Kimberly-Clark Sustainability Report Review, Essay Example

Widely considered as “one of the world’s largest makers of personal paper products” with four business segments devoted to personal care and hygiene, consumer tissue, K-C Professional, and an entire line of health care-related products (Kimberly-Clark Corporation, 2012), Kimberly-Clark is perhaps the most environmentally friendly global business in operation today and has long been recognized for its proactive customer approach as contrasted with traditional market demand patterns. In basic terms, Kimberly-Clark understands and appreciates the wants and needs of its customers and responds by providing them with top quality and environmentally-friendly products.

According to its 2010 Sustainability Report, Kimberly-Clark’s proactive customer approach is organized around three specific areas or pillars–people, planet, and products–which make up the bulk of the company’s revised 2010 sustainability strategy. As Tom Falk, Chairman and CEO of Kimberly-Clark relates, “We believe that what’s good for business must also be good for the environment and the interests of the people we serve every day” and that companies like Kimberly-Clark must expand their marketing efforts in order to “better address the social responsibility of their supply chain, increase employee engagement in sustainability,” and meet the social and environmental demands of the consumer (Kimberly-Clark 2010 Sustainability Report, 2011).

A good portion of the information contained in the company’s 2010 Sustainability Report would greatly appeal to the average consumer of Kimberly-Clark products, due to the fact that it concentrates on three areas that most consumers regard as pivotal to the success of a company in today’s highly competitive global market–1), ensuring that Kimberly-Clark’s “business practices are beneficial to our employees and the communities” in which it operates and sells its line of products; 2), utilizing “sustainable environmental practices to ensure our ability to grow under constrained global resources;” and 3), creating “innovate products and business models” in order to reach as many customers as possible, especially those that are just emerging into the market (Kimberly-Clark 2010 Sustainability Report, 2011).

In addition, most consumers would fully embrace many of Kimberly-Clark’s goals for the near future, such as eliminating workplace fatalities, decreasing the use of water by 25%, contributing nothing in the way of manufacturing waste to landfills, and a 20% reduction on the impact of packaging on the natural environment (Kimberly-Clark 2010 Sustainability Report, 2011) via the use of materials that are biodegradable as contrasted with plastic and other man-made packaging materials.

This type of proactive customer approach practiced by Kimberly-Clark is known as targeted economic development. As defined by S. Deller, targeted economic development (TED) is a “means to an end with the end being the implementation of a viable set of economic growth and development strategies” which is achieved by combining “the process of targeting analysis with the contents of the analysis” which under the best of circumstances results in “powerful new insights into the regional economy” (Targeting Regional Economic Development, 2010). Deller adds that targeted economic development, whether at regional, national, or international levels, is made up of specific parts or elements that might include “a detailed and highly methodical analysis” of the specific economy that a business like Kimberly-Clark might choose to infiltrate, guided in part by “a process that allows community leaders, concerned citizens, and consumers to influence the direction of the analysis” (Targeting Regional Economic Development, 2010).

In contrast to targeted economic development, consider the theory of supply side economics. As discussed by P.M. Johnson, supply side economics emphasizes that the “main source of a country’s economic growth is constant improvement in the efficiency with which resources are allocated for production.” This type of approach tends to focus almost entirely on “what governments can do to stimulate or restrain aggregate demand in the short-run” via the elimination of economic barriers and impediments related to the supply side that decrease productivity (Supply Side Economics, 2005).

Obviously, the people at Kimberly-Clark consider partnerships as one of the most vital aspects of company success on a global scale. For example, one of Kimberly-Clark’s sustainability goals for 2015 is to be held accountable by their major customers, retailers, and suppliers for the social compliance of their company supply chain. Overall, these entities are increasingly demanding that large corporations like Kimberly-Clark provide detailed information and data “regarding the validation of supplier performance related to total workplace sustainability” which includes “working hours, fair wages, child/forced labor, non-discrimination, freedom of association, safety/health and environmental stewardship” (Kimberly-Clark 2010 Sustainability Report, 2011). In return, Kimberly-Clark has made it known to their 30,000 plus suppliers that they must

“comply with all applicable laws in these areas” in conjunction with complying to company standards which more often than not are “greater than what the law requires” and doing whatever is necessary to increase operational sustainability (Kimberly-Clark 2010 Sustainability Report, 2011).

As noted in the Sustainability Report of 2010, it appears that the only federal government agency which Kimberly-Clark has an ongoing relationship with is the U.S. Environmental Agency (EPA), due to the fact that the management of Kimberly-Clark is

very concerned with how their business efforts, practices, and strategies affect the natural environment. In the Sustainability Overview section, we find Kimberly-Clark’s Global Business Plan via its Vision 2010 program which stresses “greater efficiency in our operations” and the promoting of “innovative materials and products” to meet the needs of an ever-growing global clientele base (Kimberly-Clark 2010 Sustainability Report, 2011).

In line with the rules and regulations set up by the EPA, some of the environmental goals of Vision 2010 includes reducing the amount of fresh water used at tissue facilities, treating waste water with the best technologies currently available, reducing energy consumption and the amount of carbon dioxide related to manufacturing, and eliminating manufactured waste from landfills. These and many other goals are founded on Kimberly-Clark’s environmental policies which the EPA heartily endorses, especially related to the company’s self-created Environment, Health and Safety Management System which includes “a procedure for annual self-assessment by our operating facilities” and the completion of mandatory “quarterly environmental compliance assurance statements that receive attention at the highest levels of the company” (Kimberly-Clark 2010 Sustainability Report, 2011).

Overall, Kimberly-Clark’s main concern is the customer and the consumer, both of whom demand that large corporations “systematically apply environmental considerations into their overall product development process.” As CEO Tom Falk explains it, Kimberly-Clark is currently taking “the next steps toward addressing our customers’ expanding sustainability efforts and our consumers’ growing interest in sustainable products” (Kimberly-Clark 2010 Sustainability Report, 2011), not to mention the creation of new and innovative products and business models that will help Kimberly-Clark to grow and expand on a global scale while also keeping in mind how the company impacts the natural environment.

References

Deller, S. (2010). Targeting regional economic development. Retrieved from http://nercrd.psu.edu/tred/WhatisTRED.pdf

Johnson, P.M. (2005). Supply side economics. Retrieved from www.auburn.edu/~johnspm/gloss/supply_side

Kimberly-Clark 2010 sustainability report. (2011). Retrieved from http://www.sustainabilityreport2010.kimberly-clark.com/

Kimberly-Clark corporation company profile. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.hoovers.com/company-information/cs/company-profile.Kimberly-Clark_Corporation.7fb0192433223539.html