P&G and EPA Forge New Agreement

The Procter & Gamble Company and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) National Risk Management Research Laboratory (NRMRL) signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) to develop new tools to optimize sustainability improvements in manufacturing facilities, and their associated supply chains.

These improvements will directly address the endpoints of P&G’s long-term environmental sustainability vision, announced in September of 2010. This vision includes:

1. Powering its plants with 100% renewable energy;

2. Using 100% renewable materials or recyclate for all its products and packaging;

3. Having zero consumer or manufacturing waste going to landfills; and

4. Designing products that delight consumers while maximizing the conservation of resources.

In order to meet this commitment, new methods and tools are needed to help optimize design and decision-making across a wide range of operations and supply choices, as well as various environmental sustainability measures. The EPA has developed a comprehensive list of sustainability metrics and performance indicators that can be used to quantify sustainability in a manufacturing and supply chain context, while P&G has a diverse set of manufacturing operations and supply chains that can be leveraged to optimize how such metrics are used to guide improvement choices. The work under this CRADA will leverage P&G’s manufacturing and supply chain knowledge with the EPA’s work on metrics to develop a modeling and assessment tool that can be used to assess future product design, material sourcing, and manufacturing options.