Welcome to our series aimed at spotlighting the NLCRC members and partners.
Discover how these companies are addressing pressing challenges around environmental sustainability issues, such as energy, greenhouse gas emission reduction, packaging, product recyclability, and what inspires each of them to include lubricant packaging recovery and recycling into their ESG objectives and how they hope to make an impact in the lubricant value chain.
Visit on the web at Safety-Kleen and connect with Safety-Kleen on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Serving as the National Lubricant Container Recycling Coalition (NLCRC)’s collector and transportation partner for the lubricant containers in the Atlanta Lubricant Container Recycling Pilot, Safety-Kleen is no stranger to the NLCRC. As a project partner, Safety-Kleen has been fundamental in the execution of developing an end-to-end solution by collecting and recycling post-consumer lubricant containers from multiple sources, involving multiple locations in the Atlanta market, including select retail stores and auto care centers, instant oil change locations, commercial facilities, and a community waste collection center.
In addition to participating in the Atlanta Lubricant Container Recycling Pilot, for more than 50 years, Safety-Kleen has been the leading provider of environmental services to a diverse range of businesses. Learn more about Safety-Kleen’s commitment to sustainability.
What are your long-term sustainability goals, and how do they relate to lubricant packaging?
As part of our parent company, at Clean Harbors, we recognize that environmental, social and governance (ESG) excellence is foundational to our framework for success. The sustainability of our company adds long-term value to Clean Harbors for our employees, customers, and shareholders.
Our sustainability story is focused on both mitigating our resource consumption (environmental footprint) while also providing industries with a mechanism to minimize their cumulative impact and to achieve their own unique sustainability goals (environmental handprint). Everywhere industry meets environment, Clean Harbors is there providing responsible and sustainable waste solutions, environmental and industrial services to our customers that minimize environmental impacts and support their business needs. Annually we avoid through our sustainable customer solutions including used oil collection and recycling more than twice the emissions we generate as a company.
At Clean Harbors, our people are our greatest asset. We are committed to the safety and well-being of our more than 20,000 employees and strive to cultivate a culture of inclusion that values diverse perspectives across our global workforce. In 2022, we achieved a sub-one (<1.0) total recordable incident rate (TRIR) for the first time in our company’s history satisfying one of our nine forward-looking ESG goals for 2030.
Clean Harbors’ commitment to sustainability is reflected across the entire organization, including at the Board level and in our executive management team. As a global company, we are committed to demonstrating corporate social responsibility in limiting our environmental impact and providing sustainable solutions to our customers while engaging and supporting our local and global communities. Our company aligns with 7 distinct Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations Global Compact. We are focused on sustainable supply-chain management and IT security and cybersecurity to account for the challenges of an evolving global marketplace. We have established goals around Board diversity and management incentives tied to ESG criteria.
Lubricant and petroleum packaging have its challenges in the recycling system. As the nation’s largest re-refiner and recycler of used oil in North America, we collect and process over 200 million gallons of used motor oil annually, returning in 2022 more than 196 million gallons of new re-refined oil, lubricants, and byproducts back into the marketplace.
Our customers want an alternative to better manage their containers and Clean Harbors wants to be at the center of finding a sustainable solution for this challenge. As a company, we have committed to increased recycling as part of our forward-looking ESG goals. Specifically, to increase the recovery of key materials by 25% on a combined basis by 2030. In conjunction with the NLCRC, we are helping provide options to safely collect, store, and treat these materials on a post-consumer basis. Our collective goal is to ultimately have these containers recycled repeatedly – just as we do with waste oil in our re-refineries, which we can turn back into base oil and lubricants an infinite number of times.
How does your NLCRC membership help your company to meet your sustainability goals and commitments?
The NLCRC is committed to building a sustainable future for the recycling of plastic lubricant containers. As North America’s largest recycler of used oil and as a provider of sustainable and responsible waste solutions, Clean Harbors is positioned to support and advance the mission of the NLCRC to create a better system for the recycling of lubricant bottles and containers. Through a partnership with NLCRC, Clean Harbors can progress toward our commitment to increase our recycling operations and recovery by 25% on a combined basis by 2030. Further, continue to evolve as a company to meet customer and market demands and remain an innovative and dynamic waste service and used oil management provider.
What do you value most about the collaborative nature and your membership with NLCRC?"
We value the opportunity to work with everyone in the lubricant bottle supply chain all in one forum. With the NLCRC, we are able to collaborate with lubricant producers, retailers, plastic producers, and advanced recyclers. This gives us a great way to brainstorm and learn from each other’s business.
About NLCRC
The National Lubricant Container Recycling Coalition or “NLCRC” is an industry-led technical coalition established by a committed group of industry leaders in lubricant and associated plastic packaging manufacturing, focused on establishing solutions for post-consumer recovery and recycling of plastic lubricant containers.
NLCRC members include Berry Global, Castrol, Chevron, CKS Packaging Inc., Graham Packaging, Nexus Circular, Pennzoil - Quaker State Company, Petroleum Packaging Council, Plastipak Packaging, Safety-Kleen, and Valvoline. For more information, visit https://www.nationallcrc.com or connect with NLCRC on LinkedIn and Twitter.