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  • Earth Day!

    by: Posted

    Today’s guest blogger is Dr. Beth Lange, Chief Scientific Officer.  Dr. Lange leads Mary Kay’s Research & Development division and due to her passion for nature also champions our corporate environmental sustainability efforts.

    Happy Earth Day!  April 22nd is the 41st celebration of Earth Day.  This is a great time to reflect upon and enjoy the beautiful world around us.  In celebration of Earth Day, I want to share with you a favorite inspirational Mary Kay quote:

    “I feel very strongly that we must do everything in our power to save our planet or our grandchildren will not have a place to live. Let me emphasize that Mary Kay is an environmental leader because we strongly feel it is the right thing to do.”

    Mary Kay was a leader in everything she did and left us all a rich legacy.  This legacy includes a commitment to the environment.  As far back as 1989, Mary Kay Inc. started one of the first of many projects that helped the environment.  This first initiative was to make our packaging more environmentally friendly and reduced the amount of waste at all our US locations.  From this initiative came our first refillable compact – a green product form that we still have today!

    Since then, we have continuously refined our environmental efforts – and we have been recognized for these efforts along the way!  In 1993, Mary Kay received the first Fashion and Environment Award from the United Nations Environment Programme.  We also have been recognized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Keep America Beautiful and the Arbor Day Foundation.  Outside the U.S. we have won many awards.  In 2007 and 2009, Mary Kay China was awarded the Model Unit of Environmental Protection by the Environmental Protection Bureau of the Hangzhou Economic and Development Area.

    Today, through Pink Doing Green, Mary Kay’s commitment to the environment is stronger than ever!  In order to further “green up” our business, we are focusing on REDUCE in 2011.  Specifically, we are working to reduce the amount of waste sent to the landfill, reduce our energy use and reduce our water use.   We will report on our progress later this year!

    So what can YOU do to contribute?   I encourage everyone to think about how to reduce your environmental footprint.  It doesn’t have to be big; the little, every day things can really add up! Take saving paper as an example.  We use paper every day.  Have you ever thought about what it takes to make a piece of paper?  The answer isn’t just trees – it takes a lot of water and energy to turn a tree into paper.  In fact, it takes three gallons of water to make a single sheet of paper!  That number astonished me and makes me think twice before I print something.

    When we talk about REDUCE, we are really talking about not being wasteful.  This was something Mary Kay Ash understood.  Even she used old note pads for scratch paper.  Through Pink Doing GreenSM, we carry on Mary Kay’s legacy – as she said – because it is the right thing to do.  I would love to hear how you are celebrating Earth Day this year.  How are you helping to REDUCE in your life?

  • Brown to Green with some Pink too

    by: Posted

    Today’s guest blogger is Tony Gilbert, Mary Kay Inc.’s Vice President of Manufacturing Operations and Engineering.  Tony has worked for Mary Kay for 27 years and is one of the company’s champions for sustainability.

    One day my friends and I had spent the day at Six Flags over Texas.  We were all young and I was just learning how to drive – well, at least drive on Dallas highways.  On our way home, my buddies and I were joking and laughing about the day when I came over a small hill and saw the Fort Worth city skyline.  That normally wouldn’t have been so bad, but I was supposed to be heading to Dallas some 30 miles in the opposite direction.  My journey to embracing “green” was a bit like my trip home from Six Flags some 38 years ago.  How did I end up here?  

    I have a lot of roles in my life.  I’m a father, husband, brother, friend and yes, a Vice President at Mary Kay.  In my role at Mary Kay, I am also one of the ‘green guys.’  I’m a green guy in our pink world.  I serve as a champion for Mary Kay’s sustainability initiatives.  I’ve been with Mary Kay for 27 years, and have witnessed and been a part of many strategic decisions.  But like many ideas in a corporation, it started with one person saying, ‘let’s see what we can do.”

    In the beginning, two long-term Mary Kay employees, David Long and Carlos Troncoso, came up with a way for us to reduce material handling, labor and chemicals in our company’s sanitation area at our manufacturing facility.  (If you are in Dallas, stop by and we’ll show you around our manufacturing facility and let you see one of our big sanitation areas.  If you can imagine a “dishwashing” room that is what it looks like.) They also found a way to improve performance, process and safety by changing the way we transport our products around inside our manufacturing plant.  We were using big round drums and made the decision to use totes instead.  I don’t mean the type of tote you take to the beach.  I mean a tote that is about the size of your washing machine and dryer combined.  These totes have collapsible plastic frames with a plastic liner.  Of course, we had to crunch the numbers to make sure switching from the drums to the totes was a good decision.  We made the transition and someone asked what should we do with the plastic liners from the totes when we finish filling the product?  And so it began.  We were thinking green.  Our company has always had a recycling program for paper and many common items, but this was bigger.  We were starting to think how we could incorporate green into every step of our manufacturing and distribution process.  

    Like any new idea, there was resistance. Everyone said you couldn’t recycle it except for Carlos.  Carlos wouldn’t take no for an answer and found a recycler.  So, we began recycling the huge plastic liners.   Plastic liners led to plastic bottles that led to stretch wrap, which led to metal, which led to gloves, and the next thing you know we are reducing our waste AND generating cash.  

    Our senior environmental scientist, Tara Still, joined Carlos in our effort to increase the number of units per pound of waste we generate.  Sounds simple, but it was like mixing oil and water.  Carlos is the ultimate doer.  Get out of his way because he’s gonna get it done. And Tara is the ultimate regulator.  Get out of her way because she is gonna make sure it gets done RIGHT!  Somehow, some way, with much effort on each of their parts, they created magic.  What has happened has been amazing.  Through their efforts and the efforts of our folks at manufacturing, we have reduced landfill waste by 70 percent since 2007.  Can you imagine that?  In less than four years, we’ve reduced our landfill waste by 70 percent – one item at a time.

    Now for the punch line, the ta-dah moment, the chest thump - we expect to be a zero landfill site by 2012!  ZERO!  There I said it!  Didn’t plan on being green. Wasn’t looking to be green. Hadn’t thought about how to be green. Simply by trusting Carlos and Tara and relying on the numbers we turned green.  And I’m mighty proud to be here.  Admittedly, I’m still not comfortable with saying I’m the green guy.   Must be the Texan in me.  But I can proudly say that I work for a green company.  A pink company that is doing green.