2025, ProcureCon MRO. Panel Hitting Your Sustainability Goals in Facility Services

Tom Whitmore, Category Manager, Facilities and Real Estate – Hilti Group: You guys good? That's right. Comfortable if you need it. I got it.

Stephanie Buntine, Senior Manager, Category Manager – Facilities, CAPEX & MRO – Bausch + Lomb: I took some cliff notes. I think

Kelvin Burnett, Senior Sourcing Manager, Indirects –The J.M. Smucker Company: I should be

Stephanie Buntine, Senior Manager, Category Manager – Facilities, CAPEX & MRO – Bausch + Lomb: okay.

I hope

Kelvin Burnett, Senior Sourcing Manager, Indirects –The J.M. Smucker Company: every time I speak Ellis is always there, so I gotta, yeah, I gotta watch myself 'cause he knows what I said last time. So

Tom Whitmore, Category Manager, Facilities and Real Estate – Hilti Group: you said SU.

Kelvin Burnett, Senior Sourcing Manager, Indirects –The J.M. Smucker Company: Yeah, but vantage, we, yeah.

Tom Whitmore, Category Manager, Facilities and Real Estate – Hilti Group: My father-in-law went to LSU, so he was, yeah. Got to hear about that. Perfect.

Yep.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): Yeah, let's do it.

You guys can hear. There we go. Finally, there's more people, you know in the room than on the stage, so that's good. When we hear sustainability in facilities, that's usually means good for the planet. But there's much more than that, right? There's operations, there's cost, there's also procurement credibility on the line.

So today discussion, we're gonna dive into a little bit of a progress from making public commitments to showing real progress. And to do that, I have a panel with me. And we'll do a quick intro. I'll start with myself. So Dmitri ov. As of last week, I'm a new title VP of Supply Chain for Coal Stream Energy.

My background is the engineer, a petroleum engineer, and I spent over 15 years in energy industry, starting with materials management, planning, procurement logistics. Last five years I spent in the global procurement overseeing supply relationship management. Contract compliance, sustainability, risk management was the topics that I was involved in.

And, very happy to be with the panel and with you today. And hopefully, our goal today is to uncover things that these teams have and also make sure you don't fall asleep after lunch.

Tom Whitmore, Category Manager, Facilities and Real Estate – Hilti Group: Sorry.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): Good timing. All right, Tom, over to you.

Tom Whitmore, Category Manager, Facilities and Real Estate – Hilti Group: My name's Tom Whitmore.

I've been with Hilti for about two and a half years. I am the category manager for facilities and real estate. My background be, I was in the Marine Corps for four years and I have a 24, 25 year career in facilities and real estate. Started out in facilities, then corporate real estate, then brokerage.

I'm a real estate broker, and then. The procurement. My background's a unique I think in that I bring an operational look at contracts, especially for facility spend and real estate negotiations. And so I'm able to bring the strategic and the operational side to the contracts.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): Alright

Stephanie Buntine, Senior Manager, Category Manager – Facilities, CAPEX & MRO – Bausch + Lomb: Stephanie Buntine.

I'm with Bausch and LA now for about a year. Category manager for CapEx facilities and MRO. Most of my experience is on the former the CapEx and the facility side. MROs a new new again, category for me, I should say. I spent a lot of time the last decade working specifically in facilities both from an operational perspective and also for the procurement lens.

Yeah, I think it brings a different twist. Being able to work with operations and understand their needs versus only looking at it from that cost perspective.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): Alright, Kel,

Kelvin Burnett, Senior Sourcing Manager, Indirects –The J.M. Smucker Company: Kelvin Burnett senior sourcing manager responsible for MRO and Facility services. I've been with with JM Smucker.

So say with the name like Smar, it's gotta be good, right? So with smar, I've been with Smar now about 25 years, but got about 35 years of total experience from. The US Army to now managing the MRO and facility services space.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): Alright. Okay, let's get started. So first question and I have Tom and Calvin on, on, on the spot.

So we'll start with the Hilti has actually been carbon neutral in their operations. They also have committed to reduce their Scope one and Scope two by 50% by 2032. And scope three by 30%. At the same time, we have Schmucker who had, from their baseline of 2019, had seen the increase in scope one and Scope two.

So Tom, we'll start with you. And so how do you take that, high level goal and how do you translate that into, actions and how do you measure success?

