Latest Evidence of Company-Wide Environmental Sustainability ROSWELL, Ga., June 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Kimberly-Clark Corporation (NYSE: KMB) received another environmental accolade, achieving its first ever LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council for its Kimberly-Clark Professional headquarters building (Building 100) in Roswell, Ga. The building obtained LEED Certification under the LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance program for existing and new practices in energy use, water use, and indoor environmental quality. To obtain the LEED for Existing Buildings: O&M Certification, the Roswell North Atlantic Facilities Management (NAFM) team focused on water efficiency, energy efficiency, the use of sustainable materials and resources, and indoor environmental quality. Fortunately, the facility already had many environmentally sustainable features in place, but the NAFM team also made several improvements to the four-story, 80,000-square-foot building, which houses about 350 employees and was originally constructed in 1980. Key achievements and resulting benefits include: Water Efficiency - Changing one gallon-per-flush restroom urinals to one pint-per-flush urinals, which helped the building reduce water use by 99,140 gallons per year. Energy Efficiency - Improving the building's EPA Energy Star rating from 72 to 79 after a comprehensive building commissioning and operational improvements which reduced energy use by 548,084 kilowatt hours per year, resulting in an energy cost savings of more than $40,000 and a maintenance cost savings of $2,605 per year. Sustainable Materials & Resources - Increasing the recycling of office materials from paper and cardboard only to also include aluminum cans, glass, and plastic bottles, thus diverting 5,300 pounds of waste from the landfill. - Using copy paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). - Using paints, carpet adhesives and other materials that have low volatile organic compounds (VOCs). - Maintaining a furniture re-use program that limits the need to buy new furniture. - Using low-mercury-content fluorescent bulbs throughout the building. Indoor Environmental Quality - Increasing the amount of outdoor air in the building from 1-5 cfm/person to more than 10 cfm/person. - Reducing HVAC system operation from 24x7 to hours of occupancy only, resulting in an estimated energy savings of more than $39,000 per year. - Instituting 100 percent occupant-controlled lighting in individual workstations and multi-occupant spaces - an achievement that qualifies as "exemplary performance" by USGBC. - Instituting a Green Cleaning program that replaced paper towels and other paper products used for cleaning with WypAll brand microfiber cleaning cloths and dusters. This change also significantly reduced the amount of cleaning chemicals and water used for cleaning. - Using restroom paper products that meet U.S. EPA Comprehensive Procurement Guidelines requiring a minimum percentage of post-consumer recycled content. All paper products used in Building 100 and throughout the entire Roswell campus are manufactured by Kimberly-Clark Professional, which achieved FSC chain-of-custody certification for a broad range of Kleenex brand and Scott brand tissue and towel products in August 2009.
