Procter & Gamble
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As the largest producer of consumer goods, Procter & Gamble has a huge carbon footprint, coming mostly from the manufacturing and distribution of their products. As well, the use of their products has a big impact on the environment, so the way it is designed for end of life is of the utmost importance.
P&G has made some very impressive steps to help their consumers reduce their carbon footprint. The company is quick to mention their detergents that are designed to be used in cold water as a way to reduce carbon emissions and fight global warming. This is a big step, and something mentioned in the water usage section of this site.
While this is a step in the right direction, we would now like to see the company move into a full fledged run in that direction, or at least a light jog. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case for P&G.
The company has put in place a modest set of goals that is somewhere between greenwashing and thoughtful action. P&G wants environmental products to make up an increasing size of their portfolio, with a target of $20 billion of cumulative sales by 2012 coming from products with a reduced environmental impact. This sounds impressive, but loses some of its credibility with a bit more analysis. The company defines ‘reduced environmental impact’ as a product that is at least 10% better than the previous alternative. This is not a terribly ambitious goal for improved products, and many products at other companies reach that anyways. As well, the total amount is only a small portion of their total sales, which are over $70 billion annually. Stretch that out to 2012 and the proportion of green products drops pretty quickly.
P&G also plans to decrease their carbon emissions by 10% per unit of production over the next five year. This goal is better than the one above, but is based on a ‘per unit’ basis which would allow them to increase their total emissions and still reach this goal.
In their operations, P&G has started to make use of some renewable energy sources at their distribution centers, though this remains a small fraction of their total energy use.
One area where P&G has been quite strong environmentally has been to design their products with their end of life in mind, to ensure they have as small an impact as possible when disposed.
The company has also made strides in their packaging, and have reduced overall packaging per case by 27% since 1990.
So how do they stack up?
Business Strategy: 1.5/5 – the company seems to have jumped on the global warming bandwagon, but most of their efforts seem to be greenwashing, rather than true action
Products & Services – 2.5/5 – have started releasing products with a smaller carbon footprint, but this trend needs to grow quickly
Leading by Example: 1.5/5 – the company is sticking with their ‘follower’ strategy on going green, a great shame considering how innovative they are in other areas
Overall: 1.8/5
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