Cintas Outlines Sustainability Goals

Posted September 24, 2021 at 1:35 pm



Cintas Corp., Mason, OH, recently announced its ambition to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050, according to a news release.

The company also is in the midst of a comprehensive, enterprisewide review of its business model as it relates to environmental, social and governance (ESG) opportunities, improvements and efficiencies. Cintas has been built on sustainable business practices, and the continuous improvement of its sustainability measures has been key to the company’s operational success over the years.

As its business review continues for the next 12-18 months, Cintas expects to better define its ESG journey, including identifying strategies to reduce its Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions and potential avenues to reduce Scope 3 GHG emissions from its supply chain. The review also will focus on opportunities to further reduce its overall environmental impact through continued reductions in energy, water, raw materials and waste throughout its business.

“Cintas was founded on a sustainable business model and has grown to a $7-plus billion-dollar company by recycling, reducing and reusing our products and materials for our customers, and helping them reduce their environmental impact,” said Todd Schneider, Cintas’ president and CEO. “Our corporate culture is based on doing what’s right and challenging ourselves to be better, so we view announcing our ambition to reach net-zero GHG emissions by 2050 as a natural extension of our culture and how we conduct our business. We believe that climate change is a real issue, and that as a good corporate citizen, we must actively engage in activities and initiatives that help reduce our impact on the environment. We understand that reaching net-zero GHG emissions by 2050 is ambitious given our business and industry, but we are committed to doing our part to innovate and explore new technologies that will be necessary in this journey.

“We continually develop and implement new processes to reduce our energy and water consumption while still maintaining our industry-leading quality and service. Our net-zero ambition will challenge our entire company to think even more critically about our business and create more sustainable means to help our customers get Ready for the Workday. To successfully achieve our ambition to reach net-zero GHG emissions by 2050, we’ll need to think differently about our own operational processes – including the energy sources we use and our delivery fleet – and we’ll need the support and buy-in of our supply chain.”

Cintas’ ambition to achieve net-zero GHG emissions by 2050 builds on the company’s history of demonstrating environmental impact improvements year over year. Between the fiscal years 2016 and 2020, Cintas improved its water-efficiency rate by 16% while increasing its sales by almost 48% in that same time frame. In the last three years, the company has reduced its energy consumption by almost 13% as sales rose by 10%. Further, traditional at-home laundry processes consume 55% more water and 204% more energy than Cintas’ process.

To read the full release, click here.

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