With eagle eyes, trash grabbers, and — despite the unpredictable April weather — a good mood, four teams from our Spühl location picked up trash aroundWittenbach, Switzerland, in honor of Earth Day.
The teams removed more than 10 kilograms (approximately 22 pounds) of residual waste and a bag full of glass! When they were finished, they celebrated with a grilled bratwurst and a drink.
We want to say thank you to our teams at Spühl for their commitment to helping keep our communities clean!
Our Home Furniture team in Kendallville, Indiana, recently came together to celebrate Earth Day and appreciate one another’s hard work.
After a tornado halted production at one of our locations in Mississippi, some of our branches increased production to help out, and the Kendallville branch was one of them. “We decided to roll our celebrations into a big thank you!” says Jess Morris, Human Resources Manager at Kendallville.
To celebrate, the team enjoyed grilled cheese sandwiches, chips, and could choose from a mix of perennial plants — tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, and grape hyacinths — to take home. The appreciation note next to the plants says, “Just like plants need water to grow, we need you to be successful! Thank you for your hard work and dedication to our team.”
At Kendallville, “Success is showing that we care, not only for our customers, but for our partners and our environment as well,” says Jess. “We take pride in our work, we stand beside one another, and we take care of our environment by being a zero-landfill facility. We recycle and reuse everything we can to help lessen our carbon footprint.”
Thank you to our team in Kendallville for your commitment to care for one another and the environment!
At L&P, we are committed to the responsible use of raw materials, which includes the wood we use in our various bedding products.
In 2022, our U.S. Spring business’s spend with Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC®)-certified sources increased by approximately 4% to 76%, compared to 2021. We are also increasing the use of FSC®-certified wood products in our Work Furniture business to help our customers achieve their sustainability goals.
At L&P, our businesses are building sustainability into product development processes and designing products for improved durability, recovery, and recycling at end of life.
Our Flooring Products business manufactures carpet underlay products that make a direct contribution towards LEED green building certification for our customers. All products can be 100% recycled at the end of their useful life and exceed the CRI Green Label Plus test program. Green Label Plus is an independent testing program that identifies carpet, adhesive, and cushion products with very low volatile organic compounds emissions to help improve indoor air quality and helps our customers achieve LEED green building certification.
Leggett & Platt believes in supporting the communities where we live and work. With that goal at heart, L&P is sponsoring the Trinity River Waterwheels Initiative in Fort Worth, Texas.
This initiative seeks to install large, solar-powered litter capture devices, or “waterwheels,” in the Trinity River. Waterwheels are a proven, sustainable, lower-cost technology to clean waterways. A waterwheel can remove up to 50,000 pounds of litter per day – about the size of two and a half garbage trucks. Removing the waste protects the water quality, improves the aesthetic and usability of the river, and improves the aquatic ecosystem for fish and wildlife.
“The Trinity River provides 710 miles of habitat, drinking water, tourism, and recreation,” said Juli Ragland, Environmental Program Manager for the City of Fort Worth. “The impact of this project will reach beyond Fort Worth and the metroplex and provide a cleaner river to the Gulf of Mexico.”
The Trinity River Waterwheels initiative aligns with our L&P commitment to being good stewards of the environment and our company’s value of doing great work together.
“We are excited to be part of the solution to reduce litter in the City of Fort Worth through our support of the Trinity River Waterwheels Initiative,” said Tamara Cook, L&P’s Sustainability Director. “The Waterwheels will benefit the Fort Worth community and communities beyond by collecting trash and litter from the Trinity River.”
The Waterwheels Initiative also aligns with our commitment to being good partners in the communities where we operate. Leggett has produced carpet padding in the Fort Worth area for over 50 years and works hard to create sustainable solutions with our products. In our Flooring business, we manufacture carpet cushion products that are certified by the Carpet and Rug Institute (CRI) Green Label Plus and help customers achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building certification. Each year, we incorporate several hundred million pounds of recycled urethane foam in our production of bonded carpet cushion.
“Supporting the Waterwheels initiative and recycling foam to make new carpet cushion products are excellent examples of how L&P is supporting positive environmental impacts in the Fort Worth community,” concludes Tamara.
To learn more about the Trinity River Waterwheels Initiative and follow along as they plan construction for the first Waterwheel in Fort Worth, visit their website. And to learn more about our Environmental, Social, and Governance efforts, visit www.leggett.com/sustainability.
