Material and Product Specific Requirements

Kimberly-Clark has made the health and safety of our consumers, people, and partners our number one priority as we work to provide the products the world is counting on to ensure hygiene and health. We have rigorous safety and quality requirements, and we are proud of our long track record of producing safe products. This commitment to safety includes the ingredients and materials used in our products.

Kimberly-Clark’s business strategy is to start with safe materials and safe products. Therefore, Kimberly-Clark requires world-class quality for all purchased materials, products, and services to consistently meet customer and consumer needs, perform as intended, and be safe for their intended use.

Therefore, Kimberly-Clark maintains a standard for Fragrance, Pulp, Cotton, and Packaging to ensure that our suppliers share in this responsibility to ensure that the highest degree of focus is taken to meet or exceed all specified safety, compliance, and quality requirements.

Principles for Management of Restricted Substances

We maintain a Restricted Substances List to ensure a consistent, global approach to safeguarding our consumers and the environment from exposure to ingredients of potential concern. We are committed to reducing or eliminating restricted substances and to implementing the use of alternatives through our continuous research and development efforts.

Restricted Substances Management at Kimberly-Clark is based on the following principles:

Maintain a Restricted Substances List (RSL) for Kimberly-Clark products that contains restricted (limits established by product or material) and prohibited ingredients relevant to Kimberly-Clark products. (Note that the Kimberly-Clark RSL represents a small subset of chemicals that we prohibit. There are many more chemicals that we would prohibit but do not list since they would not be considered for use in the products we produce).
Formally review substances and ingredients in our products to ensure they meet current regulatory requirements and public safety expectations.
Proactively monitor and assess new information regarding ingredients published by scientific research and regulatory agencies globally, including public perception, to ensure the RSL remains current.
Provide an active process for identification, review and communication of the RSL to enable the proactive development of business strategies to remove and/or reduce specific chemicals of concern, and advance safer alternatives, in some instances above and beyond regulatory requirements.
Collaborate with supply chain partners to reduce, eliminate, or manage chemicals identified by Kimberly-Clark on the RSL.

We require our suppliers to adhere to the Kimberly-Clark RSL, and to have processes and systems in place to ensure compliance.