Here at ACI, we have challenged our members to align their corporate climate strategy and targets with the 1.5°C ambition, which strives to reach net-zero global emissions by 2050. Across the cleaning products industry, companies are taking bold action to limit the global average temperature rise to less than 1.5°C.
Milliken & Company has stepped up to the challenge. ACI spoke with Milliken's Deidre Sandrock, Director of Sustainability and Innovation, and Cindy Boiter, EVP and President, to learn how they are using systems approaches to drive sustainability efforts.
ACI: Milliken has committed to net-zero by 2050. What are some of the key commitments that will help you reach that goal?
Boiter: Back in 2018, Milliken set out to achieve 12 sustainability goals focusing on people, product, and planet by 2025. One of those goals was to reduce our scope 1 and scope 2 indexed greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 25% by 2025. In 2022, we met this goal by successfully implementing emission reduction projects, expanding renewable energy, and utilizing carbon credits. But we realized we can and should be doing more.
We began exploring what a net-zero commitment would look like for us as a diversified global manufacturer. Being a science-driven company, we knew we wanted to follow the best available climate science with the precision and rigor we expect of our own products and processes. The U.N.-backed Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) offered us a way forward— a best-in-class global initiative helping organizations set emission reduction targets consistent with climate science and the Paris Agreement.
Milliken’s approved near- and long-term targets in line with the Net-Zero Standard have us reaching net-zero across our value chain by 2050 from a 2018 base year. These targets cover all categories of scope 1, scope 2, and scope 3 emissions, meaning we’ll have to reach across our value chain and collaborate with partners, suppliers, and customers to meet these targets.
By 2030, we are aiming to reduce absolute scope 1 and scope 2 emissions by 50.4% and reduce absolute scope 3 emissions by 30%, and we are well on our way. But this is only part of the work. Striving toward net-zero by 2050 will mean pulling our collective resources as a materials science expert, as well as engaging stakeholders across our value chain. We recognize achieving our long-term targets will be a challenging task and while we don't have all the answers, we're committed to being a part of the solution.
ACI: What are some actions Milliken has already taken to reduce your carbon footprint?
Boiter: At Milliken, our sustainability efforts reflect our company values—commitments to integrity, excellence, innovation, people, and, of course, sustainability. Our decisions and solutions are driven by the desire to make a positive impact on the world for generations to come. No matter the problem we are looking to solve, whether it’s a customer ask or a process need, we approach it with our values in mind.
To reduce our operational carbon footprint, we wanted to implement a solution that would dramatically alter our energy demands in a way that benefited our community. From 1964 until 2021, one of our largest manufacturing sites relied on coal for steam generation. To transition to a coal-free operation, Milliken invested $25 million in cogeneration capabilities that produce both steam and electricity.
This project eliminated coal as the site's primary steam fuel source, accounting for an enterprise-wide 9.2% emission reduction and a 4.7% waste reduction while achieving a 20% increase in energy efficiency. This investment now powers two Milliken plants, including one of Milliken’s largest chemical plants.
ACI: What role does packaging circularity play in climate change?
Sandrock: Addressing circularity is a big part of our sustainability efforts at Milliken—in fact, advancing circularity in plastics is one of our 2025 Sustainability Goals as packaging itself can affect the entire life cycle of a product.
Circularity requires us to embrace reducing, reusing, and recycling principles. It's easy to overly focus on recycling, and while that is critical to defining packaging circularity, we must balance it with reduction and reuse considerations.
We want to help drive an industry shift from "take-make-dispose" to a more circular mindset where we can mitigate packaging's environmental impact from a resource management and consumption standpoint.
Just what does this look like in practice? It's a holistic approach:
- Consider resource utilization from the beginning. Resource efficiencies or even reductions are possible if we start the conversations early in the process.
- Reduce emissions wherever you can. Emissions savings can be realized throughout the value chain by managing both the manufacturing process and the sourcing of materials, which ultimately translates into larger GHG reductions.
