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Throughout the last few decades, we’ve focused conservation efforts on minimizing our draw from freshwater sources and reducing our overall water needs.
We’ve made significant strides in lowering the amount of water required to wash a pound of laundry without compromising our ability to meet hygienically clean certification standards (where applicable), which is critical to our customers.
We continue to seek opportunities that will help us further reduce our water consumption.
We work collaboratively with our capital equipment manufacturers and our wash chemistry partners to improve our operational footprint, and to realize the combined impacts of engineering efficiencies and chemical improvements on our water requirements.
Water Reuse We are continuing to identify ways to increase waterreuse rates throughout our production facilities.
Our ability to expand and monitor our water-reuse capabilities at all our locations is an important step in our ongoing work to lessen our freshwater withdrawal and lower our overall water consumption.
WATER-STRESSED REGIONS With our operational footprint stretching from coast to coast across the United States and Canada, we draw water from a variety of sources, including water-stressed regions.
The majority our FY’originated in 14 major water basins, with 82% of our water drawn from five sources: the Mississippi–Missouri river system (35%), the Gulf of Mexico (14%), the St. Lawrence River (17%), the North Atlantic Coast (9%), and the state of California (7%).
An FY’plants that operate in water-stressed regions of the United States and Canada, where they are experiencing high to extremely high water stress.
Of our processing plants located in current water-stressed regions, 17 are in Arizona, California, Colorado, and Nevada, states which have been severely impacted by historic droughts and declining water tables.
At operations in these states and other water-stressed regions, we are emphasizing water-reuse technologies.
As good environmental stewards, increasing our reuse efforts will also be important to help supplement our ongoing water-conservation efforts.
It begins with the removal of lint and other solids from wastewater after a wash cycle, which generates non-toxic waste that is disposed of in landfills.
Once wastewater has cycled through the DAF system and has been treated, it is discharged back to the municipal water supply.
In the western region, legacy systems currently installed at our Las Vegas and Denver-area locations have provided contextual examples of how expanded reuse capabilities can positively affect water consumption.
As various reuse opportunities and technologies emerge and evolve, we expect to prioritize the expansion of water-reuse capabilities in water-stressed regions and identify and apply appropriate technologies in these vital areas.
MANAGING WASTEWATER AND EFFLUENTS Both our Environmental Compliance policy and our Water Management Position outline our expectation that our field locations treat and process wastewater as necessary to comply with their specific local, state, and federal regulatory requirements.
Our Rental business is the overwhelming driver of our company’s water interactions.
Our ongoing operational review has helped us more fully identify opportunities for how we work with water.
The water data in this year’s report includes all of our Rental processing locations in the United States and Canada.
Water Intensity Decreases Since FY’As our business has continued to grow and we’ve processed more product volume, we’ve significantly invested in decreasing our business’s water requirements.
With the increase in output at our processing locations, we continue to realize the impact of our efforts to reduce our overall water needs.
Since FY’lowered our water intensity9 by almost 21% – even as revenues have grown by almost 14%.
Lowering Water Requirements Our ongoing efforts to innovate, increase efficiency, and explore reuse opportunities have resulted in significant reductions in our water needs.
With wash chemistry programmed to meet specific product load weights, our washers and dryers are more efficient – requiring less water and energy and fewer chemicals to clean, and less energy to dry.
Since FY’9.1%, our water discharge by 9.8%, and our total water consumed by 2.8%.
We’re using the water we draw in more effectively and increasing the amount we return to local municipal water systems.
We expect our efforts to increase water-reuse opportunities will bear additional impact in coming years, further helping to lower our overall water withdrawal and consumption.
Water-Stressed Regions We put significant attention on our water stewardship in areas experiencing water stress.
Since FY’lessened our water withdrawn in these regions by 11.7%.
In FY’total water withdrawal in stressed regions, but only consumed 13.9% of our total water consumption in the same areas.
As a company, we discharge withdraw back to municipalities, but in water-stressed regions that total is up to 91.8%.
Overall we consume withdraw as a company, but that total is even lower in water-stressed regions, at 8.2%.
Our efforts to optimize existing water-reuse systems and explore further reuse opportunities in waterstressed regions are contributing to our lower water requirements in these important areas.
