Celebrating Sustainability on Earth Day at Johnson & Johnson

From Al Iannuzzi, Senior Director, Worldwide Health & Safety, Johnson & Johnson

Today marks the 41^st annual celebration of Earth Day, a day to celebrate our environment and focus on creating a greener planet.

Here at Johnson & Johnson, we are joining the one billion people around the world celebrating this important day. In my role as a senior director of Worldwide Health and Safety for Johnson & Johnson, I’ve had a firsthand look at our work in product stewardship and sustainability across the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies. As a large healthcare company, it’s important that we remain committed to reducing our medical waste in the environment.

We’ve done a lot of work in the area of sustainability. Our EARTHWARDS program, established in 2009, encourages product stewardship as well as sustainable product innovation in all of our companies. As of today, we have 16 products given the EARTHWARDS distinction, and we hope to have 60 EARTHWARDS products by 2015.

Across the company, our businesses are working to reduce their environmental impact and improve the health of our planet. Our Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics franchise installed a 1.7 Megawatt solar power array at their headquarters in Raritan, NJ. Our campus of Janssen, Division of Ortho-McNeil-Janssen powered up the largest solar power installation in New Jersey last September. At Cordis Corporation, the company is working with their external suppliers to find a replacement for PVC tubing that they use in some products. Our Ethicon Endo Surgery franchise has worked with the Healthcare Plastics Recycling Council to pinpoint opportunities to increase its recycling efforts.

As a result of these efforts, Johnson & Johnson as well as Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics, Cordis Corporation and Ethicon Endo Surgery received Champion for Change Awards for Environmental Excellence presented by Practice Greenhealth earlier this month. Practice Greenhealth is a membership organization for healthcare organizations that are committed to using sustainable, environmentally-friendly practices in their organizations. Practice Greenhealth members include businesses – such as Johnson & Johnson – hospitals, healthcare systems and other members of the healthcare industry. The group offers members the ability to network and share best practices in an effort to enhance member organizations’ sustainability initiatives.

You can see an interesting time lapse video of the Janssen solar power installation construction on our Johnson & Johnson Health Channel. The Health Channel also features a playlist of sustainability videos. The playlist includes videos that highlight our sustainability initiatives across the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies.

Taking care of our planet is important to all of us at Johnson & Johnson and Earth Day gives us an opportunity to reaffirm our commitment. We hope you’ll join us in celebrating Earth Day today, and every day.

  JNJ13383