A number of years ago, J+J Flooring Group had put together some solid sustainability accomplishments, working to improve processes and limit its environmental impacts here and there. Like many other companies, sustainability gains were important, certainly on their radar. But what exactly were they working toward?
Russ Delozier joined J+J Flooring Group five and a half years ago as its new Director of Sustainability. He came armed with a background in chemical engineering and eight years of carpet industry experience. When he started in his position, he recognized the missing piece that many interior product companies, while leaders in sustainability compared to many other industries, are still trying to find.
“The first thing I did was make an end goal,” said Mr. DeLozier. “When I got here, we were making plays and doing some great things, but there was no end zone, to use a football analogy. There was no final goal.”
The role of a sustainability director is not simply to identify and lead sustainability programs and to make sure everything’s on schedule; they provide (or should be providing) that big picture goal – that end zone – that will inform everything the company does moving forward.
If your company doesn’t have an aggressive end goal for your sustainability efforts, how do you know you’re really making an impact? Sure, any progress is good progress. But do you have any idea what you’re shooting for? If you don’t set some version of a significantly higher purpose, how do you know when you’ve accomplished something worthwhile?
“We set our goals by looking at three main areas – air, land and water – that make up the full picture of sustainability,” said Mr. DeLozier. We study what will push us, and what we can accomplish. It really takes a lot of analytical dexterity to figure out. And we do a competitive review as well – looking at what our competitors are doing.”
J+J Flooring Group is certainly not the only company attempting to piece together a bigger picture effort that makes sense. But it is setting itself up as a leader in the industry.
J+J Flooring Group’s version of this higher goal is called 20/20 Vision – a series of aggressive goals informing the place they want to be by the year 2020. These sustainability goals are framed around three key areas: “conserving the resources we use, responsibly sourcing the materials we need, and minimizing the environmental and social impacts of our operations and products.”
The 20/20 Vision goals are as follows:
>Eliminate our use of landfills.
>Reduce water usage by 66%.
>Reduce energy intensity by 20%.
>Increase our use of renewable energy to at least 10% of our total energy consumption.
>Cut our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 20%
>Increase recycled, bio-based or renewable content in our products to 33%.
Of those six goals, J+J has completed two: eliminating their use of landfills, and reducing energy intensity by 20%. In eliminating its use of landfills in 2015, the company became the first flooring manufacturer in the U.S. to become a third-party certified Zero Waste to Landfill manufacturer, six years ahead of its 2020 goal.
“The zero waste achievement is not just for manufacturing waste. It also includes all waste collected from throughout the company’s Dalton administrative headquarters and manufacturing campus (more than 950,000 square feet). Waste is collected from all bathrooms, break areas, offices, conference rooms, design studios and other areas.”
“Any material (i.e. “industrial debris”) that cannot be recycled, repurposed or reused is being sent to the company’s energy recovery partner, Covanta. The amount of industrial debris J+J Flooring Group anticipates sending to Covanta annually is approximately 130,000 pounds. By sending its industrial debris to Convanta, the company is achieving the equivalent of removing the CO2 emissions for 60 cars each year.”
And, “As part of the company’s broader commitment to thinking differently about energy consumption, the company also offset more than 50% of its direct energy consumption in 2016 with the purchase of renewable energy credits through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Green Power Partnership.
The progress of each of these goals is carefully detailed at J+J Flooring – regularly for its employees, and in an annual corporate sustainability report the company makes available to the public. Mr. DeLozier notes that establishing robust public reporting efforts – full transparency about goals, accomplishments, strategic partnerships and research – is a key step to becoming an industry leader in sustainability. And as part of its holistic approach to sustainability, J+J Flooring is integrating its sustainable goals into product development.“Our Campus Environmental Team monitors our operational progress toward these and other shorter term environmental impact goals with the same stringency we use to measure our financial performance,” reads J+J Flooring Group’s 2016 Corporate Responsibility Report. “Guided by our executive group and under the leadership of the Management and Process Services manager, the team holds responsibility for assessing and implementing enterprise-wide sustainability strategy and activity across all key business units.”
J+J’s Kinetex product is “an advanced textile composite flooring that combines key attributes of soft-surface floor covering with the long-wearing performance characteristics of hard-surface flooring.
“Created as a unique floor covering alternative to hard-surface products, Kinetex…offers a reduced environmental footprint compared to traditional hard-surface options.”
“We really invested in this product,” said Mr. DeLozier. “It’s patented, and we designed and bought brand new equipment to help make it possible. And If everything goes as planned, we’ll have a nice big surprise for NeoCon 2018.”
J+J Flooring Group’s work in sustainability is a great example of a company taking its efforts from good to superb, moving toward a more mindful and holistic approach to sustainability.
