Kimberly-Clark has announced its new 2030 sustainability strategy in its 2019 Global Sustainability Report, laying out goals that include a 50 percent reduction in its carbon footprint, forest footprint, water footprint, and use of virgin fossil-fuel-based plastics within these next 10 years.
With sustainability at the core of the agenda in the UK, Europe and Africa and drive change across the industry, this plan for 2030 is our most ambitious yet, said Tristram Wilkinson, Kimberly-Clark president of Europe, Middle East and Africa.
The new carbon footprint targets laid out in Kimberly-Clark’s 2030 strategy have been approved by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), which was formed by CDP, the United Nations Global Compact, World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) to empower companies to set GHG reduction targets that are in line with the Paris Climate Agreement.
Targets are considered “science-based” if they align with what is necessary to limit global warming to well-below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C, according to the latest climate science.
“We are focused on delivering material change across key areas such as climate, plastics, fiber and social impact. Already, we have achieved significant milestones in EMEA, including reducing carbon emissions by 17 percent since 2015,” said Wilkinson.
More specifically, K-C has completed 30+ carbon reduction projects, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 7,000 metric tons a year. The company has phased out of coal as fuel by installing a new gas boiler at its Enstra manufacturing facility in South Africa, saving 17,000 Co2e/year. In addition, the company has substantially reduced its water footprint at water-stressed sites, as well as diverting some 5.5 thousand metric tons of product and packaging from landfill.
The company’s Huggies baby wipes will be plastic-free by 2025, and its packaging fully recyclable. In 2019 alone, Huggies removed 15 tons of plastic from its Extra Care wipes and reformulated select packaging, saving 43 tons of plastic annually.
Also, the company joined the WRAP UK Plastics Pact, a collaborative effort between industry, NGOs and government to tackle the problem of plastic waste and create a circular economy, which gave rise to its global 2025 commitments to use an average of 20 percent recycled content across all plastic packaging and to make 100 percent of its packaging reusable, recyclable or compostable.