ESG REPORT ABOUT CINTAS OUR ESG JOURNEY ENVIRONMENT SOCIAL GOVERNANCE APPENDIX PURSUING GREATER WATER REUSE Our water journey has been full of advances and successes, and as a water-intensive business, we must keep innovating solutions that lessen our use of natural resources.
For that reason, we continue to view our water-reuse initiatives as a tremendous opportunity to reduce our total water consumption and expand our water-conservation efforts.
We also completed an assessment of each type of water-treatment and -reuse system currently utilized by Cintas to identify opportunities for improvement and expansion.
Further, we continued evaluating advances in wastewater-treatment technology that could also expand the long-term potential of water reuse.
This examination of our water-reuse technologies and capabilities will be especially important as we identify opportunities to reduce our total water consumption in geographic areas experiencing significant water stress.
Those systems aid our efforts to reuse water.
WHAT’S AHEAD Optimizing our ability to reuse water and lower our overall water consumption is an important priority at Cintas.
Water reuse will continue to be a focus of our engineering, production, and plant management teams.
These groups include plant locations in Northern Indiana, Michigan, Northern and Eastern Ohio, Western and Central Pennsylvania, Western and Central New York, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Maryland.
Their success has also helped us identify optimal reuse technology integrations and use cases that will benefit our enterprise footprint.
This includes our processing locations in water-stressed regions that face added challenges.
Our corporate environmental engineering team supports our locations in their annual Tier II filings and oversees Cintas’ compliance with the regulations.
This includes Green Seal-certified products, Design for the Environment (DfE) chemicals, environmentally friendly detergents, and fire suppression foam.
WASTE From our very beginnings, our company reduced waste and found new ways to extend the life of products.
Waste was identified as an Impact Priority in our recent assessment.
Our Waste Position formalizes our organizational commitment to responsible waste management.
This includes evaluating our operations to identify opportunities to minimize waste through process improvements, recycling and reuse options, and new technologies, as well as collaboration with our vendors, suppliers, and customers to identify waste-minimization opportunities in our value chain.
We have also found great success with our Zero Waste Programposted a diversion rate of 93.16% in FY’22.
Cintas has received eight TRUE certifications from Green Business Certification, Inc., certifying eight of our facilities.
We plan to investigate additional programs and initiatives that can lower our waste destined for landfills, including broader enterprise-wide recycling and reuse programs.
THE BUSINESS CASE FOR REUSING PRODUCTS Our business model reduces waste by reusing textile products.
Our Uniform Rental operation has perfected a business model that both reuses garments and textiles and extends the average usable life of apparel to help reduce textile waste.
Operationally, we have other inputs that support our waste-minimization goals.
By providing reusable alternatives to products often treated as disposable, we offer our customers a means to reduce their disposable waste.
The broader environmental impact of these offerings is significant.
Reusables vs. Disposables Research conducted in Textile Association (ARTA) found that the use of reusable healthcare products instead of disposable versions reduces solid waste between 84% and 97%,13 and lowers waste-disposal costs.
Additional research conducted by CWS (published found that the circular system created by the apparel rental industry in part helped extend the life of garments and reduced waste.
When garments needed repairs, researchers found that only about half of necessary repairs were completed at home by wearers, resulting in the unrepaired garments being discarded as waste.
In the circular rental environment, almost all the necessary repairs were completed, and the garments’ useful lives continued to be extended.
Similarly to the added climate benefits of reusable healthcare items, circular garment programs also reduce a garment’s associated GHG emissions by approximately or about 50% including transportation and delivery.
As we continue formulating an updated enterprisewide waste-minimization strategy and complementary policies and programs, we expect to centralize existing smaller-scale programs.
These current programs – usually location- or region-based – help us reduce our overall waste and further divert waste from landfills, and also allow us to learn and develop best practices.
PARTNERING FOR CIRCULARITY As we look for additional ways to incorporate sustainability, we continue to identify new ways to use and process end-of-life garments to help reduce end-of-life waste.
https://cint.as/https://cint.as/3FKCd0U ZERO WASTE PROJECT Cintas has established several waste-reduction programs throughout its operations.
These initiatives have demonstrated success in helping lessen our waste while creating opportunities to recycle (or reuse or repurpose) refuse that would otherwise be destined for landfills.
