P&G Passionate About Green Efforts
by October 19, 2011 8:32 pm 128 views
For Jeff Schomburger, sustainability issues aren’t just a way to talk. They’re also a way to walk.
“My personal message,” he said, “is to be a difference-maker. Be personally tangible. Try to do a little bit every day.”
Schomburger, president of the Global Wal-Mart Team for worldwide consumer product titan Procter & Gamble, offers a snapshot of the atmosphere cultivated at the company’s Northwest Arkansas headquarters in Fayetteville.
Sustainability practices and thinking, he said, are built into the organization’s everyday work.
The HQ on Joyce Avenue, built in 2007, has 18 percent less office space per employee than the previous location, offers more than a dozen carpool parking spaces and the Mud Creek Trail that winds behind the building gives employees the option to ride a bicycle — or even walk — to the office.
And several among the approximately 250 employees do, Schomburger said. It’s a simple extension of a strong company philosophy of being a friend to the environment.
“We are absolutely inspired by our company strategy,” Schomburger said. “It’s [about] environmental sustainability, but it is also about giving back to the community and making it a better place to live.”
Because of its close association with Bentonville-based Wal-Mart — its No. 1 customer — Schomburger highlighted Tide Coldwater laundry detergent as a key product advancement in P&G’s sustainability efforts.
The innovation aims to reduce the amount of energy needed to heat water for a load of laundry. The goal is to convert 10 percent of all washing-machine loads across the globe to cold water by the end of the decade.
And with P&G being the country’s largest detergent manufacturer and Wal-Mart being, well, Wal-Mart, the ability to educate consumers on the environmental benefits is there.
“That’s a high priority for us in this office,” Schomburger said. “We’re doing this nationally, but the benefit we have locally is that 100 million shoppers a week shop at Wal-Mart. So if we can do a better job communicating to Wal-Mart shoppers, it would accelerate the whole conversion process across the United States.”