Tom Whitmore, Category Manager, Facilities and Real Estate – Hilti Group: So we actually incorporate embed reduc, carbon reduction sustainability into our contracts. Within procurement from vendor selection all the way up to the vendor on onboarding process, they have to sign document and they have to understand up front that they have to provide information.

From negotiating contracts, HVAC and electrifying operations, we're actually able to keep track of everything through real time data to provide actual insights towards our targets.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): That's good. Kelly.

Kelvin Burnett, Senior Sourcing Manager, Indirects –The J.M. Smucker Company: Yeah. James m Smucker, has grown their business through acquisition. So we have acquired a lot of businesses that, was not as far along the journey in in this area as we were.

So as a result, we've seen some increases in those areas, but what we've done is we've entered into a lot of purchase agreements to help offset that. So in our corporate responsibility report that we are just getting ready to launch, you'll see that we've actually had a reduction, a total reduction because of our virtu virtual purchase agreements that we've used, solar, wind farms, different things like that to offset those increases that the otherwise we would've seen if we wouldn't have invested in some of those virtual purchase agreements.

So that's one way that we've done, to offset some of those increases, but also you. What we've done is work back with our businesses to make sure that they, understand every project coming in. How do we evaluate those projects and how those projects have impacts to those different sustainability results?

We'll talk a little bit more about that.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): Alright, thank you Colin. Maybe Stephanie, just to give you opportunity if you see a struggles, making the progress, so how do you reset, how do you push forward?

Stephanie Buntine, Senior Manager, Category Manager – Facilities, CAPEX & MRO – Bausch + Lomb: I feel like this is very common. In sustainability projects, but it always helps in my opinion.

To go back to the why, remind the team why we're doing this. What is the objective, what we're trying to accomplish? Is it that we have a net zero goal for 2030? A, a previous company that I worked for had a zero to landfill goal. So how do we take back what we're actively working on today, reenergize the team.

On how we can work together to start on the same, restart on the same path.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): Alright. Sounds good. That's Harry, you have it guys, from translating what's written, getting into the operational aspects and measuring the progress. We'll switch into cost versus, say sustainability.

I think that's, very. Interesting subject Kel. And I'll you're gonna go next. So there's something that I picked up from the corporate report so very kind of inspiring goal. 0% waste true zero waste certification by 2030. And you already have one side that's gold certified. So can you help us, explain a little bit what's happening around it?

How do you achieve it? And and how does relate to cost? How do you see all that?

Kelvin Burnett, Senior Sourcing Manager, Indirects –The J.M. Smucker Company: Got it. Yeah, so what we've realized is that when we, when you're really operating at a high level, you're actually taking cost out of the business. So by becoming green certified, not only that but by making sure that all of our sites are qualified, what we've done is we've changed the way that the operations thing.

I used to, start an operation at everything, went into, just this one big catchall, trash, right? So we coined the phrase of cash, excuse me, trash to cash, right? So there's a lot of things that otherwise would've been co-mingled when separated. Now they become viable.

Profit centers versus cost centers. So we've, just by doing that along, we've driven out a lot of operational costs and it's been easy to replicate that at other sites. So we, have great partners that we've looked to help us with the type of items that we're buying, making sure that those items are sustainable, recyclable, so that they fit into our current, waste streams.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): Alright. No, that's good. That's good. Really you found a way, for sustainability angle to save money and, work together. And if it's really saves money, wine, it's not adopted faster, maybe Stephanie, you wanna try that?

Stephanie Buntine, Senior Manager, Category Manager – Facilities, CAPEX & MRO – Bausch + Lomb: I think that people have the idea that green costs more, and sometimes that's true.

Sometimes, in fact it does cost a lot more. But this, I think also goes back to what I said previously about reminding folks why we're doing things right when your company develops science-based targets. And that's what we're working towards for consider the greater good of the world, right? Because the US or Europe, we're not the only people, not the only companies that are working towards green goals.

I think that it's important to remind folks that green doesn't necessarily cost more money. And if it does, then you have to really work a little bit harder to try and highlight what that return on investment is. It might not be cash, but it might be meeting our green goals.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): And we'll talk ROI on the next question.

Tom, you wanna add something?

Tom Whitmore, Category Manager, Facilities and Real Estate – Hilti Group: Yeah. To piggyback off of Stephanie's comments, the, it definitely provides value. It definitely provides savings, but it is a lot of the technologies and stuff out there. It's a long term value add versus a short term, hitting the margin short term.

