Brown to Green with some Pink too
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.
