Circular and reuse economy

Over the past two decades, Kimberly-Clark owed manufacturing waste to higher value alternatives, and is one of the leaders in the industry with a 96% diversion rate. “We are taking the lessons learned from our efforts to address manufacturing waste and applying them to our plastics footprint aspiration. We aspire to be at the forefront of the transition to a circular, reuse economy – contributing to human and ecosystem health by reducing waste, improving waste-handling systems and innovating new ways of giving consumers the products they need. We realize getting there will take game-changing innovation, and we know we’re up to the challenge,” says Kimberly-Clark.

The goals to lead in driving innovative solutions are aggressive for 2025 and 2030. To accelerate the shift to more sustainable materials and processes, Kimberly-Clark is partnering with stakeholders across the value chain to drive innovation and action in three key areas:

• Packaging – We will explore opportunities to extend our strategy to replace hard-to-recycle components with recyclable, renewable or reusable.
• Product – Our program is highly focused on the footprint of our plastic-containing materials, and shifting to recovered or renewable materials to reduce our consumption of traditional plastics and designing products to be recyclable or biodegradable to provide secondary value to post-consumer waste.
• Waste Management Systems – We will continue to nurture circular systems around the world that are necessary to recover the materials in our products and packaging when a consumer is done with them.