And so you have to make the business case to the leadership. I'm fortunate at Hilti because we're very sustainable, I can, we lease our locations so we don't have a whole lot of requirements CapEx for larger projects in retrofits. But with that said, making the business case for your leadership, showing that this technology is gonna reduce, our energy consumption or something over time.

And help us reach our emission, our carbon goals.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): All right, sounds good. So let's moving on. So suppliers is a big part of, everything that we do, right? There's obviously internal operations, but we are relying on suppliers a lot. So I know Boston and Lo has. Specific tracking program for working with the suppliers.

And so how do you find yourself, Stephanie, on today's world? Is do you have suppliers that bringing you innovative ideas, solutions, or you still have to. Pull them along. Was the join both was the journey?

Stephanie Buntine, Senior Manager, Category Manager – Facilities, CAPEX & MRO – Bausch + Lomb: Both. We definitely and I won't just speak specifically about Ba la I've been here for a year, but much broader experience with other companies as well, and I feel like the suppliers, you can find a great partner that is willing to bring you along on their journey. Maybe they're further along than you are. I worked with a packaging supplier when I worked at Kon Nagle. And they were already trying to figure out how we can buy corrugate at, with lower water consumption or recyclable, more easily recyclable plastics, things like that.

So you have those innovators that are out there that are taking the lead that you can hitch on their bandwagon. And then on the other end of the spectrum, you've got the guys that still wanna, chip rocks in a cave. And it goes back to, making sure, hey, it's sustainable.

Perhaps I think, sorry.

I think it goes back to making sure that your goals are aligned, right? You don't wanna partner with somebody who's going to drag you backwards. If they're a sole source provider, then you gotta figure out how to work together to get. The same direction.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): That's right. Yeah. I have the, if you guys interested tomorrow I have a speech on that, how to work with sole suppliers and single source.

But Tom over to you. What's your experience at Hilti?

Tom Whitmore, Category Manager, Facilities and Real Estate – Hilti Group: First off, I had, I have long COVID, I have this dry cloth that won't go away, so I apologize for the burst of sound. I'm really trying to make sure I'm not coughing, and so if it look like I'm straining, that's why. Yeah, hilt, we have a circularity.

And, circularity within recycling it's a, we are very cautious in about what we're putting in the landfill. And so with that, the circular area process. If you go to one of our repair centers, we literally, those tools, we take in about a million tools a year, and then we recycle about a hundred thousand of those parts and that are recertified and put into tools for refurbishment.

And we're very careful. The repair center has zero waste. They don't actually put anything in landfill. Everything gets repurposed. And so I don't, I support that on the contract side via, e-waste steel metal recycling plastic waste in case there ever is any to make sure it doesn't go to land, to the landfill.

But with that we, I find that they're usually pulling us along a little bit more than we're pulling them along 'cause of who we partner with. 'cause we do a really good job of vetting. And so take waste management for reference. They have really good tools for waste management reporting, carbon emissions, whatnot.

And there's, they have tools that we're not even using. And so a lot of times you. You have to see what those vendors have, what their value add is, and then, in this case they're pulling us along.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): Alright. That sounds good.

Tom Whitmore, Category Manager, Facilities and Real Estate – Hilti Group: Sorry I went in circle.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): Yeah, we've seen the full spectrum, right?

There is, there's innovators out there that trying to build a business case around, around finding solutions in innovative space. Kel, what's your experience, have you had suppliers. Maybe blocking your efforts altogether and, how do you handle that?

Kelvin Burnett, Senior Sourcing Manager, Indirects –The J.M. Smucker Company: Thank you. Great question. Early on in our journey to zero waste it we had items that was going to waste, right? It's about understanding what the, those items were, and then figuring out the source and then working backward, for example, the supplier we were buying a certain chemical from, because they felt that chemical worked well in an application.

So working back with that supplier, bringing in other cross-functional resources like our h, s and E, our environmental teams to help us test other products that were more environmentally friendly. Showing them that those products will work, will clean just as effectively will work, just as effectively driving cost out.

And increasing their productivity was a win for us across the board. And so that's one of our lead sites now that right now other sites are modeling from. And we're taking those opportunities to further drive those types of collaborations to take more waste out on landfill.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): Alright. No that's a great example.Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): All right, so we talk about, partnering with suppliers. We talk about cost. So let's talk a little bit more internal, how do you build the. The ROI for full sustainability, ROI that allows you to get a CapEx. So I know Balo has done double materiality assessments so they recognize, value.

