United Nations Global Compact: Doing Good is Good Business
By Aileen Zerrudo, Director – Corporate Communications
This week Clorox became a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), the world’s largest organization that’s bringing companies, NGOs, governments and other stakeholders together to advance the most important sustainability issues in the world as reflected in the organization’s Ten Principles.
We announced this news at a local event held by the United Nations Association of the East Bay where Clorox was one of three companies recognized with a Global Citizen Award for our sustainability and corporate responsibility work in recent years. Joining UNGC marks an important milestone for the company. We first published our Corporate Responsibility (CR) Strategy in 2010, and it reflected — and still does — a comprehensive set of commitments across our company – from human rights and product safety to transparency, environmental sustainability and contributions to communities where we operate.
In the early stages of our CR journey, external stakeholders told us that they needed to know more about Clorox’s CR performance and commitments; so, we focused much of our efforts on CR reporting. We became a U.S. Sector Leader with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and became involved with the International Integrated Reporting Council, issuing our first integrated report in 2011. Over the past five years, we’ve focused on increasing our transparency through our reporting and through Ingredients Inside, our voluntary product ingredient communications program focusing on disinfecting and cleaning products in the U.S. and Canada.
So why join UNGC now? After extensive research and many discussions internally as well as with UNGC and other external organizations, we believe this is a meaningful next step in our CR strategy, giving us an opportunity to continue learning from and sharing ideas with key sustainability influencers and other member companies.
As we reviewed UNGC’s Ten Principles, we were struck by the statement, “By incorporating the Global Compact principles into strategies, policies and procedures, and establishing a culture of integrity, companies are not only upholding their basic responsibilities to people and planet, but also setting the stage for long-term success.” This statement speaks to how we view CR at Clorox – that doing good is good business.
The fact that Clorox has been around for 100 years, growing from just one product — Clorox® bleach — to building a global portfolio of iconic brands has a lot to do with the company doing business the right way — with CR and our values guiding our strategic choices and every day operations.
We look forward to learning from other UNGC members and continuing to evolve as we travel on this CR journey.