October 2021 – Repertoire Magazine
By Dylan Beach, Sustainability Manager, GOJO Industries
Sustainability is a business imperative. The question that should be at the top of an organization’s mind is, how do we transition to an equitable, low carbon, circular economy? This is arguably the biggest business opportunity in history and refers to the three biggest trends in sustainability today. The companies that enable this transition and provide products and services that deliver a real social good will survive.
The healthcare sector can drive diversity, equity, and inclusion
The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion movement in the U.S. continues to accelerate for many companies, including GOJO. We understand that sustainability is not just environmental, but also has interconnected social and economic elements. That’s why a low carbon, circular economy also needs to promote opportunities for people to bring their full and authentic selves to the work that they do.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics survey from 2020, the healthcare sector accounted for 12% of total U.S. employment1 and admitted 36,241,815 patients in 2019.2 In 2013, the average patient admission required $4,470 of supply expenses in U.S. hospitals.3 This sector can have a significant impact on promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion and suppliers to the sector can help in this effort.
In 2020, GOJO became certified by the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) as a Women’s Business Enterprise (WBE). Our WBENC certification is significant because GOJO can now help health systems achieve their supplier diversity goals and, in turn, formally demonstrate their commitment to fostering diversity and equity.
The healthcare sector can help transition to a low carbon future
The best science tells us that the world needs to reduce climate emissions by 50% by 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2050.4 The U.S. healthcare system has a role to play. It contributes an estimated 10% of the nation’s carbon emissions and 9% of harmful non-greenhouse air pollutants.5
Many health systems are adopting strong climate goals, such as the UK National Health System, Kaiser Permanente, and NYU Langone Health System. To seriously tackle carbon emissions, health systems will increasingly look at how to reduce select Scope 3 emissions (emissions from sources it does not directly own or control). A health system may ask its group purchasing organization to source low carbon products from suppliers that can show evidence of carbon reduction.
Between 2010 and 2015, GOJO reduced its carbon intensity by 46% per product use, and from 2015 to 2020, we reduced carbon intensity by an additional 49% per product use. Furthering this goal, our Cradle to Cradle Certified® Gold PURELL® hand sanitizers and soaps are manufactured with 50% renewable energy.
Circular design can help hospitals ease reliance on disposable plastic
Plastic use has grown exponentially since 1950. Approximately 40% of plastics are used to produce packaging, which is often single-use, meaning it is not designed to be refilled and has a life of less than 6 months.6 In hospitals, medical waste and single-use plastics was already high, but the COVID-19 pandemic caused a surge in consumption.7 As we emerge from this pandemic, there is an opportunity to examine how health systems can reduce their reliance on disposable plastics, while of course addressing public health concerns regarding the spread of pathogens.
Circular design principles have been integrated into upcoming innovations in our pipeline, which will help our health system and distributor partners meet waste reduction and packaging sustainability goals. In the meantime, our breakthrough Energy-on-the-Refill Technology on the PURELL® ES8 dispensing system represents a 68% reduction in battery waste and a 15% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions8 when compared to leading touch-free systems on the market.9
Safe, then Circular
GOJO was founded in 1946 on a safer way to clean hands, and we carry that design ethos forward with us today. From 2015 to 2020, we have been advancing a sustainable chemistry strategy underpinned by two goals. First, to reduce chemicals of concern in our portfolio by 50% per product use and second, to double the percent of global sales from third-party certified products.
The NGO-led Chemical Footprint Project (CFP) began in 2014 with the mission to transform global chemical use by measuring and disclosing data on business progress to safer chemicals. Many healthcare organizations are signatories of the initiative, including Kaiser Permanente and Vizient. GOJO was a founding participant of CFP and the first company to declare a public, quantitative target to reduce chemicals of concern. Through CFP, we have publicly disclosed our progress since 2014, and at the end of 2020 we had reduced chemicals of concern in our portfolio by 64% per product use.
Third-party certifications make it easier to evaluate the health, safety, and environmental performance of products and help organizations buy green products with confidence. Significantly, certifications meet environmentally preferable purchasing guidelines of government contracts and green building standards such as LEED and WELL.
Some significant third-party certifiers in the infection control space are the Cradle to Cradle Certified™ Products Program, Ecologo and Green Seal. GOJO was the first company in our industry to certify a hand soap to a third-party standard in 2006 and a hand sanitizer in 2010. In 2020, many PURELL® products achieved Cradle to Cradle Certified™ Gold with a Platinum level Material Health rating, the highest material health rating possible. The Cradle to Cradle Certified™ Products Program is the world’s most advanced standard for safe, circular and responsible materials and products.
GOJO uses the Chemical Footprint Chemicals of High Concern list and third-party certification standards as minimum benchmarks for product development. We know that providing products that are increasingly safe, effective and good for you and the planet helps deliver on our GOJO Purpose of Saving Lives and Making Life Better through Well-being Solutions, while helping to meet the needs of our customers.
1 Bureau of Labor Statistics, State Occupational Employment Statistics Survey, May 2020.
2 Fast Facts on U.S. Hospitals, 2021. AHA Hospital Statistics.
3 Abdulsalam, Y. and E.S. Schneller. Hospital supply expenses: An important ingredient in health services research. Medical Care Research and Review. 2017. 1–13. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1077558717719928
4 IPCC, 2019: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change and Land: an IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems.
5 Eckelman, M.J., and Sherman, J.D. Estimated Global Disease Burden From US Health Care Sector Greenhouse Gas Emissions. American Journal of Public Health. 2018. 108: S120-S122. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5922190/
6 Geyer, R. et al. Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made. Science Advances. 2017. 3, 7. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1700782.
7 Silva, A. L., P., et. al. Increased plastic pollution due to COVID-19 pandemic: Challenges and recommendations. Chemical engineering journal. 2021. 405. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cej.2020.126683.
8 Based on a 1200mL refill with an assumed usage rate of 2.35 refills per dispenser per year and a 6-year dispenser lifetime.
9 2017 Healthcare Sanitizer Market Sales provided by Definitive Healthcare, LLC.