Carbon-Friendly Condoms: How To Reduce The Carbon Footprint Of Products Using Supply Chain Analysis

Posted on 22. Jul, 2009 by Ross in Corporate Policy, Manufacturing, United Kingdom

In an interview with the Telegraph, and in association with the Carbon Trust, Britvic and SSL chairman Gerald Corbett recently talked about how carbon has “rocketed” towards the top of the corporate boardroom agenda.

In dealing with carbon reduction in more than just fulfilling corporate social responsibility goals, Mr Corbett says all businesses should have whole teams devoted to lowering carbon footprints of products, and highlights the strides that SSL made in lowering the carbon footprint of one of their popular brands of condom:

Analysing the carbon emissions of a 12-pack of Durex Fetherlite condoms, for instance, from right up the supply chain down to when the end user disposes of the product, was quite telling. We found an amazing 50% of the carbon footprint of a condom is packaging; the latex is about 5%, silicon is 15%, freight is 8%. It is only when you have the whole analysis that you can work out how to change things.

By breaking down the various contributions to the product’s carbon total, SSL has been able to deal with minimising the constituent factors more effectively. The company’s development team is reducing the large carbon cost of the condom packaging by 10%, and reducing the 10% of the product currently shipped by air by another 25%.

Building energy efficiency measures are also being used to drive down the carbon footprint of the company’s condoms. Three Indian factories used for washing and drying the condoms have been equipped with solar photovoltaic panels and solar water heaters to provide the buildings’ entire hot water and lighting needs. The world’s largest condom factory in China is soon set to be 20% more efficient than SSL’s other factories.

Although marketing of the Durex condom brand could justifiably become tinged green as a result, health and well-being are the primary drivers behind the product, meaning the pay-off from the carbon reduction efforts are primarily cost-cutting.

Five years ago it probably didn’t look as important as it does now. But going forward I think it will become more and more important as the cost of energy rises.

Image by Warren Rohner @ Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.