Social responsibility (SR) is the focus of a special panel at ASQ’s World Conference on Quality and Improvement in Minneapolis, May 18-20. The May 19 SR event features panelists from three Twin Cities area corporations with solid SR credentials. Representing Ecolab Inc. on the panel will be Kristina J. Taylor, director of community and public relations.
Ecolab supplies cleaning, food safety, and health protection products and services to hotels, restaurants, food service, healthcare facilities, educational facilities, commercial laundries, dairy plants and farms, food and beverage processors, and retail and commercial establishments. With plants in 30 countries, including 12 facilities in the U.S., the company and its 26,000 associates serve 900,000 customers worldwide.
Ecolab looks at SR through a sustainability lens, counting SR as one of the company’s three pillars of sustainability alongside economic progress and environmental stewardship.
As a business-to-business company, Ecolab’s approach to SR has a lot to do with providing products and services that allow its customers to be socially responsible.
“We talk about sustainability issues that are relevant not only to our business as we’re running it day-to-day, but to our customers’ businesses as well,” says Taylor. “Because that’s where we feel we make the biggest impact, quite honestly, is on our customers’ sites.”
Foodservice establishments using Ecolab’s Apex™ warewashing system are able to monitor usage and performance to reduce water and energy consumption, detergent usage, and waste. Typical average annual savings for a single restaurant using this system might include 7300 gallons of water, 20 kilograms of plastic waste, 2100 kWh of electricity, and 1 metric ton of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gas emissions.
“Our customers wash over 250 million dishes a day,” Taylor says, pointing out the cumulative effects of increasing operational efficiency across many locations. “If we can help them reduce the water they’re using, reduce their energy bill, reduce the amount of human capital they have to have by having people stand by dishwashing machines and laundry machines, we feel that’s where our real value is,” she states.
As the conversation around social responsibility and sustainability keeps developing, Taylor sees two positive effects.
“People really need to challenge themselves to look at the whole picture,” she states. “What does the whole process look like? Challenge the company or organization producing [a product] to show me every step along the way; be very transparent about how you get from point A to point Z, and make sure that the whole process is sustainable. It’s not so green if you have to wash the dish three times to get it clean when you could have done a one-pass wash. That’s not sustainability. That’s not being green. My point is to look at the whole process and figure out there’s more to being green than just the ingredients and there’s more to being sustainable than just saying you’re green.”
Another core element of SR for Ecolab is commitment to the well-being of associates and the quality of life in communities where the company operates.
Training, development, diversity, and inclusion programs are designed to reinforce a culture at Ecolab where all associates can make a difference. “Ecolab has always been a really terrific company to work for,” says Taylor. The company is recognized annually by Sales Force magazine as one of the best sales organizations to work for. Ecolab was recognized as one of the world’s most ethical companies by Ethisphere for both 2007 and 2008.
In the community, Ecolab supports and encourages volunteerism on the part of associates. The company supports education through its Visions for Learning program and other initiatives.
To learn more about SR at Ecolab, check out the company’s sustainability report online. You can hear Kristina Taylor expand on these themes—and many others—as part of the SR panel session at the World Conference on Quality and Improvement on May 19 in Minneapolis. Joining Taylor on the panel will be representatives from Target and 3M.
As part of its growing effort to assume a leadership role locally and internationally in the SR movement, ASQ will host “Sustaining the Future: A Social Responsibility Event” on Earth Day, April 22, 2009, in Milwaukee.
The event is designed to unveil the initiative that will illustrate how aligning quality and social responsibility can help to achieve triple bottom line results. The event also aims to highlight and energize leading-edge SR practices by local and national organizations.