Jeff Rehm, Grainger's manager, sustainability; Andy Stewart, director of its green product portfolio; and Daniel Munoz, senior manager, green products, explained during the 2014 Grainger Show why sustainability is now recognized as a priority for practically every company.
"Sustainability encompasses lean manufacturing, quality, safety," Stewart said. "We focused our customer efforts on 4 major pillars: managing energy, water conservation, indoor air quality, and waste. Oftentimes waste is the first one that you go to, but it has to be a financially viable solution that helps a business really define sustainability. We focus on that and then find ways to oftentimes have other unintended or intended consequences."
He said Grainger looks both at what it is doing internally as a business and also what its personnel are doing to help customers, offering products and services to help them become more sustainable. Grainger released its first Corporate Social Responsibility report in 2013 and participates in the Carbon Disclosure Project, an international organization that provides a system for companies and cities to measure, disclose, and share key environmental information. The company recently reported that it operates 16 LEED certified buildings in North America, is building a distribution center in Toronto, Canada, to LEED specifications, and its U.S. distribution centers recycled more than 2,500T of cardboard, plastic wrap, and metal in 2013, improving their recycling rate by 5.1 % year over year.
"We've internalized it, it's part of our overall corporate social responsibility commitment to the environment. With that, the motto of the sustainability movement is 'people, profit, plant.' Your decisions are affecting all of those in a positive way, otherwise it's not a sustainable investment or program." Grainger strives to run its facilities as efficiently as possible to reduce costs and also confer environmental benefit, then it transfers those ideas and approaches to its customers, Rehm explained.
"We're a great test lab for ourselves. working together and share ideas. Sometimes a new supplier/technology will come in, they say this is viable now,"Rehm added.For example -LED lighting upgrades, where Grainger consistently sees 10-15 percent energy reductions in its warehouse lighting. "We partner with Grainger Lighting Services to do those projects.
How Sustainability Dovetails with Safety
Stewart said sustainability solutions frequently have a safety outcome. Improved lighting, for example, makes a parking lot safer or can prevent slips and falls on a shop floor. Extended-life lamps are changed less often, which translates to fewer accidents and lower insurance rates.
"We want to ensure we position the offer correctly for customers. Are they meeting regulatory guidelines? Are these offers going to improve their bottom line?" Munoz said. We need figure out what resonates with our customers and we package that to our customers so that it is aligned to our message internally."
Muniz said "I think the reason sustainability nevertheless remains a hard sell for some customers for that is because the way that sustainability has been positioned in the past has been mostly from an ideology point of view. We're saying sustainability is not just about being green, it's about being lawful--regulatory compliance--and number three is the economic driver. A lot of these things are going to save you money in the long run."
"All of our customers are involved in sustainability." Stewart replied, "but they just don't always call it that.
About 33,000 to 34,000 SKUs in Grainger's vast offerings bear an insignia of "environmentally preferable product." They said this number has grown dramatically from just 10,000 two years ago. The number soared because Grainger has gotten better at identifying sustainable products and because these products are in demand. Grainger's product certifications are third-party audited for accuracy." Stewart said. Jeff Weaver, senior manager of safety identified several recent crossovers between safety and sustainability: signage manufactured from sustainable materials, gloves sourced from bamboo, and a hard hat sourced from sugar cane.
"We're trying to help customers become more efficient and effective at safety," Safety directors are struggling with limited resources and tight budgets. They're challenged to keep up with OSHA regulations and by a changing workforce—how to ensure that workers of various ages, temporary workers, and multilingual workforces are working safely, even on the first day of work. cont'd bottom on next page
Sold on Sustainability
Sustainability is part of Grainger's corporate social responsibility commitment, and it increasingly important to the company's customers.