Procter & Gamble (P&G), Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, this week announced additional investments in recycling and beneficial reuse that will eliminate all manufacturing waste from its global network of more than 100 production sites by 2020.

Since P&G began qualifying sites as zero manufacturing waste to landfill, 56% of its global production sites have achieved this milestone. Plans are now in place to complete the remaining facilities over the next four years. This means eliminating or beneficially re-using about 650,000 metric tons of waste, equivalent to the weight of nearly 350,000 mid-sized cars that would typically go to landfills.

"We are accelerating progress toward our long term vision and pushing ourselves to do more—with less waste," said Shailesh Jejurikar, executive sponsor for sustainability and president of Global Fabric Care. "Since 2010, we’ve been working toward a vision of sending zero manufacturing and consumer waste to landfills. This announcement marks another step on that journey."

P&G will achieve its zero waste goals by ensuring all incoming materials are either:

• Converted into finished product
• Recycled internally or externally, or 
• Re-used in alternative ways through partnerships.

P&G has been focusing on finding unique alternatives for its waste. For example, in Lima, Ohio, liquid waste from products like Tide and Gain are being converted to other alternative fuel sources to power vehicles. Non-recyclable plastic laminate materials from its plants in Mandideep and Baddi, India, are shredded and pressed into low-cost building panels. Through efforts such as these around the globe, P&G is not only reusing and recycling for its own needs, it is investing in local communities by helping convert its waste into raw materials and feedstock for other companies.

Currently, more than half of P&G’s production sites have achieved zero manufacturing waste to landfill status, including a broad range of product families and geographic regions. In 19 countries (Germany, U.K., Poland, Japan, Mexico, Spain, Egypt, Belgium, Ireland, Vietnam, Hungary, Indonesia, Czech, Romania, Singapore, Korea, Thailand, Turkey, and Pakistan), all manufacturing facilities have met the zero waste qualification, and the company is approaching 100% of sites in other countries, including China and India.

"Our employees are using the same innovation skills and zero loss mentality they put into manufacturing our products to drive out waste," said Yannis Skoufalos, P&G president of Global Product Supply. "For example, surfactants from Head and Shoulders waste in China are repurposed into carwash, while scrap from our Tampax plant in Canada is used to make emergency spill containment products. These innovative external partnerships enable our sites to see scrap not as waste, but as potential worth for someone else."