Henkel employees educate students on sustainability

Henkel Corporation, the maker of well-known Adhesives Technologies, Beauty Care, and Laundry & Home Care products, recently held three interactive events focused on educating children on the importance of sustainability at locations in Connecticut and New Jersey.

Henkel's commitment to sustainability goes back across much of the company's 141-year history, from creating ways to make production processes and energy usage more efficient, to developing packaging that keeps sustainability in mind from concept to completion.  

In Stamford, Conn., home of Henkel's Consumer Goods headquarters, approximately 20 certified Sustainability Ambassadors arrived at Dolan Middle School on a mission: to help seventh graders discover the importance of sustainability and environmental responsibility. At the April 26 event, Henkel Sustainability Ambassadors presented to students a history of the company's commitment to sustainability, along with suggested tips and tricks for the students to lead more sustainable lifestyles, from being mindful of water usage to remembering to recycle.  The students then worked with their Henkel sustainability ambassadors to create decorative bird feeders from recycled bottles of Persil ProClean®, Henkel's flagship laundry brand.  The feeders will be installed by the school's garden club in an on-site garden space.  

"Our experience with Henkel has been incredibly positive," said Charmaine Tournes, Principal of Dolan Middle School. "We are thrilled to have found such an engaged partner who takes its commitment to the environment, and to Stamford, so seriously.  We look forward to continued partnership in the future."

In New Jersey, two recent events also focused on teaching sustainability to students.  On April 20, about a dozen Henkel sustainability ambassadors from the company's adhesives site in Bridgewater visited nearby Hillsborough Middle School to lead hands-on experiments demonstrating how adhesives support recycling efforts and provide thermal properties in solar film applications.  The following week, on April 26, 2018, students learned the benefits of sustainability during Take Your Child to Work Day.  Over 40 children between the ages of six and 14 participated in a sustainability lesson that emphasized the three Rs -- reducing, recycling and repurposing -- as they learned about a local initiative by Henkel employees to repurpose non-saleable hot melts into decorative magnets. The children put their artistic skills to use decorating the magnets as a souvenir of the day. Employees provided donations in exchange for the finished magnets with the proceeds supporting Central Jersey Stream Team, a local non-profit whose goal is to improve degraded water quality of central Jersey streams and rivers.  

An important goal for Henkel on a global level is to certify as many employees as possible as Sustainability Ambassadors, arming them with the tools to teach sustainable practices in schools or other community venues.