2013/03/25

Henkel employees hold lessons on sustainability for schoolchildren around the world 

1,000 ambassadors for a more sustainable world

To heighten the awareness of employees for sustainability and strengthen their engagement in this area, the Laundry & Home Care business sector of Henkel has established a “Sustainability Ambassadors” program. In online seminars, the employees obtain an overview of the global challenges involved in sustainable development and learn more about Henkel’s own sustainability strategy. Since the program began in July 2012, around 500 employees have successfully completed this training. This figure should rise to 1,000 by the end of 2013. 

The aim of the “Sustainability Ambassadors” program is not only to help staff members to gain a detailed understanding of the topic of sustainability, but to enable them to convey this knowledge to their co-workers, suppliers, customers and consumers, and to students as well. In a series of pilot lessons at schools in Germany, the Czech Republic and the United Arab Emirates, more than 400 children have already learned how they themselves can do their bit every day to help to achieve a more sustainable world. Based on the experience gathered in these lessons, Henkel is now rolling out the schools sustainability project globally. Since the beginning of 2013, the Sustainability Ambassadors have been visiting elementary schools all over the world to work with the children and develop ideas as to how they can behave in a more sustainable way in their daily lives.

“For Henkel, our people are the most important success factor in implementing sustainability. The “Ambassadors” program of the Laundry & Home Care business sector enables them to experience sustainability on a personal level, to understand it even better and incorporate it in their daily actions,” says Bruno Piacenza, Executive Vice President Laundry & Home Care at Henkel. “This shared understanding is the foundation for developing our business even more responsibly and successfully in the future."

The aim of the school lessons is to explain to the children what sustainability really means and how each one of us can make our own contributions. With an interactive, specially prepared and entertaining program, the students learn, for example, how they can save water and energy in the bathroom and when doing laundry. Up to 70 percent of the environmental footprint of laundry detergents and household cleaners is generated during the use phase, for example when heating the water in a washing machine. This is why it is important to create awareness of sustainability in tomorrow’s consumers at a very young age. Through their dialogue with the students, the employees themselves also gain new insights as to how they can adapt their own behavior as consumers.

Detailed information on Henkel’s sustainability strategy can be found on the internet at: www.henkel.com/sustainability. 

Henkel operates worldwide with leading brands and technologies in three business areas: Laundry & Home Care, Beauty Care and Adhesive Technologies. Founded in 1876, Henkel holds globally leading market positions both in the consumer and industrial businesses with well-known brands such as Persil, Schwarzkopf and Loctite. Henkel employs about 47,000 people and reported sales of 16,510 million euros and adjusted operating profit of 2,335 million euros in fiscal 2012. Henkel’s preferred shares are listed in the German stock index DAX.

Photo material is available at http://www.henkel.com/press

Contact	Inga Krüger		Bettina Klinken	
Phone	+49 211 797 – 9987		+49 211 797 – 8312
Fax	+49 211 798 – 9832		+49 211 798 – 9832
E-mail	inga.krueger@henkel.com		bettina.klinken@henkel.com

Henkel AG & Co. KGaA