Solid Waste

Growing responsibly compels us to constantly seek improvements in the design, manufacture, and delivery of our products. So P&G has established a Global Integrated Solid Waste Management Team made up of its experts around the world.

A Partner in the Journey

In 1995, P&G scientists first published Integrated Solid Waste Management: A Life Cycle Inventory, a book based on their experience working with governmental agencies, academia, environmental and consumer organizations, and other industry partners in this area. It voiced support for practical solutions, such as the benefits of recycling and energy recovery, ways to implement curbside collection for recovering recyclables, and ways to compost biodegradable materials.

Packaging Progress

We continually look for opportunities to reduce packaging while maintaining consumer needs and product integrity—an effort that forms the cornerstone of our solid waste efforts. We have packaging sustainability experts working on every category of the business and they look at packaging efforts systemically. Since 2006, improvements made company-wide resulted in 136,000 metric tons of packaging material avoidance. We are also shifting some materials to renewable sources, with several efforts under way.

Integrated Waste Management (IWM)

We support IWM—a system which combines waste streams, waste collection, treatment and disposal methods, with the objective of achieving overall environmental benefits, economic optimization and societal acceptability. This will lead to a practical waste management system for any specific regions.

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)

We do not support EPR, which shifts the responsibility for waste management solely to manufacturers of products. We believe that all societal groups need to support solid waste management and play their role to reach a successful Sustainable Waste Management.