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How DowCorning complies with global packaging regulations and creates its packaging waste reports

As part of a series of SAP sponsored sustainability customer reference interviews, I talked to Dirk Krúger of Dow Corning about how they manage to stay compliant with the many and constantly changing regulations around packaging, production of packaging waste reports and transportation of dangerous goods. This proved very challenging for them in the past but since the rollout of SAP Recycling Administration they have reduced the time to create their packaging waste reports by as much as two months per report.

Check out the interview above and the transcription below to learn more.

Tom Raftery: Hi everyone! Welcome to The GreenMonk TV Sustainability Customer Reference Series, sponsored by SAP. With me is Dirk Krüger from Dow Corning. Dirk, can you start off by telling me first of all a little bit about Dow Corning itself, and then your role within the organization?

Dirk Krüger: Yeah, Dow Corning is a global leader in silicon based technology and working as a global company, we serve, I think, more than 25000 customers worldwide with more than 7000 products. I am working a packaging engineer in the International Trade Compliance team, which is part of the logistics organization in Dow Corning, making sure that Dow Corning complies with all the regulations worldwide on packaging, transportation of dangerous goods, imports and export, documentation.

Tom Raftery: Okay. You mentioned legislation, that your job involves compliance with legislation?

Dirk Krüger: Yeah.

Tom Raftery: What kinds of legislation do you have to comply with?

Dirk Krüger: Yeah. First you have to select the right packaging that is compliant with requirements of the — the requirements for our regulated products. So for flammable liquid, we use stronger packaging, and for non-dangerous goods, this compliance for the regulations and packaging wastes, needs also to be disposed off.

Tom Raftery: What kind of challenges do you meet in your role in Dow Corning and how is SAP helping you overcome those?

Dirk Krüger: More and more of regulations around to products, product responsibility regulations increase globally, and so, therefore we use SAP recycling administration to be in compliance with the regulations by creating the packaging waste reports for the product we put on the marketing.

Tom Raftery: So, what’s a packaging waste report?

Dirk Krüger: In the packaging waste reports we have to summarize so much material of plastic glass, steel, you put on the markets to sell your products in Europe, so every company in Europe has its own reporting. Formula, you have to fill out. It took about between 2 weeks and 2 month to create such a report, depending on the country.

Tom Raftery: Okay.

Dirk Krüger: Okay. And now it’s running overnight and the report is complete.

Tom Raftery: And finally what are your plans for the SAP solution going forward?

Dirk Krüger: To expand the usage to really use it in every country we sell our products, because currently we are just reporting for the European countries, but in Asia for example, we have got more and more regulations in place, like, also for Taiwan. So we will expand the usage of recycling administration.

Tom Raftery: Dirk, that’s been great! Thanks million for talking to us today.

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GreenMonk Sustainability Customer Reference series – Kimberly-Clark

This is the second video in my Sustainability Customer Reference series project – it involves my going to SAP customers and interviewing them about the sustainability solutions they have implemented. The first SAP customer I visited was AkzoNobel in Sweden. In this second video, I talk to Kimberly-Clark’s Barry Podd.

Here’s a transcription of our conversation:

Tom Raftery: Hi everyone, welcome to the GreenMonk Sustainability Customer Reference Series, sponsored by SAP. With me I have Barry Podd from Kimberly-Clark. Barry can you tell me a little bit about your role in Kimberly-Clark and also a little bit about Kimberly-Clark itself?

Barry Podd: My role within Kimberly-Clark includes looking after chemicals legislation globally for the company. And this has become more important for Kimberly-Clark over the last few years by the way the chemical legislation has been written, including companies who use chemicals, rather than manufacture them.

To talk about Kimberly-Clark, it’s a very large company, of course. We have a professional business, and we also have a consumer business. And it is probably the consumer business that is best known.

Products that we make are facial tissues. Kleenex is the big brand name in that area. Also our diapers, Huggies is the big brand name in that area. And we also make things like toilet tissue and Andrex and Scottex are probably the names that people know best in that area.

