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Similar to Towards Zero Waste At Hollander Home Fashions
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Towards Zero Waste At Hollander Home Fashions
- 1. “ Creating an environment where we can achieve our goals” Ron Capranos Sr. VP Manufacturing Hollander Home Fashions Journey Towards Zero Waste
- 13. Zero Waste Recycle Reduce
- 15. Sustainable Supplier Certification Corrugated Carton Supplier Inbound Freight Logistics Provider
- 25. “ Creating an environment where we can achieve our goals” Ron Capranos Sr. VP Manufacturing Hollander Home Fashions Journey Towards Zero Waste
Editor's Notes
- Have this screen open during opening remarks…
- Here is our 8 point sustainability plan. All of the components of this plan were important to the overall success, especially Communication, Education, Strategic partnerships Setting goals and measuring results. I will speak a little about each component of our plan in the following slides…
- Click A cross functional leadership team was established that consisted of senior level executives from Sales and Marketing, Global Sourcing and Manufacturing/Operations. This cross functional team was set up to ensure that we had representation from all areas of the business. Click A CEO communication was rolled out informing all associates of the creation of the Sustainability Leadership Team, reminding everyone that they were all members of this team and that we needed everyone’s help working together to achieve our goals. Click One of the first things the Leadership Team was tasked with was to write Guiding Principles and establish goals based on input from all areas of the company and our customers.
- We developed the following SMART model that we borrowed from the goal setting component of our current performance appraisal system. Our goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time Bound. Click Suppliers —We encourage our suppliers to adopt a mindset focused on sustainable practices, and we give preference to those who qualify through our Sustainable Supplier Certification Program . It is our goal that certain environmental requirements be maintained in any factory making Hollander product, and to recognize suppliers who show the greatest initiative in this effort. Click Materials— Through programs such as Zero Waste , we select materials with earth-friendly properties and aggressively recycle and re-use materials to help eliminate landfill waste. We partner with suppliers to ensure that excessive packaging materials are eliminated and that packaging elements are recycled or re-used where possible. Click Associates— Achieving our sustainability goals is dependent on successfully engaging our associates in this mission. Education, training, and tracking measurable objectives will help our associates to play a vital role in the adoption of key sustainable practices, both at work and at home. Click Retailers— We are committed to working with retailers on product design and packaging processes that utilize renewable and recycled materials to meet our eco-friendly objectives. Through our retailers, we are able to communicate to consumers our support for this initiative while offering them the chance to show their individual environmental responsibility by choosing one of our products. Click Tomorrow— Acting with foresight Today is a crucial step toward achieving a comprehensive environmental sustainability policy. We recognize that our SMART initiatives represent a major opportunity to support our environment and our communities, helping us to ensure a healthier Tomorrow .
- Here is the existing document that we have added to our Supplier Manuals and shared with all Associates and are posted at our factories and offices. It was very important for us to create this foundation of guiding principles that could guide us in our every day business decisions
- Communication is one of the most important components of our plan. We gave great importance to communication and carefully planned how it was delivered and shared with our associates, suppliers and customers. We have both internal and external communication which I will now cover. Click CEO letter was published in our newsletter to kick off our Sustainability Initiatives. Click Presentations were developed to share with all management detailing our overall Sustainability strategy and goals and rolled out to all management. Anecdote at the opening of our presentation to our leadership team we got everyone to sing to the melody of Diana Ross’s hit song Ain’t no Mountain High Enough but changed the words to Aint no Mountain Green Enough, Aint no River Blue Enough to keep me from recycling for you! I am sure it is not going to be as great a hit as Diana’s original but it certainly made for a fun presentation. Click Information boards were put up at all locations where we post copies of our newsletters, updates on our progress, tips on recycling and a variety of other related materials. Click Customer presentations were developed and shared at meetings and visits to our factories. We wanted to let our customers know what our plan and goals were. Click We shared our SMART principles with our suppliers to let them know how we would be conducting our business from a sustainability standpoint. Click Shared Goals – we shared our goals with our strategic supplier partners. Several of them were excited and saw business opportunities that would strengthen our partnership and help us to achieve our goals.
