Collaboration — the key to recycling success

From nappies to toilet tissues, most will be familiar with at least some of the indispensable hygiene products manufactured by Kimberly-Clark. What you may be surprised to learn is that the company has been making great strides to meet ambitious waste management strategies that minimise the impact of its products on the environment. However, achieving success with such strategies has not come without challenges.

Jacquie Fegent-McGeachie, Head of Sustainability and Corporate Affairs at Kimberly-Clark Australia and New Zealand, says that a key waste management challenge the company faces is the fact that the majority of the health and hygiene consumer products it manufactures are designed for single use. And although the company doesn’t see itself as a recycler, it takes very seriously its responsibility in reducing the impact of these products on the environment. “In order to achieve the outcome we want, which is less waste to landfill, it has required finding innovative ways to partner with experts in the waste industry, as it requires new technology, new processes and the establishment of commercially viable secondary markets for the components recovered through the recycling process.”

With trillions of dollars’ worth of materials currently lost to landfills each year globally, there is huge potential for secondary markets for post-consumer recycled material. Therefore, it was surprising to hear that when Fegent-McGeachie first approached the traditional waste industry four years ago about how the company could partner in finding composting or recycling solutions for its post-consumer nappies, essentially the big players in the waste industry weren’t so interested.

“It is heartening to hear the big players in the waste industry are now increasingly looking at more difficult waste streams and how they might help to address the challenge of these waste streams going to landfill; but, in our experience, we have found the waste industry to be very conservative, taking a tried and tested approach. Therefore, the challenge for us was, how do we promote breakthrough innovations and how do we look at different ways of collaborating to establish new ways of recycling different materials and establishing viable local secondary markets for these materials. What we are now seeing is ‘disruptive innovators’ coming into the market.”

Fegent-McGeachie describes one such example as ‘mumprenuer’ Elizabeth Kasell from Victoria. She was unhappy about the amount of flexible plastic packaging going to landfill and was told it couldn’t be recycled as part of kerbside recycling, so in 2012 she set about establishing her own initiative called REDcycle. In a trial, Kasell teamed up with Coles and an organisation in Victoria called Replas that specialised in recycling this type of plastic into useful equipment such as outdoor furniture and play equipment. The initiative was a success and has now been scaled nationally, with a huge volume of flexible plastic packaging now being diverted from landfill.

Fegent-McGeachie says: “Since the launch of the REDcycle Program in 2012, RED Group has collected more than 100 million pieces of plastic that will never end up in landfill, on our beaches or in our waterways.

“The key to the success of this initiative was around collaboration. It is a great example of the unique collaboration between an entrepreneur who had a great idea and her success in getting on board a recycling innovator, consumer goods companies and retailers in order to solve an unmet need in the community.”

Along with others, Kimberly-Clark Australia has introduced the REDcycle logo on the flexible plastic packaging of its consumer products to help increase awareness and inform its consumers about how to keep it out of landfill. Kimberly-Clark, along with other industry partners, is now working to see if it can replicate a similar scheme in New Zealand.

In another example, entrepreneurial parents of two Karen and Karl Upston implemented a nappy composting innovation in New Zealand. Fegent-McGeachie explains how the couple loved the convenience of disposable nappies but didn’t like the thought of all those nappies going to landfill, so they also set about doing something about it. They trialled a nappy composting solution in collaboration with HotRot Organic Solutions using its existing HotRot technology. “We heard about this great idea in regional New Zealand back in 2009 and thought they were onto something, so we came on board in the early stages,” said Fegent-McGeachie. “We have since seen this nappy composting facility, called Envirocomp, scale up in New Zealand with a second facility in Wellington and a third planned for Auckland. It was also recently accredited under New Zealand’s product stewardship scheme.

“We’ve been wanting to replicate this solution in Australia, but for a whole host of reasons it hasn’t happened yet,” said Fegent-McGeachie. “However, Australian entrepreneurs, again from Victoria, have started up a company called Relivit. The company licenses the Knowaste technology that has a different process to enable recycling of absorbent hygiene products (nappies and adult incontinence and sanitary products). At the end of last year we have come on board as a supporter of Relivit and hope that once their planned facility is built in Southern NSW that they can assist our Huggies consumers to divert their nappies, along with incontinence and sanitary waste, from landfill.”

As well as partnering with Relivit on the post-consumer waste around its Huggies brand, this collaboration also has the potential to provide a solution for some of Kimberly-Clark’s manufacturing waste.

Scheduled to start next year in Australia, the Relivit agreement will also include a component for the diversion of some manufacturing waste from Kimberly-Clark’s Huggies manufacturing site in south-west Sydney. Fegent-McGeachie explained: “The agreement with Relivit came about for three key reasons: one, Relivit’s planned facility and the technology they use should provide a solution on an unmet community need. Secondly, they wanted the waste stream from the manufacturing off-cuts for its planned recycling process and thirdly, their fee structure is actually cheaper than current landfill costs, which makes it pretty remarkable.”

Creative innovations are exactly what is required to achieve Kimberly-Clark’s goal of zero manufacturing waste to landfill. A 96% diversion of waste from landfill has already been achieved at its largest manufacturing facility in regional South Australia even though it’s a long way from recycling facilities. “So to get to where we are now has required establishing some creative local collaborations. For example, some of the tissue off-cuts go to a local worm farm in the Mount Gambian region.

“We still have 4% to go, and to get this, some small but tricky waste streams will have to be solved. For example, we are doing some trials on the aloe vera resin from some of our tissues but haven’t found a home yet.”

With rising landfill cost and gate fees, especially in New South Wales, the business case for implementing zero-waste-to-landfill strategies is even more compelling. However, according to Fegent-McGeachie, the dichotomy that Kimberly-Clark faces is that most of its sustainability initiatives come at an upfront cost, but consumers won’t pay a premium. “We know this, but as consumers become more engaged and involved on sustainability issues, the hope is companies, such as ours, will be rewarded via consumer loyalty to our brands and therefore the cost gap narrows.

“It is about weighing up the short-term cost against the long-term benefit and what also comes into the decision is our corporate social responsibility. We are committed to reducing our impact on the environment; it is something that forms part of our ethos, so that does help with the business case.”