal liabilities, and threats to business continuity.
Learn about our Environment Goals here.
Learn about our Health and Safety data here.
By 2030, we want to drive our EHS performance to industry leading levels in the following key areas:
Occupational Health and Safety incidents are measured through Kimberly-Clark's TRIR metric. We measure TRIR based on a combination of industry and regulatory practices for the classification of injury and illness. Where K-C's definition differs from local regulatory definition and recording requirements, we will always meet the local reporting expectations, while continuing to prioritize our improvement focus through our internal definitions. Health and Safety Severity is measured per K-C definition, based on days lost as a result of an incident.
Kimberly-Clark has an Environmental Policy that provides guidance on how we handle and address environmental compliance, water management, energy and climate, waste, and fiber resources. This policy serves as a foundation for Kimberly-Clark’s strategic approach to our integrated EHS management system. Kimberly-Clark also has a policy to manage occupational safety and hygiene globally for the protection of our employees, contractors, and visitors, and to aggressively drive toward the elimination of occupational injuries, illnesses, disabilities, and fatalities.
Learn about our Environmental Policy here.
Learn about our Occupational Safety and Hygiene Policy here.
Our strategic approach to EHS promotes a culture where teams across all sites work to continuously improve our EHS performance – reducing risks to employees and the environment surrounding our operations. Our Global Supply Chain Leadership team has defined six EHS Leadership Imperatives to be integrated across our operations, including:
1. Consistent EHS leadership
2. Positive EHS interactions
3. Risk tolerance reduction
4. Workforce empowerment to drive impact.
5. Consistent critical EHS work practices.
6. Aligned incentives and metrics.
To operationalize these imperatives, the company developed and continues to advance an EHS Transformation Strategy with the core objectives of improving EHS mindsets, behaviors, and capabilities; reducing risk and helping to ensure compliance; and managing EHS systematically. To drive improvement in all these areas, we have a maturity framework deployed throughout our operating facilities, providing a roadmap to achieving these objectives while bringing to life our Leadership Imperatives. Key programs within our strategic pillars include EHS leadership training, standardized risk assessment and reduction across total EHS discipline, and compliance assurance through consistent reporting, escalation, and corrective/preventative follow-up action and closure.
Kimberly-Clark’s integrated EHS Management System, modeled on the ISO 14001 and 45001 Management Systems, is implemented in all our manufacturing facilities. Our integrated system helps enable a standardized and efficient approach to management of EHS within our operations.
Kimberly-Clark does not mandate certification to the ISO management system standards. However, our integrated EHS Management System effectively supports sites that seek to pursue third-party certification.
Key elements of our approach to EHS Management at our operating facilities include:
Kimberly-Clark’s Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) framework is designed to identify, assess, and mitigate risks that can materially impact the company’s financial results and reputation. Safety, environmental and sustainability risks are integrated into our ERM framework.
The ERM framework is supported by:
As part of our commitment to complying with all applicable environmental laws and regulations, we strive to have emplaced at our facilities appropriate pollution control devices to protect the environment. We also leverage our EHS Management System and maturity model to promote practices that help ensure the pollution control devices operate within specified ranges and to maintain regulatory requirements.
We understand the value of the materials in our product and packaging categories and seek secondary, beneficial uses of these materials. We are committed to seeking opportunities to reduce, reuse, and recycle waste streams of all types from our facilities. We strive to continuously improve our processes and implement innovative solutions for beneficial re-use.
Kimberly-Clark will continue to focus on achieving zero waste to landfill across our operations, including manufacturing facilities, offices, warehouses, and distribution centers1. At local facilities, waste inventories catalog each waste stream’s composition, quantity, consistency, and handling practices. This process helps gauge the risk profile and identify opportunities for a secondary beneficial use for hard-to-divert waste streams.
[1]Excludes major construction and demolition debris as well as regulated or mandated disposal methods
You can see our operational waste data here.
Kimberly Clark requires all sites to have a documented Emergency Prevention, Preparedness, and Response Plan and Program that includes the following key elements:
Published June 2023
1Excludes major construction and demolition debris as well as regulated or mandated disposal methods
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