Kimberly-Clark and its well-known global brands are an indispensable part of life for people in more than 150 countries. Every day, 1.3 billion people - nearly a quarter of the world's population - use K-C's brands and the solutions they provide to enhance their health, hygiene and well-being. Kimberly-Clark holds the No. 1 or No. 2 share position in more than 80 countries. Brands include Andrex®, Kleenex®, Huggies®, Fiesta®, Kotex® and Depend®

Dave Challis graduated with a degree in Biological Sciences in 2001 and has been working at Kimberly-Clark for five years on environmental management. As Sustainability Manager for Europe, his focus includes responsible sourcing, carbon management and overall sustainability performance for our European business.

Do brand-leading producers like Kimberly-Clark have any specific role in fighting climate change?

"We have a responsibility to minimise our environmental impacts and we have been focussed on this for many years. We embrace 'life cycle thinking' into everything we do to identify where our impacts are - not just in Carbon but in water usage, energy usage and waste to landfill.

"We have had reduction objectives and plans in place for more than 15 years and this is really important if we are to manage our impacts effectively."

How has Kimberly-Clark tackled its own carbon footprint or sustainability issues?

"We launched our global environmental 'Vision' programme in 1995 to provide direction, objectives and targets that foster sustainability in our products and processes. In 2006, the Vision programme moved into its third five-year phase - Vision 2010 - with a new set of objectives.

"Ambitious goals for the next five years have been developed in reducing energy consumption, reducing carbon dioxide emissions, eliminating all landfilling of manufacturing waste, reducing total fresh water use, maintaining treated wastewater quality, establishing an internationally recognised system to manage environmental and safety issues, designing for the environment, establishing special programmes in D&E markets that protect the environment as the businesses grow.

"We have also participated in the Carbon Disclosure Project for 5 years, including partnering with one of our key customers in the new Supply Chain Leadership Collaboration (SCLC) project in 2008.

"In 2007 we also became one of the Carbon Trust's pilot partners in the UK and are testing the draft methodology for measuring Carbon Footprints with our Andrex and Huggies brands." [The Carbon Trust is currently running trials to measure and indicate on packaging the carbon emissions produced by the manufacture and distribution of individual consumer items]

How do you encourage stakeholders to participate in your efforts?

"Communications is key. We audit all of our fibre suppliers and in 2007 we launched our 'Sustainability at K-C: Guide for Suppliers' which is published on our website.

"We regularly talk to retail customers to make sure our strategies are aligned to theirs and we invest in insights that tell us what shoppers and users of our products think and feel.

"We are actively involved in working with the industry and take part in Industry Association working groups with IGD, Edana, ETS and AHPMA.

"Inside K-C everyone is focussed on Sustainability and I partner with specific teams to help them bring environmental projects to fruition."

As a multi-national firm, do you feel national governments are adequately coordinating their carbon reduction efforts?

"At the moment there seems to be no co-ordination on a multinational level and at some stage this will need to happen. We are encouraged to see the Carbon Trust sharing its learning's internationally.

"We are close to having a common standard in the UK for measuring carbon footprints but we do not feel we are close to having an international standard. We think it is important to have common goals on carbon reduction internationally and we support international agreements to standardise these approaches.

"National governments have an important role to play in both setting national and industry objectives and influencing consumer behaviour. We participate in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme across Europe."

How will the current economic climate affect the push to reduce carbon emissions?

"Understanding the total environmental impact across the life cycle of the products we manufacture helps to identify further areas for improvement.

"As carbon management for consumer products is often linked with energy usage and manufacturing efficiency, addressing carbon management can help to reduce overall costs and drive out inefficiencies which is even more important in an uncertain economic climate."

What has been your most successful low carbon initiative and what made it so?

"Our 'Vision' programme of environmental objectives which launched more than 15 years ago has been very successful.

"When we compare our energy consumption in 1996 with 2007 we can see that we have reduced consumption by 61.7 million mmbtu which is obviously significant during a time when production would have been increasing. Obviously during that time some Mills have left the K-C portfolio and some have joined."

What's next on your agenda?

"Continue to develop our carbon strategy as part of our life cycle thinking approach. By using information from product and from geographic regions I want to undertake carbon footprinting work which will help focus our efforts and put reduction plans in place to contribute to our global reduction objectives under the Vision programme."

What advice would you give to someone taking on a role similar to yours?

"Focus on the things that you can change and that will make a real difference."

Low Carbon Board Report

Working Together – Public Sector Partners

Public sector bodies have an important part to play in reducing carbon emissions in a number of different ways.

Most obviously, they shape the legal and regulatory environment that companies must operate in. Some are tasked with long term economic issues such as supporting regeneration, and safeguarding the sustainability of communities.

Public sector bodies are themselves wrestling with the difficulties of reducing emissions. Because they are free of private sector concerns about protecting competitive advantage, they are often willing to share valuable insights with other organisations.

Last but by no means least; they are important customers of the private sector. Understanding their changing needs can deliver important business benefits for the private sector.

In Whitehall, the key agency driving the climate change policy agenda is the Department for the Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra), which helps to fund agencies such as The Carbon Trust and co-ordinate the activities of other central government bodies.

Promoting sustainable development

For many companies, government activities at regional, sub-regional, and local levels will be just as interesting, if not more so. In England, the nine Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) are tasked with helping to deliver carbon reduction in the business sector by managing initiatives such as Defra’s Business Resource Efficiency and Waste Programme (http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/waste/brew/index.htm).