- Here is a copy of our newsletter, appropriately named Pillow Talk… You will see a section named Green Team Zone which is dedicated to green tips for our associates with updates, web site and other information. This particular copy of our newsletter has our CEO’s letter in it as well as some updates on some of the new products that we developed that were in keeping with our goals of developing products with recycled materials. There is another section where we posted a web site called Catalogue Choice to help associates discontinue unwanted magazines that were being delivered to their offices and homes. We had our receptionist volunteer to go to the web site for our associates to get their unwanted magazines canceled. This newsletter really helps to keep our associates engaged and is a great communication tool. By the way in keeping with our zero waste goal we are no longer printing this newsletter it is now available on line to all of our associates.
- Just some other examples of how we are keeping our associates informed and involved Our Employee Appreciation Day, which coincides with Earth Day and our Take Your Kid to Work Day were themed around Sustainability at Hollander. We put on presentations for everyone and gave out these tote bags as gifts and reminders to everyone to do their part at home as well as at work. An E-Waste event at one of our locations helped to create associate involvement. We invited all of our associates to bring their electronic waste such as old cell phones, TVs and printers to work and we would take care of getting it disposed of properly and responsibly. The event was done in coordination with the city where two of our factories are located just outside of Los Angeles. We had several pallets of electronic waste that were able to recycle that day. We took photos and shared the event with all of our other associates. Associate Recycling – this is one that we were really proud of. One of the communities where our factory is located did not have a municipal recycling program and many of our associates expressed concerns over not being able to recycle at home. So we invited them to bring in their recyclables from home and we would take care of it through the waste management company that did the recycling for our factory. To make things fun anyone that brought in recycling from home were eligible to enter a monthly drawing for one of our products.
- Click Creating local teams was an important part of our plan because we felt it was necessary to have an excited group at each location leading the efforts for their location. Each of our locations built their own teams. In some cases it became part of the JHSC in other cases it was the Associate Activities Committee that took on the role as the green team. Click Sustainability Champions – in each of our locations we have recognized “Sustainability Champions”. Those are the individuals that have shown passion and have gone above and beyond in their efforts. Click Community Events – I just spoke earlier of events such as the E Waste drive in California and we are encouraging each of our locations to do similar things by sharing the success of the event that took place in California.
- We recognize that our suppliers play such in important part in helping us achieve our goals. We know that most of our environmental footprint is made by the materials we purchase, the logistics of how they get delivered and the way in which we use these materials. We identified 4 main categories of suppliers we wanted to start with. Here are some of the reasons why… Click Corrugated Shipping Cartons – we purchase over 120 million square feet of corrugate annually so we felt this was a big opportunity for savings and cost reduction. Click Recycling Providers – were very important for us to help in identify recycling opportunities. We invited them into each of our locations to see what we were disposing of into landfill and told them of our Zero Waste goals. Click Packaging Suppliers – in keeping with our Zero Waste goal we wanted to ensure that any products we sold were in the least amount of packaging and it all had to be recyclable to ensure it was kept out of landfill. Click Fiber Suppliers – supply the highest volume of material that we use and is in almost every product that we make so we felt this was another opportunity for strategic partnership and opportunity.
- Education – in this area we continually work on educating and informing our associates as well as our customers and suppliers. Click Sustainability Workshops, RILA Conference and Scorecard training seminars and trade shows were attended by various senior level, line managers and associates to gather information and get more knowledge that has helped us with the development of our Sustainability initiatives. Click From information gathered at the various workshops and conferences we were able to further develop our own in house training. We also shared what we learned at these events. Double Click Here are just a few of the things we use to communicate and educate our associates Bulletin boards are posted at each location. One of our locations designed their own calendar that hangs at the front entrance to the building with events listed and recycling reminders and energy saving tips. This is a copy of a poster that we have in our office to remind associates to recycle CD’s and CD cases. This came from a suggestion of one of our associates.
