Clorox Sites Celebrate Earth Month 2018
By David Creamer, Environmental Sustainability Manager
Clorox sites around the world further embraced the spirit of sustainability in honor of Earth Month 2018.
Individual Eco Warriors at each facility crafted a site-specific plan to engage employees in environmental initiatives and help them understand more about our corporate commitment to sustainability and how to help reduce our footprint.
Here, we round up some of the activities of Clorox people to celebrate Earth Month.
Kimberley Perrim in Fairfield, California, was one of thousands of Clorox employees to participate in Earth Month 2018.
Aberdeen, Maryland
One way to know your environmental footprint is to measure it.
The Aberdeen plant wants to add recycling for plastic bottles and aluminum cans at their plant. So this Earth Month, they placed containers around the plant to collect recyclables to see how much plastic and aluminum waste they generate.
The hope is this data will provide a baseline of what their recyclables volume might look like so they can add recycling services to their site.
Alpharetta, Georgia
There were 3 ways to get involved for Earth Day at our Alpharetta Site:
- Enter the Alpharetta Eco Warriors Earth Day Pledge Challenge where you choose from a list of sustainable activities and pledge to commit to one or more. The list of possible actions was long and ranged from pledging to recycle all paper products to turning off the water while brushing teeth (thereby saving roughly 200 gallons of water month) and switching to nontoxic or organic pest control products, to name just a few.
- Support environmental organizations through the GIFT campaign
- Participate in the Earth Day Pollinator Garden planting event on May 2
Amherst, Virginia
Our Amherst plant focused on waste for its Earth Month celebration.
Employees watched a video about the plant’s waste-to-energy program, which has been in place since January 2018. They also engaged in conversations about how the plan will achieve zero-waste-to-landfill certification soon.
And as a thank-you to employees for their recycling efforts, everyone received a tomato plant for their home garden.
Donna Murphy, A Clorox employee in Amherst, designed the Glad-Amherst tree logo for Earth Day 2018.
Atlanta, Fairfield, Houston and Summer Shade plants
The Kingsford plant in Summer Shade, Kentucky, was one of many Clorox plants to hold electronics recycling drives to celebrate Earth Month.
Our Summer Shade (Kentucky), Atlanta Main and Atlanta West (Georgia), Fairfield (California) and Houston (Texas) Plants held recycle and reuse drives for batteries, electronics and other potentially harmful waste.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Americans throw away more than 3 billion batteries every year. That’s about 180,000 tons of batteries, and more than 86,000 tons of this battery waste are single use alkaline batteries.
Electronic waste like televisions and computers contains heavy metals and other harmful chemicals that can leach into the ground if disposed of improperly. About 60 percent of all electronic waste ends up in the landfill.
These sites set up large containers where employees could bring in items like clothing and shoes as well as electronic waste and batteries. They will partner with local vendors to ensure these items are donated to those in need or disposed of properly.
Inhui Sweeney participated in the electronics recycling drive at our Fairfield, California, Cleaning plant.
Biscayne, Canada
The Biscayne office rallied around our company’s goal to certify 10 zero-waste-to-landfill sites by 2020.
It held a dumpster dive event where people sorted through waste containers to identify opportunities to divert more waste from landfill to recycling.
During the site-wide eco event, the Biscayne team shared information on the Company’s zero-waste-to-landfill journey (five sites globally are now certified zero-waste-to-landfill), as well as updates on its own zero-waste journey. It also unveiled improved waste and recycling signage and shared results from the dumpster Dive. The event closed with a cool prize to the employee whose tree seedling, given out at last year’s Earth Day event, had grown the most.
Kennesaw, Georgia
Spring cleaning and gardening go hand in hand in Kennesaw.
The local Eco Warriors team gave the pollinator garden some revitalization and updating after the cold winter. Everyone hopes to have lots of butterflies and bees adding color and life to the Kennesaw office campus soon.
Planting a pollinator garden in Kennesaw.
Orangeville, Canada
The Orangeville Plant joined an Earth Day activity at a nearby Chrysler plant. It’s one of five Clorox zero-waste-to-landfill sites.
Clorox employees shared information about our company’s sustainability commitment and had the chance to connect with other manufacturers in the area to learn about their sustainability journeys.
And once all the ice melts in Ontario, the Orangeville teams plans to get to work on an employee garden, planting pollinators to attract the bees and butterflies.
Palm Harbor, Florida
Our Renew Life facility embraced the international Earth Day theme of reducing plastic waste.
The plant screened an informative documentary entitled “Plastic Paradise: the Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” which highlights an island of garbage in the Pacific Ocean that is the size of France. It also shared information regarding the No Straw Movement, which engages consumers and businesses to stop using plastic straws due to their harmful environmental impact.
Pleasanton, California
The Clorox Pleasanton Campus celebrated Earth Month with events from April 24 – 26.
Corporate Real Estate & Workplace Services provided all employees with reusable mugs to cut use of disposable coffee cups that too-often end up in landfill bins rather than compost bins.
Employees could also make an Earth Day Pledge to reduce their environmental impact and were educated on proper waste stream separation through a fun and engaging waste-sorting game.
Several teams from Finance and Product Supply also took the initiative to engage their departments in clothing and shoe recycling drives. So far, they’ve filled seven boxes for the Salvation Army and they hope to have more than a dozen filled boxes by the end of the month.
Mancy Hong joined others Pleasanton employees for a clothing drive to benefit the Salvation Army.
Rogers, Arkansas
For Earth Month, the Clorox plant in Rogers partnered with Grace Hill Elementary School, which is right around the corner from the plant.
We supplied them with craft supplies as well as Arbor Day trees and Burt’s Bees® Wild for Bees lip balm. We also purchased them a flowering dogwood tree, which we will be plant on the school grounds.
Clorox employees in Rogers, Arkansas, donated trees to plant on Arbor Day to students at Grace Hill Elementary School.
Willowbrook, Illinois
The Willowbrook office held a donation drive which collected more than 600 toiletry items as well as clothing and food items to be donated to local charities.
The team also participated in a local park cleanup with Keep America Beautiful.
Organizing a donation drive like this one in Willowbrook gives unwanted items a second life and keeps them out of landfill.