P&G Announces Its First North American Manufacturing Plant to Achieve Zero Waste to Landfill

The Procter & Gamble Co. announced on Dec. 6 that its Auburn, Maine site, a feminine care facility, worked with both employees and suppliers to implement a process that beneficially uses 100% of its waste. A majority -- more than 60% -- is recycled or reused, while the remainder is converted to energy.

"Auburn's success is the latest milestone in our continued global effort to achieve zero manufacturing waste sent to landfill," said Len Sauers, P&G vice president of global sustainability. "Our Global Asset Recovery Purchases (GARP) program is a terrific example of how internal innovation and external partnerships have joined to help realize the company's sustainability vision and goals."

The GARP team -- charged with finding external partners that can turn waste and non-performing inventory into something useful -- connected the plant with a site solution provider, who helped sort all recyclable materials and convert existing non-recyclable materials to energy through incineration. The electricity from incineration is used by the incineration facility and the excess is sold to the local power company. The GARP team has diverted tens of thousands of tons from landfills while delivering tens of millions of dollars in cost recovery to the company in the past year alone, P&G reports.

Auburn is the ninth P&G global manufacturing plant to earn this distinction. Some of the other sites that have achieved this status include the Fabric and Home Care site in Belgium, Beauty & Grooming site in the United Kingdom, and the Feminine Care site in Hungary and Italy.

P&G's vision includes having zero manufacturing waste globally going to landfills. The company also has a goal to achieve less than 0.5% disposed manufacturing waste by 2020.