Innovation

Currently, 2 billion people around the world lack access to basic sanitation, which means that children die from preventable diseases, women do not have a safe place to relieve themselves, and girls miss school because they are unable to safely manage their periods. Additionally, 785 million – or 1 in 10 – do not have clean water close to home. Kimberly-Clark’s essential products give people greater control over their lives, and they have an inherent connection to sanitation. Kimberly-Clark is involved with several initiatives to help tackle the issues surrounding access to sanitation, which also impacts menstrual hygiene.

Kimberly-Clark and several of its brands, including Andrex, Neve, Scott, Suave, and Baby Soft, responded to the global sanitation crisis and have engaged consumers through the 'Toilets Change Lives program over the last six years. Supported by the Kimberly-Clark Foundation, the company launched the program in 2014 initially with its Andrex brand, and it has since provided critical resources in 12 countries and impacted 5 million lives.

Last fall, Kimberly-Clark and its Kotex brand launched the Women in the Sanitation Economy Innovation Lab in partnership with the Toilet Board Coalition, which it co-founded in 2014. This initiative cultivates and catalyzes early-stage ideas and businesses within the sanitation economy that are either women-led and/or women's health-focused. The Innovation Lab initiative features five women-led businesses from Kenya, the U.S., and the UK and expands the reach of the Toilet Board Coalition's current Sanitation Economy Accelerator Program. Kimberly-Clark is providing mentorship from its employees around the globe to support these female entrepreneurs as they aim to tackle some of their unique business challenges and positively contribute to some of the world's most pressing sanitation issues.

Inspiration

As the chief scientist and technical vice president at Kimberly-Clark, Pete Dulcamara combines the consumer insights of today with predictive data, trends, and habits of the future to uncover new opportunities and innovation as he helps determine what’s next for Kimberly-Clark. Pete is a strong proponent of humanity-centric innovation, which aims to solve the biggest challenges facing humanity, such as taking urgent action on climate change, ending poverty, and eradicating infection and disease, in an economically and environmentally viable way.

Pete wants to help create businesses that improve people’s lives, and he said that his role at Kimberly-Clark provides him with an opportunity to leverage science and technology to make an impact that extends far beyond profit margins – with the massively transformative purpose to provide essentials for a better life to every single person on earth.

Pete explained that care – for the company’s employees, consumers, communities, and planet – underlies everything that he and his colleagues do at Kimberly-Clark. That’s reflected in Kimberly-Clark’s work to help address some of the most pressing issues facing humanity, and this includes sanitation issues in underserved communities. Pete is passionate about making sure that Kimberly-Clark helps local entrepreneurs all around the world to solve the global sanitation crisis.

Whenever Pete meets with his colleagues at Kimberly-Clark, he asks, ‘Who wants to be a billionaire?’ Pete says that everyone has an opportunity to become billionaires if we stop defining billionaires as someone who accumulates a billion dollars and instead defines it as someone who helps a billion people.

Pete emphasizes the need to "solve the biggest problems of humanity" and how he must ask himself every day, "what are the world's biggest needs?" Pete has a strong desire to achieve "gender equality, and quite frankly social justice by 2030, or even sooner." There is nothing we can't accomplish when we work together. Pete points out that we made it to the moon in the 1960s in less than a decade - we must use the same determination to solve people's greatest problems today.

Overall impact

Kimberly-Clark has an incredible opportunity to leverage its expertise and advocate for societal changes that positively impact the trajectory of people’s lives, and the company wants to identify and eliminate the root cause of a problem and implement long-term and sustainable systemic change. As Pete explained when discussing access to sanitation, installing a toilet in a community fundamentally changes the lives of everyone who lives in that community. Children can then continue their education, secure fulfilling jobs, support their families, and strengthen their communities.

As Kimberly-Clark continues to address access to essentials like water, sanitation, and hygiene while at the same time breaking down barriers for women, it’s easy to see that we can all become billionaires if we redefine the meaning and approach it from a societal impact perspective.

Business benefit

Sustainability is at the heart of Kimberly-Clark’s business strategy, and by 2030, the company aspires to advance the well-being of 1 billion people in underserved communities through social programs and reduce its environmental footprint by half. The company’s focus on helping to solve the global sanitation crisis plays a key role in its global ambition.

From diapers and wipes to menstrual pads, to toilet paper and adult incontinence products, Kimberly-Clark’s products reach consumers at every stage of their lives. Kimberly-Clark understands its responsibility to make a positive contribution to the people that it serves around the globe as it continues to innovate its products and deliver essentials for a better life, and the company’s sustainable practices – brought to life through programs like Toilets Change Lives and the Women in the Sanitation Economy Innovation Lab – support a healthy planet and build stronger communities to ensure that its business thrives for decades and generations to come.

Social and environmental benefit

Kimberly-Clark delivers essentials for a better life to 1/4 of the world’s population every day, yet millions around the world still lack access to basic products and solutions that could dramatically improve their quality of life – either because they can’t access or afford them, or because of associated social stigmas. Meeting these unmet societal needs is the foundation for the company’s ambition to advance the well-being of 1 billion people in vulnerable and underserved communities.

Kimberly-Clark understands that a strong and enduring focus on safeguarding natural systems is just as essential to helping people live a better life, and the company is focused on the areas where it can make the biggest difference – climate, forests, water, and plastics. As part of its 2030 sustainability strategy, Kimberly-Clark made a commitment to reduce its plastics, water, and natural forests footprints by 50 percent. The company has a zero-waste manufacturing mindset to ensure that it does not send product and packaging material to community landfills, and the company is currently an industry leader with a diversion rate of 96%.

Additionally, the company plans to reduce by 2030 its absolute Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 50 percent and Scope 3 emissions from purchased goods and services and end of life treatment of sold products by 20 percent. Both targets have a 2015 base year.

Interview

Peter Dulcamara, Chief Scientist & Technical Vice President