Sunshine Scherer and Nicole Koharik - GOJO

Nominator: Scott Levin, GOJO

How has the nominee implemented sustainable business practices in his or her business or organization and what are the triple bottom line benefits (people, planet, prosperity) of the nominee's work?

Nicole Koharik and Sunshine Scherer both champion sustainability throughout the GOJO enterprise. Nicole, as our global sustainability senior marketing manager, focuses on market-facing opportunities to create sustainable value. She has assumed a position of passionate leadership in helping to establish and advance our enterprise-wide sustainability goals and launch products that reflect this commitment. Sunshine, with an operational focus, finds sustainable value in our supply chain and implements changes in the way we work that make positive impacts on the environment. Together, they are a powerful force for embedding sustainability principles in our company and industry. In establishing our Sustainability Enterprise Team, Nicole led development of the GOJO sustainability policy and the business plan that serves as our road map forward, and played a key role in our successful launch of the world’s first green certified instant hand sanitizer. Through steady determination and collaboration with many different internal and external stakeholders, Nicole is advancing social sustainability through several initiatives that enhance quality of life and reduce risks to health and well-being. After a university study proved the vulnerability of refillable bulk soap dispensers to bacterial contamination, she led the development of a whole-systems strategy to raise industry awareness of the issue and promote the use of a safe alternative that protects the health of hand washers. Her response included speaking engagements before industry groups to call attention to this little-known health risk. Nicole is also initiating action to help GOJO deliver social sustainability results to the world’s neediest. She recently reviewed the findings of a study in South America that proved the effectiveness of hand sanitizer in reducing life-threatening health risks to children in parts of the world with limited access to clean water. Nicole is now working to leverage those findings to establish a program that will bring hand hygiene to children in water-restricted areas of developing nations. As a key member of our Sustainability Enterprise Team, Sunshine’s most critical responsibilities involve implementing changes in production practices to significantly reduce our environmental footprint. She began to meet these challenges by designing and implementing an Environmental Management System (EMS). This required an incredibly detailed action plan for impactful change, specifically to meet our top three sustainability goals by 2015: • Reduce water use throughout our operation by 30 percent relative to our 2010 per-use rate. • Reduce solid waste generation by 25% throughout the organization relative to the 2010 per-product use rate. • Reduce greenhouse gases (GHG) by five percent relative to the 2010 per use rate. Sunshine has driven significant progress toward each of these goals. For instance, the smart investments we’ve made to reduce water usage include modifications to our water osmosis system that improve our efficiency and send less water down the drain. For cleaning our mix tanks we now use high pressure equipment that cleans more efficiently and uses less water. We also successfully reduced cycle time on our bucket and drum washer. This last modification alone saves GOJO more than 200,000 gallons of water per month. “Landfill avoidance” is the goal of the solid waste reduction strategy implemented by Sunshine and her team. In this effort, she’s recruited the participation of companies in other industries that have become valued collaboration partners. One company, for instance, uses our solid waste as a fuel for cement kilns. Another repurposes our scrap soap and hand sanitizer for use as industrial equipment wash, industrial floor wash, automobile wheel, dashboard and leather cleaner and other industrial cleaning applications. In all, 80 percent of the soap we previously earmarked for landfill disposal has been diverted for other highly worthwhile purposes. Thanks to Sunshine’s leadership in this area, GOJO has been able to divert 86 percent of all of our company’s waste from landfills in just a few short years. In the process, Sunshine helped make it possible for GOJO to donate more than 176 tons of scrap plastic for conversion to more than 320 playgrounds. This win-win move advanced social and environmental sustainability goals by making a positive impact on the planet and the well-being of people. While the GOJO production process does not result in significant greenhouse gases, Sunshine has initiated actions here as well. She led efforts to install more efficient T8 lighting at our production facilities. This lighting expends 75 percent less energy than standard incandescent lighting. Sunshine is also helping us undergo an energy audit that will lead to additional efficiencies. Meanwhile, Nicole drove development of the world’s first green certification standard for the hand sanitizer product category. Springing from this effort, GOJO was able to launch in North America the world’s first green certified instant hand sanitizer and the first green certified bundle of soaps and hand sanitizers. Next, she helped expand our sustainability presence internationally by leading GOJO in meeting (and in some cases helping establish) certification standards for soap and/or hand sanitizer in the European Union, Australia and Brazil. Nicole’s influence resulted in our latest green-certified products being among the first featured products of the new USDA Bio-Based Product Label by meeting the certification requirements for bio-based content. As a result, GOJO has established a comprehensive global portfolio of green certified soaps, hand sanitizer and body wash products that are environmentally responsible while also meeting our social sustainability goals in promoting health and well-being. In other words, these products uplift people and the planet. To embed sustainability right into the GOJO product design process, Nicole championed adoption and implementation of Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). This systematic evaluation of our product design and production process focuses on understanding and reducing environmental and human health impacts from product concept through the end of its useful life. Working collaboratively in this effort with EcoForm, a leading sustainability consulting firm, Nicole helped design a training program to educate GOJO employees on the principles of life cycle product design. The new process has enabled us to benchmark the environmental footprint of existing GOJO dispensers and use that information to significantly improve the sustainability profile of our newest systems. LCA principles are now a standard part of new product development at GOJO. Nicole and Sunshine have both helped prove that, in addition to benefitting people and the planet, sustainability can also drive bottom-line results. Sunshine’s efforts have helped us reduce water bills and work in more cost-efficient and environmentally responsible ways. Nicole helped us successfully enter the green cleaning market and immediately achieve a position of industry leadership. Our ever-expanding and fast-growing sustainable product line has proven to be highly popular with customers and helped us build prosperity for our company, our employees and stakeholders.

