by Brianna Crandall — April 20, 2011—The American Cleaning Institute (ACI, formerly The Soap and Detergent Association) has published the “first-ever” sustainability report for the U.S. cleaning products industry, showcasing aggregated environmental metrics data from producers and suppliers of cleaning products and snapshots of the industry’s social and environmental sustainability programs and activities.
In 2009, ACI and its members embarked on a project to report on a common set of sustainability-related metrics relevant to both its consumer packaged goods and raw material supplier members. As part of ACI’s Sustainability Metrics Project, 20 member companies (representing 73 percent of ACI’s dues-assessed member product sales) participated in a project to track environmental sustainability metrics.
Among the project’s findings:
- Between 2007 and 2009, total energy use, which includes electricity, steam and fuel used by stationary combustion sources, decreased by approximately 18 percent per ton of production.
- Between 2007 and 2009, the rate of GHG emission per unit of production decreased by approximately 25 percent, reflecting applied practices to reduce GHG emissions among member companies.
- Water use decreased approximately 10 percent per unit of production between 2007 and 2009.
- Between 2007 and 2009, the rate of GHG emission per unit of production decreased by approximately 25 percent, reflecting applied practices to reduce GHG emissions among member companies.
For Better Living: 2011 Sustainability Report summarizes data on greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), energy use, water use and solid waste associated with U.S. production of cleaning products. Besides the sustainability metrics data, the report features snapshots of many ACI member company sustainability efforts and a profile of ACI’s social and environmental sustainability programs and activities.