Tom Raftery: What impact has the changing legislation had on Kimberly-Clark?

Barry Podd: We have to do things like tracking the amount of chemicals we import as a global manufacturer from outside the European Union. Also, as far as our articles go, we’re very fortunate, we don’t tend to use hazardous chemicals in our products because of the nature of them, but that doesn’t help us under the legislation. We still have to track and know that we do not have those hazardous chemicals in our products.

Tom Raftery: And you’ve recently rolled out the SAP Product Safety Solution, what benefits do you see that having Kimberly-Clark?

Barry Podd: It will bring benefits in three areas. It will be fully integrated with the SAP software we already have, so a lot of the information we need is already in there and we’ll be able to bring it in and use it to the benefit of ensuring compliance with the legislation.

We still have a lot of data to collect from our raw materials suppliers, and also curiously from our customers on how they use the products we supply them with and SAP will help us in a big way to do that.

And then the third area that it will help us, it will help us store the information that we need to demonstrate that we fully comply with the legislation available to us in Europe. And there, that is one of the really big pluses of the SAP software solution.

Tom Raftery: And finally, what are your plans for the solution, now that you have it installed?

Barry Podd: Well, we’ve got big plans. Not only are we going to use it to ensure compliance with chemicals legislation, and it will be chemicals legislation around the world, but we’re also going to use it to produce our safety data sheets. One thing that we haven’t discussed at the moment is the legislation behind safety data sheets is changing, and they will have to include a great deal more information than hitherto has been the case. And we have decided to bring that now in-house, because that’s the best way for Kimberly-Clark to ensure that we comply with that legislation as well.

Tom Raftery: Barry that’s been great, thanks a million for talking to us today.

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GreenMonk Energy and Sustainability post for 22nd Feb

greenmonktv on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

We had a great Energy and Sustainability show today – in case you were unable to make it, I recorded the video (above) and the chatstream (below):

Tom Raftery :
Kicking off the show in a sec

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100219123517.htm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/18/worlds-top-firms-environmental-damage

http://greenmonk.net/do-risk-and-compliance-have-a-part-to-play-in-reducing-pollution/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/17/amazon-hydrocarbon-boom

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61L2ZT20100222

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/22/jonathan-safran-foer-cows-beef

http://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_oliver.html?awesm=on.ted.com_886s

http://www.triplepundit.com/2010/02/seriously-where-does-our-food-come-from/

http://www.dukeorganic.co.uk/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7236011/UN-global-warming-data-skewed-by-heat-from-planes-and-buildings.html

http://www.smallbusinesseurope.org/en/news1610.html

http://www.smartmeters.com/the-news/823-meters-and-more-looks-to-create-global-standards.html

http://www.grist.org/article/2010-02-19-all-electric-plug-in-project-seeks-to-make-the-family-car-a-cash/

http://www.greenenergyscheme.org/index.php?page=suppliers/tariffs

http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20100219/NEWS02/2190351/1006/NEWS

http://www.environmentalleader.com/2010/02/17/nike-starbucks-lead-push-in-oregon-for-clean-energy-economy/

http://www.fastcompany.com/1552709/a-facebook-petition-to-stop-facebook-from-powering-its-data-center-with-coal

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100222/sc_afp/uncitesspeciestunajapan

http://www.marcgunther.com/2010/02/21/nukes-why-small-is-beautiful/

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61L1WB20100222

http://www.environmentalleader.com/2010/02/18/j-p-morgan-develops-guide-for-a-paperless-treasury-operation/

http://www.triplepundit.com/2010/02/government-aid-to-flow-into-great-lakes-helping-fight-asian-carp/

http://www.avaaz.org/en/robin_hood/

?17?:?10
cgarvey :

Cheers Tom .. I’m still stuck back at the smart meters link .. loads of links to digest. Ta!

?17?:?10
raphael :

thanks tom

?17?:?10
Tom Raftery :

Thanks everyone, as always, Tom