- We developed 5 strategic goals based on input from across our business including from our customers. Click Zero Waste – Our goal is to have Zero Waste going into landfill by our manufacturing process and by the packaging in the products we sell. Zero Waste is our number one goal because we felt that was the mindset and foundation on which the other goals were built. We wanted to reduce our waste not only in landfill but in all areas. Even when it came to things such as running reports, photo copying and faxing. We took steps to put in scanners at all of our locations so we can now scan documents and email them instead of copying and sending by courier. This not only helped the environment but also reduced our costs. Click Sustainable Supplier Certification –To ensure that we are selecting suppliers that are environmentally responsible and aligned with our principles we have included a Supplier Certification as one of our goals. Click Increased Cube Utilization – This was important to our customers due to the high cubic volume of our products and we recognized the opportunities for savings for both our customers and our company. Click Product Development –We recognized that it is at the development stage where you can make the biggest impact. We worked on developing products that had less of an environmental impact and reduced or included recyclable packaging. Click Energy Consumption Reduction We have 7 factories producing product in North America consuming electricity to run our equipment and fossil fuels to heat our plants. We knew this was one area we needed to concentrate on. We have recognized that meeting our goals for Sustainability is not only good for the environment but it is good for sustaining our business. We have seen our costs go down as well as strengthened relationships with our customers, suppliers and associates. Now I will speak a little bit about the work we have done on our goals.
- Zero Waste – our goal was to reduce our landfill waste by 25% in 2008 and work towards zero waste the end of 2010. We exceeded our goal in the first year and recycled almost 75% of our waste. We are analyzing our current waste and looking for ways to eliminate or recycle with our recycling partners. The photos below show a couple of examples. The recycle example is where we were disposing approximately 250,000 lbs annually into landfill. This is now 100% being sold to recycling companies, generating revenue, reducing waste disposal costs and lessening the burden on our landfill sites. We are pleased that these materials can now be put back into the cycle and be made into other useful products. The second example showing reduction is just one case where we worked with our corrugate supplier to discontinue stretch wrapping and using wooden pallets when shipping these cartons to us. We have also asked our suppliers in China to discontinue using strapping on the cartons of finished products that we import from China.
- Here is our recycling report for 2008. In the past we were not tracking or measuring our waste. Our philosophy has become, “if it does not get measured, it does not get managed”. We have these numbers broken down by location by month so we can track the progress at each of our facilities and question the numbers to ensure our recycling programs are on track. We are also tracking the financials related to disposal costs and revenue generated by recycling. The current economy has had an impact on our revenue and in some cases we are getting very little but we are still committed to recycling rather than landfill disposal even if there comes a time that there is zero revenue generated. We have also set up systems where we are tracking hazardous waste such as machine oil, light bulbs and electronic waste.
- Sustainable Supplier Certification We are still working hard in this area and are in the process of developing an auditing system that will be used at our own factories as well as our suppliers. This is still a work in progress but we do have some individuals on this project working under our SVP of Global Sourcing. Click The first example is a supplier that has a mindset focused on responsible manufacturing practices and has been Sustainable Forestry Initiative certified. Each of our shipping cartons has this logo on it so it helps to also reassure our customers that we are working with environmentally responsible suppliers. Click The second example is from our logistics provider that moves all of our inbound freight to our factories. We have shared our goals with this supplier and have asked them to use SmartWay transport providers. We are now asking for information that tracks the amount of freight we are bringing in and how much of it is moved by SmartWay trucking companies. In 2008 68% of our inbound freight was moved by SmartWay transport providers.
