Sealed Air’s Soap for Hope™ Program Awarded Prestigious Honor in China

Tuesday, January 3, 2017 – 11:00am

The first “Value Co-Creation” Outstanding Corporate Social Responsibility Practices in China award ceremony was recently held at Fudan University in  December, 2016. Sealed Air’s Soap for Hope™ program won the Vote of Excellence Award with a significant majority.

The selection of best CSR case studies was sponsored by Fudan University School of Management, the well-known Human Resources management company CIIC Guanaitong and Beijing SynTao Information Co., Ltd. It is the first evaluation program for social value creation case studies that is dominated by academic institutions in China. The award focused on the standards of global sustainable development, business innovation, and social value creation.  Experts from well-known domestic universities voted for the top 50 case studies. Only three of the submitted case studies won the honor of the annual Value Co-Creation Excellence Award. Sealed Air’s Soap for Hope program best exemplifies China’s development trend towards creating shared value for society with programs that benefit both corporations and communities. Through the Soap for Hope program hotel properties collect, repurpose, and distribute discarded soap in their local communities along with hygiene education.  The other two projects that won the Excellence Awards were “Cow School” from YiLi and “Yi Nong Dai” from CreditEase.

Shen Hong, Vice President and Greater China Managing Director, and Ivy Zhang, Greater China Human Resources Director from Sealed Air China attended the award ceremony. Hong made a speech at the awards ceremony to share Sealed Air’s experience in the region, and also highlighted the importance of sustainability in the Company’s strategy. Once it was set up in China, the Soap for Hope program developed rapidly because it was a win-win program that created mutual benefits for CSR partners by improving people’s lives and creating significant shared value.

Soap for Hope partners include hotel properties, NGO’s and their beneficiaries, and employees of both Sealed Air and the participating hotel properties.  Hotel participants strongly identify with the program’s ability to create value for both the hotel by reducing their waste and increasing their ability to give back to the local community in which they operate.  NGO’s and their beneficiaries receive numerous opportunities from Soap for Hope, one example including giving locally disabled community residents the chance to improve their job skills and integrate into society more fully. Employees from Sealed Air connect the customers, NGOs, beneficiaries and employees together to create a strong partnership, allowing the program to continue its growth across regions and hotel properties.

Many judges for the award commented on the strength of the program and the impact it has on local communities.  “The amount of used soap from many hotels one year is very impressive. Not only can the project reduce waste to protect the environment, but it also provides employment to the disabled. The social value created is significant,” said one award judge. Through this process, Sealed Air, NGOs and disabled people have established synergies and achieved remarkable results. As a global public benefit project, Sealed Air is able to tailor its approach to local conditions and demonstrate its ability to innovate in the process.

Soap for Hope is committed to improving health, supporting livelihoods and reducing waste. Sealed Air professional technology, staff, customers, and social welfare groups benefit from the program. Disabled people are trained to recycle soaps provided by hotels.  They use simple tools to sterilize and reprocess used soaps, which are then distributed to needy groups and children in remote areas.

The global program was founded in 2013. Soap for Hope began in China in 2014, and since then has recycled 10 tons of used soap and made 40,000 pieces of recycled soap for distribution back into local communities.  The Soap for Hope program is just one way Sealed Air is acting out its corporate vision of “creating a better way for life”, by implementing a sustainable development strategy into the  enterprise and societal activities to create shared value.

– See more at: http://3blmedia.com/News/Sealed-Airs-Soap-Hopetm-Program-Awarded-Prestigious-Honor-China#sthash.4EJkxI0w.dpuf

Case Study: Employee Engagement in Waste Minimization – Ashland

Case Study: Employee Engagement in Waste Minimization – Ashland

The right partnership and a culture of sustainability make a big difference.

Employees at Ashland Consumer Markets (ACM) East Rochester, Pa., site have taken on the challenge to decrease environmental impact by curbing energy usage, reusing, reducing and recycling waste. In the past two years, ACM facilities across the globe have combined to recycle approximately 8.3 million pounds of materials while reducing the amount of solid waste generated by 10 percent. There has been significant effort placed on educating employees on conserving, eliminating, reducing and recycling waste.

As a leader in recycling and waste reduction, the East Rochester plant initiated the program more than three years ago by establishing housekeeping and maintenance standards that eliminated many leaks and drips, thus reducing oily water shipments. The ACM engineering group even designed a drip less sample port that eliminated drips and collection buckets that were always a challenge to manage. In the past, these containers collected storm water, additives and oil that ended up as a waste stream rather than being used in product. In the past fiscal year, the site reduced its oily waste shipments by 99,000 pounds.

The team then identified the next opportunity – reduce waste generated from operations. Their mission was to make recycling convenient and easy so that it can be sustained. Employees set up a central collection area by the plant maintenance shop to collect and segregate miscellaneous waste for recycling. Teaming up with the right recycler also made a big difference. The recycler takes all of the site’s recycled materials, allowing for more frequent shipments and less storage. “If sorting materials is a challenge for other sites, consider teaming up with recyclers that will take mixed materials and sort the waste streams,” suggested Mike Critchlow, plant manager at the East Rochester site.

The results are significant – last fiscal year, East Rochester reduced its overall solid waste generation by 48 percent and increased recycled materials by 26 percent. “Our sustainable successes in increasing our recycling efforts and decreasing solid waste generation could not be accomplished without the efforts of all of our employees,” said Critchlow. “In East Rochester, our team has been extra diligent in ensuring all items that can be recycled are placed in the proper receptacle. Recycling has become sustainable and is part of our culture.”

ACM’s Ten Team and operations manager at the ACM Cincinnati facility are now standardizing East Rochester’s practices across the ACM supply chain. For example, the Cincinnati and East Rochester plants both changed their recycling companies and the new company began accepting many materials that had previously been land filled as solid waste.

[This case study was featured in the GEMI Quick Guide for Engaging Employees in Sustainability.]