3M's Gayle Schueller on the Joy of Sustainable Manufacturing

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Gayle Schueller
3M Chief Sustainability Officer Gayle Schueller shares her joy about finding sustainable solutions – and the challenge of cutting Scope 3 emissions

Next time you use a Post-it note, write this on it – MADE BY 3M.

And when you are using a Scotch-Brite dishwand to clean your frying pan, give thanks to 3M.

So now you know what this mega manufacturer makes – or at least two of its more than 55,000 product lines.

The firm, based in St Paul, Minnesota, US, makes so many of the products that we use, plus many

more that we do not, driving global sales of US$31bn in 2023.

Sustainability is a fundamental part of what 3M does, which is where Gayle Schueller comes in.

The SVP and Chief Sustainability Officer tells Sustainability Magazine about life as a nuclear physicist-turned-CSO and how 3M is making carbon reduction central to all that it does.

Please tell us about yourself and how you got to your current role

I am an undergrad nuclear physicist, so I did not see myself in this space. I have my PhD in material science and I joined 3M in our corporate laboratories, literally working at the bench.

I was doing research science and never saw this kind of job coming. However, during the course of my career at 3M, I’ve advanced into the electronics industry and the healthcare industry and consumer goods industry and explored a broad variety of businesses and leadership roles on a global basis.

Both of my parents were public school teachers and during the summers we would travel and camp across national parks around the United States and Canada. It gave me a profound appreciation for nature and the environment and even seeing signs of things changing over time.

So when our CEO was looking for a sustainability leader back in 2010, he reached out to me.

It's clear that you love your job. What is it that you love about it?

Well, I love that it is a science-based company and we have the opportunity to impact so much through our products. We have 55,000 products across basically every industry you can imagine. And that means that we get to touch people in unique ways. So whether it's using your electronic device or your Post-it notes or driving down the road in a vehicle or an aircraft or folks who are manufacturing respirators during Covid, I love that it's a company that can make a difference that way – and that, through sustainability, whether it's environmental or social impact, my team and I get to really have a profound effect there.

3M

Can you explain the breadth of 3M’s services?

It's based on 49 different technology platforms. 

Our first product was sandpaper and then we realised, through working with and selling the products in the automotive industry, that there was a need for something that was sticky to control paint when they wanted to make two-tone cars.

We realised that, if we didn’t put abrasive particles on the sandpaper, we had a sticky surface – and that’s how we invented masking tape. That led to all kinds of tapes and films, then to nonwoven technologies.

The technologies that came from the backing are now being used to create innovative solutions including products in greenhouses for energy efficiency and productivity. There’s so much happening in a great intersection of technologies to provide the materials solutions that are needed for a more sustainable world.

What do you think are the greatest challenges and opportunities in the role that you have?

I often say that this is a bimodal kind of job. You can be super excited about the things that you've done, but just look in the other direction and realise how much more there is to do. There are tremendous challenges in this space, whether it's climate change and carbon emissions, or advancing a global circular economy, or driving progress to reduce the consumption of virgin fossil fuel-based plastics, or the water circularity challenge. 

With 3M, we work on carbon, we work on water, we work on plastics. We also need to recognise that there's very much a social challenge that we face around the world. We focus on having equity across our organisation, but also in the communities where we live and work.

How does 3M drive sustainability across the business?

I'm fortunate to have a team that has executive-level representatives for each of our business groups and senior leaders in different geographies – Europe, Middle East, Africa, Latin America, China region and Asia.

Each of those are part of my broader leadership team and they make sure that we are learning things from their perspectives and bringing in all the things that my team and I are doing at the centre. One of the things I'm most excited about in terms of the transformation that we can help drive in society is what we call our Sustainability Value Commitment or SVC.

We have a requirement that our whole portfolio is built on new products and we have a requirement that every new product must have a Sustainability Value Commitment. So those SVCs really help challenge our teams to think about how it can be better in terms of: how we manufacture it; reducing the carbon footprint; how our customers use the product; what happens at end of life or broader societal impact.

Every product that we launch has examples of that. It's really exciting. 

Do you have any examples that shine a light on how that sustainability work is being done?

There are many. One I’ll pick right now is our Scotch Cushion Lock product. You’re familiar with bubble wrap, which is a plastic solution? Our consumer products team decided to take a critical look at bubble wrap and what we could do to work with our customers and end users to make a better product.

We started with a creative design that’s kind of like origami. It’s made from recycled paper and, as you stretch it, it has specific types of perforations that cause it to move in three dimensions.

You stretch it and then wrap your breakable product with it. And then it’s protected as you ship it. At the end of use, it’s recycled paper that can go right into your kerbside recycling.

That’s a really important story, and that’s the part people get. But what’s even more important from our customer perspective is, when we’re working with retailers, it takes up much less shelf space.

Finally, it takes so much less space in the transportation process that the carbon footprint is greatly reduced compared to plastics.

And that’s what I love about the Sustainability Value Commitment. It’s not about checking a box – it’s about how you can be more creative and innovative for more impactful customer solutions.

What does 3M do to tackle its Scope 3 emissions?

I'm really proud of our progress on Scope 1 and 2 emissions. Since 2002, we've reduced them by more than 80%, and that includes a 43% reduction since 2019.

But Scope 3 is really tricky because doing it means that we're working with our partners upstream and downstream, our suppliers, our customers, the end users, and what happens at the end of life.

I'm delighted to say that our plan for Scope 3 emissions was just validated for near-term targets with the Science Based Targets initiative.

When we talk about our math path and plan, it means that when 3M sets a goal, we think it's absolutely critical that we understand how we're going to get there. It's not just a lofty star which is far, far away. 

How do you see sustainability and manufacturing in three years?

As we evolve in the coming years, I think it's an incredibly exciting time. We have data science and digital twins in our manufacturing process that allow us to see different what if scenarios. 

We see opportunities to do even more, whether it's about shifting to renewable electricity to reduce carbon footprint or increasingly looking at alternatives to natural gas.

Beyond what we are doing within our own operations as part of that math path and plan, we’re excited about understanding what the new technologies are that are going to enable everyone to improve our collective footprint.

There’s so much that is on the verge of happening – from hydrogen fuel instead of natural gas to more sustainable materials solutions and design. I think there are some exciting breakthroughs that are going to happen, much the way we’ve already seen renewable energy scaling and transportation electrification.

We live in exciting times.

To read the full article in the magazine, click HERE.


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