EARTHWARDS®

At Johnson & Johnson, our top priority is health—health of people and the planet. That's why we set aggressive corporate wide goals to reduce our environmental impact, outlined in our Healthy Future 2015 goals. To this end, we established the proprietary Earthwards® process for developing and marketing greener products through lifecycle thinking. Every Earthwards® recognized product must achieve a greater than 10 percent improvement in at least three of the seven goal areas:

   • Materials used
   • Packaging reduction
   • Energy reduction
   • Waste reduction
   • Water reduction
   • Positive social impact or benefit
   • Product innovation

Earthwards® refers to a process; it is not an ecolabel. You'll never see it on the side a Johnson & Johnson company product. Rather, it's a rigorous process that's been through a third-party assurance audit conducted in November 2011 by UL Environment. UL Environment provides ongoing annual assurance review of the Earthwards® process and verifies that program guidelines and minimum requirements are being properly followed. These guidelines and requirements provide a framework that allows Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies to make continuous product improvements across a broad range of lifecycle impact areas. The Earthwards® protocols have been designed and implemented by Johnson & Johnson.

Further, each product is evaluated against a proprietary scorecard, developed in 2009, and updated continuously by a group of product sustainability experts from government, academia, business, and environmental NGOs. Once a product has earned the distinction as an Earthwards® product, it must undergo an annual review in order to retain the recognition.

At Johnson & Johnson, we recognize that environmental stewardship is not just good for the people and the environment, it's good for business.

Below is a research study, commissioned by Johnson & Johnson:

The Growing Importance of More Sustainable Products In The Global Healthcare Industry

To learn more about products that have received Earthwards® recognition click here.

To hear directly from one of our external Board Members, Lara Sutherland of Practice Greenhealth, about her experience with the Earthwards® process please click here.

To learn more about the Earthwards® process from the perspective of employees who helped to build the program, brand managers and R&D leaders who collaborate to design greener products, and external corporate social responsibility (CSR) experts, click here to read the series of articles on CSRwire.