by Shane Henson — May 3, 2013—To provide cleanrooms and laboratories with effective solutions to mitigate waste and enhance corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability efforts, Kimberly-Clark Professional recently introduced RightCycle, a program it says is the first large-scale recycling effort for nontraditional cleanroom waste.
As the company notes, businesses often set ambitious waste reduction goals, yet often struggle with where and how to get started. Kimberly-Clark Professional’s RightCycle program was developed to offer its customers a powerful and easy way to exceed their solid waste reduction goals, while helping to make their workplaces healthier, safer and more productive.
The program takes recycling to a new level—beyond downcycling, upcycling and other approaches. It makes it easy to recycle previously hard-to-recycle items like cleanroom garments, gloves, hoods, boot covers and hairnets. Items are deposited in either a RightCycle collection box or in the client’s own boxes. Full boxes are assembled onto pallets and picked up by Kimberly-Clark Professional recycling partner TerraCycle.
After the products are collected, they are turned into raw materials and used to create useful, eco-friendly consumer products, such as plastic Adirondack chairs and benches, bulk plastics and other items. This solution not only creates new products, but keeps waste out of landfills, something that Kimberly-Clark Corporation, the parent company for Kimberly-Clark Professional, says it is committing to doing as part of its own sustainability goals. In 2011, Kimberly-Clark Corporation announced it would be sending zero manufacturing waste to landfills by 2015.
