Glad R&D Cracks Formula for Zero Waste to Landfill

By Sarah Kuhl

The Glad R&D facility in Willowbrook, Illinois was the seventh Clorox site to achieve Zero-Waste-to-Landfill status — a feat it accomplished just before our Glad manufacturing plant in Amherst, Virginia, was also certified zero waste to landfill. It’s the first Clorox R&D facility to do so, and now all of our Glad locations in North America are certified zero waste to landfill.

With the addition of the Willowbrook and Amherst sites, Clorox now has eight zero-waste-to-landfill sites globally.

Over 94 percent of the Willowbrook’s waste is recycled. The remaining 6 percent goes to a waste-to-energy incineration facility.

The Willowbrook Green Team helped lead the site to zero waste. The 6 percent of material that can’t be recycled will go to a waste-to-energy incineration facility.

The Willowbrook team worked hard to educate employees on how to recycle correctly, from conducting “Green Trivia” surveys to placing several “I don’t know where my trash goes” bins around the building as people learned the dos and don’ts of recycling.

These educational efforts paid off during a successful final dumpster dive.

Zero-waste-to-landfill is one of the highest and most desirable eco-certifications we have at Clorox, and it’s essential to meeting our 2020 Strategy sustainability goal of having 10 zero waste sites by 2020.

Congratulations and thank you to the Willowbrook Green Team – Wayne Bulger, Ryan Haney, Sarah Kuhl, Rick Miller, Dan Musgrove, Cheryl Turner – and to the entire Willowbrook site for this accomplishment!

An “I Don’t Know Bin” helped Willowbrook employees learn some of the finer points of how to recycle correctly.