How does the nominee actively participate in the sustainability community? How do they collaborate and share their knowledge with others?

Nicole has made countless valuable contacts with thought leaders and experts in the sustainability community at regional, national and global levels. This includes networking and collaboration with the U.S. Green Building Council, The Healthy Schools Campaign and the relationships she’s nurtured with many of the world’s leading third-party environmental certification organizations. She spearheaded our company’s membership in and involvement with E4S and regularly attends sustainability conferences and workshops to connect with stakeholders. Sunshine could not have succeeded as she has without the extensive network of sustainability partners she’s established. Chemtron Corporation, Vexor Technology and g2 revolution are among our partners in recycling and reusing production-related waste that might otherwise be clogging landfills. She too is involved with E4S.

How has the nominee inspired you to implement sustainable business practices? What is your relationship with the nominee: supervisor, employee, peer, father, friend or other.

As chief financial officer and chief administrative vice president at GOJO, I sponsor the Sustainability Enterprise Team. In my working relationship with Sunshine and Nicole, I’ve been very impressed with their accomplishments. Nicole’s vision is clear and her depth of knowledge on the subject is impressive. She’s made numerous critical contacts in sustainability circles and gained a high level of credibility with her peers and earned their respect. Her passion for the subject is an inspiration to all of us. It’s impossible not to think of the sustainability consequences of every action we take here at GOJO when we have such an involved champion as Nicole Koharik. Sunshine has proven to be inspirational in finding creative ways to recycle, reuse and repurpose – and in constantly helping us improve how we work. I’ve discovered through my association with Sunshine that there’s always a more creative and sustainable way of doing things, and that the argument, “this is the way it’s always been done,” is simply no excuse for continuing policies and practices that pose threats against people and the planet.

How can someone else translate the success of the nominee? Is the work of the nominee an example or model that others can follow?

Nicole leads by example. She invites collaboration and understands that working sustainably requires whole-system thinking and engagement. As a result, she establishes cross-functional teams to reach broadly and deeply throughout our organization. She also welcomes the opportunity to share her experience and expertise. For instance, she was recently interviewed on global sustainability trends by the Copenhagen-based global procurement leader of a large building services contractor for his master’s thesis. She’s authored an instructive article for a business publication about lessons learning on the GOJO sustainability journey. She’s also been interviewed by industry journalists and by a Cleveland State University College of Business instructor conducting research on sustainability. Sunshine and her team establish benchmarks and use precise metrics to gauge their accomplishments. She sets goals and follows carefully devised strategies for gaining measurable results. In that way, Sunshine’s pattern of success can be followed and her gains replicated elsewhere – but only through persistent effort and a lot of hard work!