Each RDA is also responsible for a Regional Economic Strategy (RES), which aims to engage organisations across sectors, including local government, universities, community and volunteer groups, among others.

All RESs now include mandatory assessments of the environmental effects of the strategy, and as part of the RES some RDAs are leading the development of regional climate change action plans. All RDAs are required to include carbon reduction plans within the RES, and encourage key public and private sector partners to support mandatory carbon targets and adopt further voluntary regional targets.

Some regions are developing expertise in particular areas. Renewables East, a centre of excellence in the East of England region, is helping companies diversify into the biomass and biofuels sectors. It also aims to act as a focus for expertise in offshore renewable energy, supporting the construction of wind turbines offshore, for example.

The North West Development Agency (NWDA) is taking a lead in clean technology R&D, specifically by investing 50% of the £10m required to build Joule Centre for Energy Research & Development. The Joule Centre is a collaborative project, run as a partnership between NWDA, Universities, commercial organisations and other stakeholders associated with the energy industry.

All RDAs are set to become repositories of emissions data for their regions, collating data from Regional Observatories to build an England-wide, evidence base for the low-carbon agenda.

Local priorities and initiatives

Local authorities are important partners for RDAs. For example, East Sussex County Council aims to play a co-ordinating role through its Climate Change Strategy, engaging with business, the public sector, and the community to bring more focus and structure to emissions reduction. “We’re trying to engage with the community as much as possible. It’s a County strategy, not just a Council strategy,” says Deputy Leader Councillor Tony Reid, who chairs the project board.

Reducing emissions will be only one aspect of a broad strategy aiming to improve sustainability, he says. Reducing waste is a key priority for local authorities, and East Sussex hopes to engage business through initiatives such as The Business Excellence Through Resource Efficiency (http://www.lewes.gov.uk/business/1188.htm) programme.

Some local authorities are valuable sources of expertise in clean energy for example. Perhaps the most striking example is Southampton City Council, which has been active in this area for twenty years.

During the energy crisis of the 1970s, central government decided to investigate geothermal energy, drilling a small number of test sites around the UK, says Bill Clark, the council’s sustainability manager. “The short story is that by the time the wells had been drilled the crisis was over. Some of the sites were too remote to be useful, but the council persuaded the government not to cap the well in Southampton,” he says.

In 1987, sustainable energy specialist Utilicom was contracted to operate the well on the council’s behalf, offering energy to local customers. “It makes a small profit, split through a sharing agreement with the company. The council invests its share in other efficiency resources,” says Clark. The geothermal well still produces between 3 and 4 MW of power, he says. The council supplemented this with a gas-powered CHP generator delivering a further 5MW in 1998, and a new 1.5MW biomass boiler will come onstream this year.

The total output will be around 9MW of relatively clean energy, providing heat and cooling to more than 40 customers, including council buildings, residential housing, commercial offices, BBC TV studios, hospitals, colleges, pubs, hotels and retailers such as John Lewis, Marks & Spencers, and Asda.

Companies are drawn to participate for several reasons, says Clark. “There are long-term savings – at least a five per cent reduction in energy costs because they don’t need a boiler. It also helps reduce emissions, and helps to demonstrate a responsible attitude to energy savings.”

Although Southampton is unusual in having access to geothermal energy, other local authorities are setting up Combined Heat and Power (CHP) infrastructures, notably Birmingham City Council, and Woking Borough Council.

Exploring new ways of working

Like private sectors organisations, local authorities aim to exploit new technology, and some are looking at ways of integrating new working practices into their low carbon strategy.

Wakefield Metropolitan District Council has a programme called Worksmart, enabling staff to work more flexibly, spending more time out in the community or working from home. “We’re looking at this as a catalyst for sustainability,” says Gavin Rimmington, Business Services Manager, Strategic Procurement and e-Services.

Worksmart enables the council to dispose of old buildings that consumed energy inefficiently, but the e-services team also hopes to show colleagues how they can use resources more responsibly. E-Services staff are discouraged from printing documents and many no longer have permanent desks. As a result, some of Wakefield’s offices have reduced consumption of paper by as much as 70%, says Rimmington.

Some councils have come together to provide feedback to IT vendors, says Rimmington. “Newham is particularly active in this area, lobbying companies like Microsoft to make duplex printing the default setting for printers, or changing the default paper margins of documents to save paper,” he says.

Building trust, sharing best practice

More than 200 councils have also signed up to the Nottingham Declaration (http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/housingbuildings/localauthorities/NottinghamDeclaration/faqs/), an initiative that aims to promote good practice and co-ordinate the action of councils on sustainability. In addition to such voluntary initiatives, councils also work together through bodies such as the Local Government Association (LGA). Closer working between local government and the private sector could have significant benefits for both, suggests Paul Bettison, Leader of Bracknell Forest Borough Council, and Chair of the LGA Environment Board.

Councils could become trusted third parties on sustainability, helping organisations in all sectors to share good practice, insights and special expertise, he suggests. “What we need is for local authorities to be seen as facilitators,” he says.

Key questions:

· What clean energy alternatives are local authorities investing in?
· How can Regional Development Agencies help our low carbon strategy?
· How could partnerships the public sector improve the sustainability of our business?