April 22 is Earth Day — a day for us to invest in our future by investing in our planet.
While we come from many cultures, Earth Day reminds us of our shared responsibility and commitment to care for our mutual home. Together, we can draw inspiration from one another to care for the environment and take action to promote a sustainable future for everyone, everywhere.
At L&P, our mission is to build businesses and a culture that are sustainable for generations to come.
We recently published our 2023 Sustainability Report, which provides information about our approach to and performance on the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) matters that are most important to our business. As we move through 2023, our key ESG initiatives include:
Developing and communicating ESG goals, including climate-related targets.
Establishing a roadmap of actions that will support us in meeting our ESG goals and targets.
Obtaining third-party limited assurance of our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions data and publicly reporting our data.
Advancing our ID&E efforts as outlined in more detail in our report.
Building upon our management systems to improve data collection and contribute to broader companywide sustainability advancements.
Continuing to enhance our supplier assessment process, including a heightened emphasis on labor and social standards and cybersecurity controls.
Maintaining our commitment to transparency and continuing to share our corporate sustainability approach and performance.
Thank you for your support as we continue to build and report on our sustainable practices. Read our full Sustainability Report here: 2023 Sustainability Report
It’s Earth Month! At L&P, we are committed to fostering a culture that cares about our planet and providing sustainable solutions for our customers. Throughout the month of April, we’ll be sharing our efforts to be responsible stewards of the environment and communities where we live and work.
Our Commitment
The continued success of our company is built upon the culture and values of our nearly 20,000 employees who are dedicated to creating innovative and sustainable solutions, ensuring a safe and inclusive workplace, and driving value for our shareholders.
Our commitment to corporate sustainability reflects and reinforces our culture and our values. Our businesses are building sustainability into product development processes and designing products for improved durability, recovery, and recycling at end of life. We ensure compliance with environmental regulations everywhere we operate and engage employees in the development and implementation of sustainability and environmental programs.
Ideas for Celebrating Earth Month
If you’re looking for ways to care for and appreciate our planet, check out the following ideas:
🧹 Community Cleanup — Notice a lot of litter around your community? Consider talking to your local government to see if a litter cleanup program exists and how you can get involved.
♻️ Composting — Help keep waste out of landfills by turning your food and yard waste into compost that can be added to your yard’s soil. To get started with composting, check out the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Composting At Home resource.
🌿 Appreciating Nature — In our busy lives, we may forget to notice nature’s beauty and all it provides. Take time to reconnect with nature by watching a nature documentary, going for a walk, visiting a park, or checking out what’s in your own yard.
🛍️ Reusable Shopping Bags — Instead of using plastic bags at a store checkout, consider purchasing or using reusable shopping bags to help keep plastic out of landfills. You can also make your own reusable shopping bags.
L&P’s branch in Georgetown, Kentucky, recently received the Governor’s Safety and Health Award!
The team worked 801,564 hours—at least 24 months—without a serious work-related injury or illness that resulted in an employee being away from work for an extended period of time. During the award ceremony, a representative from the Kentucky Department of Labor congratulated Georgetown on their commitment to employee safety.
Ethan Kiser, Environmental, Health, and Safety Manager at Georgetown, said, “Our team puts safety and health at the forefront of our operations through internal safety audits, extensive employee engagement in our safety program, thorough and effective incident investigation, and by ensuring our employees are effectively trained for their positions and able to identify and protect themselves and their team against any safety hazards in their areas.
Keeping our employees safe is our most important job. This job is a moral responsibility, and it is critical to make safety a top priority to ensure all employees return home each night in as good or better shape than they arrived. Our employees are the backbone of Leggett & Platt, and when they feel safe at Georgetown, our business thrives.”
We are so proud of this team for putting people first by prioritizing safety and care for each other!
At L&P, we are committed to protecting the health and safety of our employees and being responsible stewards of the environment. Our Environmental, Health, Safety, and Sustainability (EHSS) Policy outlines our high standard of responsibility:
“We are dedicated to the safety and welfare of all employees through education, awareness, and prevention. Our goal is to reduce and eliminate workplace injuries through process safety and to continuously improve our employee safety. . .We aggressively pursue resource conservation opportunities throughout our operations. We use best practices to produce high-quality products while striving to reduce the impact on the environment.”