Going beyond sustainability or putting sustainability together on the risk metrics with the economic implications, how do you build those cases that resonate well with the finance with board members? What's been experienced for you, Stephanie,

Stephanie Buntine, Senior Manager, Category Manager – Facilities, CAPEX & MRO – Bausch + Lomb: the short an answer is because we have to, right?

We have, as a global company, right? There are requirements legally. That we have to fall in line with because like I said, we're global. There are some EU requirements from a reporting perspective. We tend to try and look at from a holistic perspective, so the, both the impact and the financial materiality they're not mutually exclusive, right?

So how do we really work together to show in a transparent way to our board, to our stakeholders, to our investors? What it is that we're trying to accomplish. We have a board of directors and a government governance program gov governance process, I should say, not program to help hold us accountable to what we're trying to put in place for all of our sustainability goals and our projects.

We're doing that on a quarterly basis. And I think it's important that the reason that we're doing this in a transparent way is also to make sure that we're not perceived as greenwashing what we're putting out there. I feel like that's a common challenge one that I've worked through with at previous companies, how do you make sure that you're showing that what you're working on is in fact impacting the way that you're reporting.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): All right. No, that's great perspective. Tom, what do you wanna share? Maybe, one or a few other KPIs that's been used? Hilti.

Tom Whitmore, Category Manager, Facilities and Real Estate – Hilti Group: Yeah. K kpi, I wise, I'm fairly lucky in that the, it comes to sustainability, reducing carbon emissions that Hilti just, it comes down from the top.

I don't really have to fight for it. On the flip side, for the audience you wanna make sure that, you make the business case, the, whatever technology you're looking at, it's gonna go on the balance sheet. And so you have to make, you wanna make sure that you're providing the numbers, the information that the ROI is gonna be there over the long term.

So if you have a purchase building or if you have a lease, it's gonna be different. For reference, like 2007, I wouldn't dare put LEDs onto a, into a building yet because the technology was so new. Nowadays we're trying to get the ballast and lamps out because LED technology is so strong. The guarantee back then was the stuff would last for a year, 10 years, but it was only lasting for a year.

And so understanding technology doing the business case running the numbers and then showing the numbers, towards the business goals and the targets. Again, I have it easy 'cause I can do that, but that's the process. Do the business case, provide the information, show the numbers let your, I work in finance, so I have to report the CFO, so I have to show the numbers and then, and then that's pretty much it. That's it. Sorry.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): Yeah. I think it's in a lucky position, when senior management recognizes the value for one or another reason, whether it's, compliance or, this is what they believe in. It makes easier for the whole organization, to travel together.

Kelvin, do you have some good examples?

Kelvin Burnett, Senior Sourcing Manager, Indirects –The J.M. Smucker Company: Oh, great. This is a great one. This one, one touches really near and dear to my heart. In my role I had an opportunity to reapply what was working well, once again in one of our coffee businesses. And it's really partnered with a great sustainability company in Vita, I dunno if you guys have heard of them, but through that we put a better lens on the cost of quality.

So when we think about the products that we manufacture and we sell, being a leader in the CPG space, it's all about quality. So there's some decent and product that you'll never make it to the shelf that we have to get rid of. The old way sent it to landfill. Everything went to landfill.

You gotta understand that landfill costs have gone up. When there are, when you can manage it and manage the type of risk outlets for this, that is much more environmentally friendly and more economical. So what we've done is we've been able to show the cost of quality, right? If it went to landfill, we'd have been paying X or xx.

And because we went to another source that's approved and be it, whatever that source is, then yes, here's what the savings is. So by doing that, we've reduced our costs in that space significantly and and got a hundred percent support. Now the whole ecosystem is using this solution through Invita and it's really been doing wonder wonders for us and really driving that wasted landfill diversion up.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): I think it's, I think it's amazing from, a circularity perspective. And, reduction of waste you find, and sometimes it's, across, it's not within your industry. Sometimes you have to work a little bit harder that someone can take your waste as a raw material stream for them.

I think it's working for both, both companies, both industries and a community that. That enjoying the benefits. So I think, hopefully this is a good example for you guys to take away. So speaking of that, for examples to take away I'm gonna ask Tom, maybe we'll start with you.