The success of existing waste-reduction and recycling initiatives is leading us to explore more comprehensive programs.
These are intended to help us minimize our company’s waste and expand our adoption and implementation of recycling, reuse, and repurposing initiatives.
CINTAS ZERO WASTE PROGRAM The Zero Waste Program at our distribution centers is an effort to increase our waste diverted from landfills.
Currently eight locations housing our distribution centers participate in our Zero Waste Program, and they continue to remain TRUE Certified by Green Business Certification, Inc.
The success of our Zero Waste Program is defined by our employee-partners’ commitment to our program’s goals.
https://cint.as/ TECHNOLOGY’S ROLE MANAGING WASTE MATERIALS We have made significant strides in leveraging emerging technologies to help manage our inventory.
This has provided greater visibility to our product supply and has created efficiencies in our supply chain system to help us identify and create processes that can lead to less waste and fewer material needs.
Our inventory-tracking systems give us clearer insights into our existing product inventory, no matter an item’s location in our company footprint.
They also mean we avoid increased waste and added costs generated by outdated excess products and inventory.
They’ve provided streamlined storage layouts for laundered garments and backstock, reducing our plant footprints.
As a result of this new auto-sort system, Cintas can store the same amount of product on a smaller footprint compared to traditional shelf-based warehousing systems.
In turn, this helps us reduce the overall footprint of the facility, helping to lower our energy needs.
MATERIALS Because of the nature of our business, we work with a significant amount of material – especially textiles.
Other cellulosic fibers TRACEABLE RECYCLED POLYESTER Traceable waste from our clients, such as plastic bottles, is processed and transformed into REPREVE® recycled polyester fibers.
Our partnerships and ongoing programs with outside organizations – like Accelerating Circularity – to develop new assets from end-of-life products have helped us recognize and understand how impactful this could be on our total environmental footprint.
We understand that even a smaller-scale product line made from a circular supply chain, or closedloop system, would have an instant impact on our environmental footprint.
Our Fire Protection division has also found ways to recycle components of their products and help cut down on the need for new materials, as well as lowering waste from those product lines.
Creating a cross-collaborative circular textile supply chain would help improve the industry’s environmental and social impact by lowering its waste and the reliance and use of raw materials, energy, and water.
Our market presence and our company footprint, coupled with our heritage incorporating a “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Repurpose” mindset, affords us tremendous opportunity to develop more circular economies.
We believe there is tremendous benefit for our customers and our environment to identify product offerings for our other divisions that further expand our recycled offerings portfolio and help minimize waste.
Our goal is to foster a working environment where everyone feels their contributions help empower our collective success.
We strive to perpetuate a safe and healthy workplace that encourages and celebrates Diversity, Equity & Inclusion so our employee-partners have a sense of belonging and purpose while they’re on the job at Cintas.
We believe these ongoing exchanges facilitate an environment of open communication and help us create strong relationships built on trust and respect.
EMPOWERING OUR WORKFORCE We’ve worked hard to foster an environment where every employee-partner is positioned to use their strengths and talents to help us meet our business goals, and to create a place where they feel supported and championed in pursuit of their professional and personal goals.
The diversity of our jobs also helps us better retain our employee-partners’ knowledge and skills so they can continue to make Cintas better and stronger.
We hold that all these tenets – and more – have helped us foster and perpetuate a strong, open environment where our employee-partners feel valued, supported, and positioned to thrive.
We believe our systematic approach to diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI) fosters a greater sense of belonging and purpose for our employee-partners, which further supports our business results.
We expanded our dedicated DEI team to help broaden its focus and impact on our overall corporate strategy, and amplified our diverse recruiting, diversity training, and ongoing workforce education.
Formal DEI programs at Cintas date back almost Chief Executive Officer Scott Farmer – now our Executive Chairman – championed Diversity & Inclusion.
Scott Farmer not only endorsed and codified Cintas’ efforts to expand its workforce diversity, but also introduced DEI metrics as non-financial goals in our executives’ annual compensation packages – components which still exist in those packages today.
By joining this group of to form meaningful partnerships with HBCUs and acknowledged that HBCUs are part of our diversity and inclusion efforts.