Mohawk releases Environmental, Social & Governance Report
In its twelfth annual Environmental, Social and Governance Report released online, Mohawk Industries, the world’s largest flooring manufacturer, stresses its commitment to innovating for a better tomorrow through strategic initiatives that are better for people, the planet and the business’ performance.
“Each year, this report quantitatively assesses our progress in important areas such as carbon emissions and our use of natural resources, and it also provides insights into what defines us as an organization,” said Jeff Lorberbaum, Mohawk’s chairman and CEO. “We invest in our employees, respecting what makes each of them unique and helping them find fulfillment through work that matters. We create innovative products that lay the foundation for healthier, more inspiring spaces where people live and work. We have greatly reduced our consumption of water and energy and are incorporating more recycled content into our products, including more than 30 billion plastic bottles in the past five years.”
In 2021, Malisa Maynard joined Mohawk as vice president of sustainability. Maynard focused on developing a comprehensive sustainability strategy that builds on existing strengths and accepts new challenges for growth.
“Innovation is the common language at Mohawk,” said Maynard. “There is tremendous passion and creativity around continuous improvement and a desire to better execute every aspect of our business. By identifying commonalities among Mohawk’s businesses, we have built a framework that truly defines what sustainability means across the enterprise. We are addressing our ESG objectives through cross-functional teams that will collaborate to define goals and initiatives focused on people and the planet.”
The Company’s refreshed ESG strategy also gained new focus through the introduction of the people, planet and performance pillars with key goals and objectives for each category representing the detail behind Mohawk’s commitment to innovating for a better tomorrow.
“Mohawk has spent the past decade working toward 25 percent reductions in emissions, water and waste-to-landfill intensity,” said Maynard. “There has been great progress. We are continuing to work on our goals and will refresh them, including expanded ESG metrics, as we execute our new governance process.”
In addition to affirming Mohawk’s ESG philosophy, the report highlights Mohawk’s comprehensive product portfolio that leads the industry in sustainable technology and product circularity. Mohawk carpet collections in the U.S. offer consumers renewable (wool), recycled (polyester) and partially bio-based (SmartStrand) fiber options while delivering unsurpassed style and performance. In Australia and New Zealand, Godfrey Hirst’s legacy wool carpet offering is completed by its Eco+ partially bio-based collections.
In commercial flooring, Mohawk Group offers the industry’s largest portfolio of Red List-free products and recently launched The Waterways Project, which promotes river health through clean-up days across the U.S. This project also includes the introduction of biophilic-inspired collections influenced by rivers and riparian landscapes and that are tailored for multiple commercial environments.
Mohawk is the world’s largest ceramic tile producer, and more than 450 of the company’s floor and wall tile products contain pre- and postconsumer recycled content.
Similarly, as the largest laminate flooring manufacturer in the U.S. and Europe, Mohawk’s products are made predominantly with recovered wood fiber and chips from sustainable sources. Every year, Mohawk’s resilient flooring manufacturing reclaims thousands of tons of PVC materials destined for landfills and transforms the material into the backing for luxury vinyl tile (LVT) flooring.
The Company’s European panels business has introduced a unique and innovative technology to recycle wood fiber from MDF and HDF boards, allowing the company to reuse this material to produce high-quality fiberboards. The process will eventually keep 380,000 tons of CO2 per year stored in wood fiber that has been given a second life.
Many of Mohawk’s achievements in sustainability come from the Company’s continuous — and creative — journey to improve the sustainability of its products and operations. The report details how Mohawk utilizes biobased fuel, has invested in solar and wind energy, has reduced water usage and recovers and reuses waste material to produce high-quality products around the world.
In 2021, three of Mohawk’s business units made new climate-related commitments. Mohawk Group signed The Climate Pledge with a commitment to achieve net zero carbon by 2040. Unilin Group pledged to set objectives aligned with the Science Based Targets initiative. Godfrey Hirst obtained Climate Active certification by committing to carbon reductions.
“Our digital ESG report offers an expansive view of Mohawk’s work around the world, and we invite everyone to view the information online and provide us with feedback,” said Maynard. “We are proud of our journey thus far, but we are still listening, learning, growing, testing new ideas and striving for greater results. We are embracing ambitious goals, and we are committed to the important work required to achieve them.”