Kingsford: Smaller Environmental Footprint, Bigger Value
By David Creamer, manager – Environmental Sustainability at Clorox
As the leading U.S. charcoal brand, the Kingsford® name is synonymous with grilling. Thanks to continued innovations in our manufacturing processes, which enable us to further reduce our environmental footprint, the brand is also becoming synonymous with sustainable manufacturing.
Reducing the impact of manufacturing
As a business, we’re reducing our operational impact in a variety of ways. We’re minimizing greenhouse gas emissions through the use of dust collectors, enclosed conveyors and storage tanks in addition to industry-leading emissions controls. Our manufacturing operations also reuse the energy created by the wood-charring process, turning it into heat to dry our finished charcoal briquets and power our steam generators. Recovered dust and broken briquets are also recycled back into the manufacturing process, as is water.
Shrinking our environmental footprint
In recent years, we’ve also worked to shrink our environmental footprint while adding value for our consumers.
For example, the ingredients in our briquets come primarily from renewable resources. Our Kingsford facilities purchase waste wood for charcoal production, turning what would otherwise be discarded into a useful product.
Additionally, charcoal can be very heavy to ship and contributes to a large transportation footprint. Innovations like grooves in the briquets have allowed us to create a lighter product. We subsequently lightened the briquets even more by adding internal air pockets that increase air flow and speed up lighting time.
Such innovation has allowed us to reduce our transportation footprint by more than 1 million miles per year and use 7 percent less material in our product while improving the product performance and consumer experience.
Whether it’s operational or product sustainability improvements, the Kingsford business proves that minimizing our footprint while delivering value to the consumer makes good business sense.
