KCP Launches Recycle Program

Kimberly-Clark Professional (KCP) has launched an initiative across EMEA to recycle single-use cleanroom and laboratory gloves and garments following a successful launch in the US earlier this year. Known as RightCycle, the program enables disposal of previously hard-to-recycle garments such as coveralls, gloves, hoods, boot covers, and hairnets in a sustainable manner. Used items are placed in a RightCycle collection box or the operators’ own boxes and assembled onto pallets for collection by KCP program partner, TerraCycle. The used garments that have been collected are turned into raw materials to create eco-friendly consumer products such as plastic chairs.

The program, initially launched in the UK and Germany as a one-year pilot scheme, is the first large-scale recycling solution for this type of waste. Companies can now reduce landfill waste streams and enhance their sustainability efforts.

Ruud Sleumer, customer marketing manager at KCP, said in a press release that the RightCycle program offers cleanroom and laboratory operators to achieve their solid waste reduction goals, while making workplaces healthier, safer, and more productive.

The RightCycle program supports the ‘Planet’ pillar of the three-pronged Kimberly-Clark Corporation Sustainability 2015 vision, which also encompasses ‘People’ and ‘Products’. Under each of the three pillars, the company is working to make a difference in sustainability that could potentially affect the lives of millions of people for the better.