- Increased Cube Utilization This is one goal that we knew would have a big impact on freight cost savings for our customers as well as savings on corrugated materials on a per unit basis. Some of the things we achieved in this area were remarkable. With just a few simple design changes we were able to realize savings as high as 65% depending on the product and the changes we made. We shared our goals with the supplier and invited them in to visit our factories and work with our engineers, management and production line associates. They collaborated with our people and with a few minor changes in dimensions and changing the carton opening to the smaller side we were able to reduce our corrugate consumption by over 20% annually which translated into savings of over ½ million dollars annually for our company. This did not include the large savings in freight two of our major customers will see which is about 23% on average annually. One of our customers estimates they will save over 2 million dollars per year by changing to this new configuration. Click 4 times to show the rest of the slide and speak to the differences.
- Here is another example of engineering solutions where we are compression packing our product in bags that can hold the compression long enough to be packed into the cartons. The bags have small flutter vents in them which allow the pillows to expand back to their normal size when they are placed on the retail shelf within about 20 minutes after being taken out of the shipping cartons.
- Some real numbers of annual savings. We can now tell our customers the more you buy from us the more you save!
- Product Development is an important goal for us and here is one example of where we designed a usable tote bag instead of using a poly bag or vinyl bag with printed insert. The consumers can feel good about buying our product and they also feel they are getting more value from their purchase.
- The products in these photos are made of certified organic cottons. The poly bags are recyclable and in the case of one of the pillows we were using a bio degradable bag. The filling materials are polyester that is made from 85% post consumer water bottles so we are using materials that otherwise could have ended up in landfill. Annually Hollander estimates that we use over 12 million lbs of water bottles in our recycled fibers. Both of these product lines have received awards from our industry.
- Click We have made progress in this area. We had energy audits conducted at some of our locations. One was done by an agency paid for by the Canadian government, and another was done by one of our suppliers. Information from these audits helped us to recognize opportunities and we began to implement some of these initiatives. Click Energy costs soared in 2008 yet we were able to keep our costs below 2007 even though we had no decrease in our total annual production at our factories.
- Here are a few simple ideas that we implemented… Click each one and speak briefly on each. No light zones in our warehouses, reminders on light switches to turn off when leaving the room, in some cases we have put in timers for lights so they automatically go on and off. Energy efficient lighting is being put in place whenever we need to relamp an area or change old fixtures. Heating units are being replaced over a period of time. We have installed high energy units at our warehouse in Pennsylvania that is of new technology where there is no heat loss through venting. These heaters have created a positive pressure in the building which helps to keep cold air from coming into the building when our shipping doors are opened. Programmable thermostats have been put in place on heating and air conditioning units. Weatherizing of buildings, dock seals, seals around doors, installed pumps to automatically close pedestrian doors. Engineering, just one example, we have installed selenoid switches on our air line which can detect when the machines are not running which automatically shuts of the compressed air flow. These reduces the energy burden on our air compressors, extends their life, reducing costs and eliminating waste.
- Click Quarterly Evaluations – we have now added a segment to our Factory Quarterly Evaluations which includes Sustainability. Each factory is measured on their contributions towards our Zero Waste goal as well as the other goals we have in place. Click Goal Setting – where appropriate, many of our associates have Sustainability related goals included in the annual goal setting portion of our performance appraisal system. Click Sustainability Champions – in our year end annual Sustainability Report we have recognized Champions at each of our locations that have gone above and beyond with their efforts to promote sustainability in the workplace, at home and in their communities. Each of these individuals have been recognized in our first Annual Sustainability Report that was just released on Earth Day!
- One of the nice things about recognition from outside the company is that when we share it with our associates it creates pride in the organization they work for and also helps us when we need to recruit new talent. The TiA Awards are recognition for new products voted on by members of our industry. It is our peers that vote on each others new products and in this case we won best eco new product two years in a row. These awards also help to give credibility for our efforts in sustainable product development. Finally and one of the most important forms of recognition that we can receive is from our customers. Customers adopting our proposals for more sustainable products and for energy and cost reduction proposals such as our cube reduction initiatives is most rewarding as it shows our associates that their work is being recognized and helping to not only make our environment more sustainable but also make our company more sustainable.
- This concludes my presentation, thank you all very much.