What Matters Most

By Nicole Koharik, GOJO Corporate Communications Director
Oct 27, 2016 3:45 PM ET

The GOJO Purpose, Saving Lives and Making Life Better Through Well-Being Solutions, inspires our deep commitment to sustainability. We see a tremendous opportunity to connect people with better health for a safer, brighter future and a better world—this is what matters most.

Living our Purpose allows us to have a positive impact on public health and the world in which we live, each and every day. It drives us to find new ways to create Sustainable Value through innovative solutions—solutions that bring social, environmental and economic value for all GOJO stakeholders. Each year, we share how we are creating Sustainable Value through our Sustainability Report.

As a privately held family business, we are not expected to report on our sustainability progress, but we believe it is important to keep our stakeholders informed—both so they can see our goals in action and understand and engage in our work going forward. We openly share our practices, learnings and the challenges we have encountered along the way.

What Matters Most – GOJO 2015/2016 Sustainability Report

We recently launched our fifth report, What Matters Most, which focuses on our sustainability progress throughout 2015 and into early 2016. It also highlights our progress against our 2015 operational impact goals and the material topics that informed the GOJO 2020 Sustainable Value Strategies and Goals.

This latest sustainability report is our first report developed in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework. This report features stories that bring to life the metrics and show how GOJO team members are advancing social, environmental and economic sustainability results.

The report also focuses on the materiality topics GOJO stakeholders identified in the company’s 2015 Materiality Assessment and how engaging stakeholders through this process informed the next round of enterprise sustainability goals.

The report cites the following accomplishments:

2015 Goals and Performance – In 2010, GOJO set goals to reduce our operational impacts. At the end of 2015, we exceeded our 2015 targets, and reduced water usage by 51 percent, greenhouse gas emissions by 46 percent and solid waste generated by 47 percent.

2020 Sustainable Value Strategies and Goals – The following are the 2020 strategies and goals we announced in December 2015 at the10th Annual BizNGO-Chemical Footprint Project Conference. This report details these goals and the strides GOJO is making to implement and achieve them.

  • Innovate to Create Sustainable Value – GOJO will reduce its Chemical Footprint by 50 percent; establish and maintain an industry-leading sustainable chemistry policy; double global sales from products with third-party certifications; and reduce packaging material by 15 percent.
  • Elevate Public Health and Well-Being – The company’s long-term social sustainability goal is to bring well-being to one billion people every day. GOJO will work towards achieving this goal while striving to be the most recognized advocate for well-being through hygiene in our industry.
  • Steward a Thriving Environment – GOJO will recover and either reuse or recycle 50 percent of dispenser materials from the value chain; migrate 90 percent of GOJO Strategic, Preferred and Collaborative suppliers to meet GOJO Sustainable Value Responsible Sourcing Criteria; and power its distribution operations by renewable energy.
  • Foster a Culture of Sustainable Value –  Continue to inspire team members to act in ways that deliver Sustainable Value through Sustainable Ways of Working (SWOW℠) with positive impact for GOJO, its team members and the communities in which we live and work. All of GOJO core processes will be infused with SWOW, which brings sustainability strategies to everything we do, and all GOJO team members will be engaged in SWOW. 

I invite you to not only learn more about our sustainability progress and story in our latest Sustainability Report, but also to share with us your feedback on this year’s report via email at SWOW@GOJO.com