Bruce Cords of Ecolab leads the Sustainability team to ensure that the work that Ecolab does improves the environment. We speak with Cords at the National Restaurant Association conference about the different initiatives that Ecolab is working on.

Full Transcription:

Ben Lack: Well, I’m here with Bruce Cords of Ecolab. Bruce is in the Sustainability Department. Thanks for giving us some of your time.

Bruce Cords: You’re welcome.

Ben Lack: What I’d like to start off first is have you talk a little bit about what does Ecolab do and what types of initiatives from the sustainability side are you guys working .

Bruce Cords: Well, Ecolab is in three primary business areas. Business area number one is the hospitality and food service and food retail business. Another major business unit is our Food and Beverage Division which would is cleaning food plants, dairy plants, and meat plants. And then the third and newest circle of business is the healthcare industry. So all the way from nursing homes to hospitals to surgical suites. So those three areas of business. And everyone of those customers is facing some sort of energy, water, packaging challenge. A good example is we do a lot of business with the cruise lines, and their biggest issue is not energy so much because, primarily, most of their energy is pushing that big ship.

So if we can offer them ten percent savings in addition, which is pretty insignificant. However, what is significant for them is packaging price because once they’re on the cruise, they can’t dump material, obviously, out in the middle of the ocean. So whatever we can do to minimize their packaging is used. So that just shows you the difference, the different markets, and what are the hot buttons in terms of sustainability.

So today, every new project potentially gets reviewed. Not only for what we’re going to make on the investment and research but also what kind of energy, water, packaging or healthier or cleaner chemistry will it offer in the customer location.

Ben Lack: When a customer looks at the different types of energy benefits that you guys have for some of your solutions, what are some of those benefits?

Bruce Cords: I think it’s probably the main thing that we looked at is, in terms of what we can offer the customer, is to take a look at can we clean at lower temperatures. Because classically, as you know, cleaning has always been the warmer the better, the hotter the better. Now, today we’re looking at can we build the chemistry and be able to take ten degrees, twenty degrees, thirty degrees of that high temperature thing, operation and move it down in temperature. Hopefully, to clean, basically, at room temperature if we possibly can.

The other big savings in energy is basically involving freight. So minimize the amount of ready-to-use type cleaners and detergents we sell. And maximize the amount of things that we sell in our concentrates. So, in other words, if the customer is buying concentrates, that’s a lot less energy, in terms of fuel, to get it from point A to point B. So a lot of it. So a lot of it’s working on more and more, heavier and heavier into concentrates. The more concentrated the better in terms of freight savings.

Ben Lack: So I assume distribution is playing into some of that to make sure that you have distribution centers in the appropriate locations where most of your customers are so you can offer that product closer to wherever they’re located.

Bruce Cords: Correct.

Ben Lack: And how long as Ecolab been in the business?

Bruce Cords: Since 1926. So the company’s been around a long, long time. We basically started in the, the base business was the institutional business. Restaurants and things, but we’ve grown. But then the newest business is healthcare.

Ben Lack: And talk to us about why you do what you do for Ecolab.

Bruce Cords: Well, I’ve been there thirty years. And I started, basically, running their Microbiology Department. And then I ran their Food and Beverage Global Research for about fifteen years. And then, in the last about seven or eight years, I got interested in the whole area of sustainability. I was kind of a lone wolf. They call me the resident tree hugger for the company, but then I basically grew into a job. And because of the interest in sustainability, acquire customers and even the investment community. And so now we’ve probably got on the order of probably seven to eight full-time people, and twenty-something full-time equivalent people working in the areas of sustainability in the company.

Ben Lack: Wow. Well, Bruce, thanks so much for you time. Much continued success on what you are doing, & we’ll talk to you guys very soon.

Bruce Cords: Thank you very much

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