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As we pursue our strategy of Better Care for a Better World, protecting the environment and ensuring the health and safety of the people who work in our facilities and live in our communities remains core to our caring values.
Kimberly-Clark’s performance in EHS management is a point of pride at our company, and we remain steadfast in our focus on continuously improving our EHS performance with operating practices designed to reduce risk and the potential for adverse impacts. This includes actively fostering employee engagement, applying EHS performance standards, and utilizing an EHS Management System to drive compliance and continuous improvement.
Our policy is always to comply with applicable environmental health, & safety (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.
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:
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 ensuring compliance; and managing EHS systematically. A maturity framework has been deployed throughout our operating facilities, providing a roadmap to achieving these objectives while bringing to life our Leadership’s 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.
At the end of 2021, the company achieved a Maturity Journey Score (MJS) of 3.0 (out of a maximum of 4.0), reflecting work accomplished across our strategy’s first two years and reflecting our minimum target for all sites. Looking forward, we expect facilities to continue their EHS maturity journey, pursuing further standardization of leading practices and processes across our operations and staff locations.
Kimberly-Clark’s integrated EHS Management System, modeled on the ISO 14001 and 45001 Management Systems, is implemented in all our operating facilities, with special attention to 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. To date, 20% of our manufacturing facilities have obtained third-party certification to the ISO 14001 standard for Environmental Management.
Key elements of our approach to EHS Management at our operating facilities:
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. Environmental as well as climate change 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 assure that our facilities have appropriate pollution control devices in place to protect the environment. We also leverage our Environment Health & Safety (EHS) Management System and maturity model to assure the pollution control devices operate within specified ranges 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 has established a goal to achieve zero waste to landfill by 2022 across all our operations, including manufacturing facilities, offices, warehouses, and distribution centers.[1] NAt local facilities, waste inventories are being created which catalog each waste stream’s composition, quantity, consistency, and handling practices. This process helps 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 July 2022
