Clean Harbors releases 2022 sustainability report

Clean Harbors Inc., a leading provider of environmental and industrial services throughout North America, has published its updated sustainability report.

As a follow-up to its inaugural report published in 2021, this edition details the company’s progress on its environmental, social and governance (ESG) journey along with recent highlights on how its sustainability efforts are affecting the environment, its customers and the communities Clean Harbors serves.

“As North America’s leader in environmental services, sustainability has been a part of our DNA since Clean Harbors’ founding in 1980,” Clean Harbors Chairman and CEO Alan S. McKim says. “Protecting the environment is central to our company’s identity. That’s why sustainable business practices are not only ingrained in our organization but are helping to shape our culture and continuing to drive our purpose more than four decades later.”

In addition to updating investors and customers on its progress toward the 2030 goals it established in its inaugural report, highlights from this year’s report in each key area include:

Environmental

• As calculated by the Net Climate Benefit factor, the company avoided twice as much greenhouse gas emissions than it generated.
• In 2021, the Clean Harbors collected 226 million gallons of waste oil, recovered about 3.5 billion pounds of key materials and recycled about 16 million gallons of solvent.
• Clean Harbors destroyed 3.2 million pounds of ozone-depleting substances.
• The firm gathered more than 50 million pounds of household hazardous waste.

Social

• The company is on track to deliver a Total Recordable Incident Rate of below one in 2022.
• The average employee tenure is 6.85 years, including more than 6,000 with tenure greater than 10 years.
• Clean Harbors’ U.S. workforce includes 38 percent ethnic diversity.

Governance

• The company’s board of directors today comprises of 33 percent women, 17 percent ethnic diversity.
• By 2030, the company hopes to have a board comprising 40 percent women and 20 percent people with various ethnic backgrounds.

The report details the company’s recycling efforts, including solvent recycling, fuel blending, e-waste recycling, light bulb recycling, chemical recycling and reuse and parts washer refurbishment.

 “One of our underlying objectives as a company is to create a positive long-term legacy through sustainability,” McKim says. “We don’t view ESG as a set of metrics we simply need to comply with but as an opportunity to demonstrate the difference our company makes in the work we do and the critical services we provide to our more than 300,000 customers.”

Related: Clean Harbors names co-chief executive officers | Clean Harbors releases results of third-party study on PFAS