What is the one action or two, that would you recommend for the people to take, this week, next week as they come back to their their job?

Tom Whitmore, Category Manager, Facilities and Real Estate – Hilti Group: From a procurement per perspective, if you don't have that operational background scheduled time with your facilities teams if you own the building, go walk the building, go up to the roof, look at the roof, 'cause it, all that stuff has an end life.

Go look at the RTUs to see what you know, figure, understand what it entails. Walk the buildings, look to see what the carpet, what the ceilings look like. Go into the genial closet, see what type of chemicals they're using. Are they low? VOC, because that's indoor air quality. For locations that are leased, if you have a IES corner that does that, does stuff out in the field, go visit a store.

See what those stores look like, see, 'cause stores are gonna have different requirements depending on the lease structure. Again, I'm in real estate too, so I have to balance, the CapEx, with, the operational spend. So go out and look at the buildings if you're supporting it.

If you don't understand what. You're supporting then, ask the facilities team they'll tell you, I'll, I can talk to facilities all day long. Yeah, they'll tell you and they'll tell you what their problems are, what they need help with. So that's my advice.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): Thank you Tom.

Stephanie, you can piggyback.

Stephanie Buntine, Senior Manager, Category Manager – Facilities, CAPEX & MRO – Bausch + Lomb: Yeah. Know your sustainability people, right? Know your company's goals for sustainability. And I think another opportunity that might help you if you don't have a formal. Program in place the projects that you're working on today. As an example, a CapEx project for a new boiler was one that we had last year, and our, one of our sustainability directors had asked what the sustainability impact was.

I don't know, I don't know that we've really looked at that, but there is a sustainability angle spin, however you wanna call it, and because it was a new boiler. It was more energy efficient than the old one. It was using less water. So how do we figure out how we measure the benefits of something that we're already doing?

We already needed this boiler. The guys that said, the facilities guys that said, Hey, I need this. They're not thinking of sustainability. They wanna make sure that the boiler works the way it's supposed to work, that we get a new one. It's technical life is good. But there's a benefit. It's like turning over the rocks, right?

It's something that you're doing already. Anyway. But you can highlight this piece of it and say, look, there's a sustainability piece here. Let's measure it and report it. Because you can take credit for that, even though it's not a sustainability project.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): It wasn't born,

Stephanie Buntine, Senior Manager, Category Manager – Facilities, CAPEX & MRO – Bausch + Lomb: no, it wasn't born as a sustainability project.

But you still, you can still find some benefit.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): Alright. Sounds good. Coming.

Kelvin Burnett, Senior Sourcing Manager, Indirects –The J.M. Smucker Company: Really to piggyback off of what Stephanie said, embedding sustainability into your CapEx program. Making sure that you can evaluate the impact to your goals with the new equipment, right? You got, you have to do that, you have to bid it in there but more importantly, make sure you're working with partners that are gonna help further your aspirations.

So one of the things, in order to be green certified, we have to have partners. So like we use, I don't just wanna throw vendor names out there, but we have some great partners that we use that, that we then. Also share what they're doing to help our sustainability aspirations as well. So really, the two things I would say, embed, embed it into your CapEx Pro program, and also finding great partners that have like goals.

'cause then that's gonna help you achieve your goals much quicker.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): All right. I'm sure you have tons of more, but

Kelvin Burnett, Senior Sourcing Manager, Indirects –The J.M. Smucker Company: I really do.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): So maybe one advice for me is as we were preparing, for the panel we had to research ourselves and we had to, I had to research the companies.

So I think I wanna give a clap, to procure MRO team for picking up the panel that they have. And these companies, they have, sustainability report, they have corporate performance report. I think. Some of the title like that. So that would be my recommendation. If you guys are looking for examples of what to do, there's plenty of, opportunities to read what others are doing.

Starting with the three companies that we have represented here. Back in my procurement days and, I was looking at some of the tech companies sustainability report and you can even gauge, how far. How many years, somebody's ahead of you and if you're looking to build a three year strategic plan for your department, they don't have to think very hard, just need to do a little bit of reading analytics and then putting it back back together.

And one more question as we were preparing for for this panel and we talk about, what takeaways we want you guys to have. So Stephanie brought up. Unicorns. Unicorns.

Stephanie Buntine, Senior Manager, Category Manager – Facilities, CAPEX & MRO – Bausch + Lomb: We could say unicorn.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): Unicorns, something exciting to share.

