Top manufacturing supply chains: Colgate-Palmolive.
Founded: 1806
Website: Colgate-Palmolive
Colgate-Palmolive’s supply chain is ahead of the curve. It leverages customer segmentation strategies and heavy investment in advanced digital technologies. This has helped the company grow, and also become more resilient, agile and efficient.
Colgate is also committed to reducing its impact on the environment and openly shares its innovations with third parties, such as its recyclable plastic tube – a world first.
Colgate-Palmolive Chief Supply Chain Officer, Mike Corbo, says: “We measure everything – how much electricity and water we use, and how much waste we generate, and then we come up with innovative ways to reduce usage.”
He adds: “I’m very proud of the fact that we’ve taken on a zero-waste-to-landfills initiative in our manufacturing operation. We have it certified externally and will soon have all 45 plants certified.”
The certification is from TRUE Zero Waste, a zero-waste certification program designed to measure, improve and recognise zero waste performance.
“You’d be surprised at how we achieved this,” says Corbo. “It sounds kind of silly but we started pretty much by doing dumpster dives – literally rifling through what we were putting in the waste stream.”
”We began to separate it all, and started asking questions. Why is this or that not in the product? Why isn’t this being recycled? What exactly is our waste stream? This is where you have to start. It takes years and it takes focus. But money and resources we were throwing out in materials doesn’t get thrown out anymore. It gets reused, repurposed, or put back into the product.”