- Design with sustainability in mind. Whether it is designing more durable packaging for reduction and reuse, sourcing additive solutions that can enhance packaging recyclability, or enabling more recycled content, there are many opportunities to create more sustainable packaging.
ACI: What role does packaging play in the safe transportation and use of cleaning products?
Sandrock: In our opinion, packaging is the unsung contributor of the cleaning industry. It is incredibly important to the overall viability and usability of cleaning products. It serves as a protective barrier to ensure safe product transport and storage, it helps significantly reduce spillage or accidental exposure, it provides crucial information and instructions, and finally, it helps prevent misuse. Completely eliminating packaging isn’t something we foresee as possible.
So, as we look to mitigate the impact of packaging, we must be thoughtful about what we can reduce and what is required to ensure the product is transported, stored, and used appropriately. We see this role as the essential role of packaging. While it cannot go away, there are a lot of opportunities to enhance the sustainability and effectiveness of cleaning product packaging. Things like incorporating more recycled content, sourcing sustainable materials, and intentionally designing sustainable packaging can help create more sustainable packaging that maintains critical performance parameters and ensures safety and regulatory compliance. It’s a question of pulling the right levers available to us.
ACI: We also have a goal for all cleaning product packaging to be circular. What is Milliken’s approach to drive circularity in packaging?
Boiter: As you can probably tell, Milliken firmly believes in utilizing scientific and systematic approaches to develop innovative solutions that drive sustainability. For circularity projects, we apply our collective resources—deep materials science expertise, diversified manufacturing capability, and consumer trend forecasting—to arrive at tangible ways that bolster circularity and decarbonization.
These tangible ways can take many shapes, but they all ladder up to designing with sustainability in mind. We collaborate with brands and the industry to redesign packaging and drive circularity in three overarching ways:
Enhancing Packaging Recyclability
- Our performance additives can simplify complex film structures in stand-up packaging and tubes to make them more recyclable.
- We offer additive solutions that encourage monomaterial packaging, which increases overall packaging recyclability.
Envisioning Reuse or Reduction Designs
- We routinely work with the industry to explore how packaging could function now and in the future.
Enabling More Recycled Content Use
- Our recycling additives help bring more recycled plastic content into the packaging mix, which allows brands and retailers to achieve their sustainability goals without sacrificing packaging performance or aesthetics.
- We align ourselves with our value chain and with the industry as a whole to ensure high-quality recycled material is available to plastic manufacturers.
No matter the packaging ask, our team can leverage a vast wheelhouse of manufacturing and sustainability excellence to develop the right packaging that achieves important customer, brand, and consumer metrics.
ACI: What are some of the partnerships that help enable Milliken’s goals around climate and circularity?
Boiter: We are fully invested in solving plastic circularity challenges together. Moving beyond the partnerships and collaborations with our customers to create ideal packaging, we also work to fund critical work that widens our impact scope.
Working with The Recycling Partnership, Milliken co-founded the Center for Sustainable Behavior and Impact in 2022, which conducts consumer research to help increase recycling rates. We also joined in The Recycling Partnership’s Polypropylene (PP) Recycling Coalition, a cross-industry effort that Milliken has supported since its launch two years ago. The coalition distributes grant money to help increase the recycling capacity for PP—building and expanding materials recovery facilities (MRF) to capture valuable PP.
We are also supporting emerging technology to great impact. Our partnership with PureCycle is working to create virgin-like recycled polypropylene (PP) resin using groundbreaking technology. This process separates color, odor, and contaminants from plastic waste feedstock, transforming it into ultra-pure recycled resin that expands the use of recycled PP beyond what is currently possible.
These are just a few of the many partnerships we engage in to help address the circularity of plastic packaging, and they highlight how we hope to contribute to plastic circularity discussion as a whole. It will take the entire value chain to address plastic circularity along with buy-in from stakeholders like business leaders, scientists, nonprofits, customers, and policymakers. For Milliken, we strive to contribute to the key priorities of waste collection and education, sorting, processing, conversion, and end-market development through our innovation portfolio, our manufacturing expertise, and our R&D capabilities.