Stephanie Buntine, Senior Manager, Category Manager – Facilities, CAPEX & MRO – Bausch + Lomb: I think we called, I think we called them jewels, but somebodys this mornings said nuggets, like the golden nugget.

What's your main takeaway?

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): All right I'm gonna come back to you guys if you want to share, whether it's a cool project, or beyond what you already mentioned. I think something interesting or a cool project would be to share. It would be nice.

Kelvin Burnett, Senior Sourcing Manager, Indirects –The J.M. Smucker Company: I'll go first. One of the cool projects we talk about that trash to cash concept is in our coffee business, right?

We have a byproduct that we produce. Understand that this byproduct is 60% of a feed stock to another one. So we've taken something that would've otherwise went to the landfill. Now we're getting paid for someone to take it. It. Yes, in sustainability there is so much opportunity, so you, it's easy to get the capital investment you need.

It's easy to get the alignment. You just have to get the right teams working on it to uncover the opportunity, unlock that potential in what you already have, and stop thinking of it as just as a call center.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): Alright, thank you Kevin. Stephanie, Tom.

Stephanie Buntine, Senior Manager, Category Manager – Facilities, CAPEX & MRO – Bausch + Lomb: I feel like there, there have been a lot of sustainable sustainability.

See, you were worried about saying sustainability o over, over my career. I think that there's a lot of cool stuff out there. Even LED upgrades I think can be cool. And that might make me a little corny, but That's okay. I feel like for me the nugget. Would be to if this is an area that you're interested in, find a way to embody it and help spread it to others.

So sustainability for me in my household, my day to day, I try and be low waste. I don't think it's possible for me to be no waste, but I, I refill my shampoo bottle or I try and do like a bar conditioner, I compost. It's a little stinky sometimes, but, from a, an overall perspective.

Circularity, recycling. All of these things are things that we can do as individuals that we can take back to our companies. And sometimes it is something as stupid as starting a compost, like a Kuna Nale. One of our sites asked for a green bin, and then it caught on after that. More and more sites wanted to do composting, and we found partners locally to the offices that would take that compost and put it to you somewhere else.

So we don't really have to worry about the icky part. We just collected it, so find the thing that you're interested in and find a way to help pivot that, or parlay, I guess I could say.

Kelvin Burnett, Senior Sourcing Manager, Indirects –The J.M. Smucker Company: Yeah. I just have to, interject here real quick and connecting people with their passion.

While I do procurement, I have a passion for sustainability because I lived a, in an area where a landfill. That, at one time was a landfill. Then, after a big storm, then they turned it into this beautiful place that they built all these houses on 10 years later, everybody had to move because of the issues with the environmental issues in on the land.

So we just can't con, continue with the mindset of everything is trash. We just can't, we just don't have a place to put it. So find those people that have a passion and when they have a passion, they're gonna come up with all kind of great ideas. Figure that out in here, organization. I think that'll go a long way as well.

Had to put that out. Sorry. Thank

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): you. Thank you. Kelly. And I really like the example, our household, that is facility, that you are running, that your family is running. So implementing those things at your home I think is a great reminder for all of us. Tom,

Tom Whitmore, Category Manager, Facilities and Real Estate – Hilti Group: the one, one thing I don't have to cough.

One thing to, to think of is, partner with the businesses, re regardless of how your companies are set up, partnering with the businesses, you can, like at Hilti we have employee resource groups. If sustainability is something that you wanna look at and you want input from the business, even if it's just the headquarters facility or whatnot go to hr create an employee resource group.

You'll hear plenty of recommendations from the employees on how to do things. Nice. Especially when it comes to contracts and of course always, partner with the facilities team on that. 'cause they're the ones that have to bear the brunt of it. But yeah if you're passionate, do something, that's all I could, that's it.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): All right, sounds good. This is all we prepared for you guys, so at this point we can open up for questions and I've seen, everyone was listening, so thank you very much for that. And here we go. We got some questions coming. Yeah. Thank you guys for this panel. We have microphone.

Man, I'm mess behind you.

Audience: Thanks.

Tom Whitmore, Category Manager, Facilities and Real Estate – Hilti Group: Test.

Audience: Thank you for jumping up here guys. This is really fascinating. When you think of like low hanging fruit, I heard like landfill waste emissions testing, water and corrugated products, what are the low hanging fruit opportunities that you see that are just turnkey that good places to start?

Kelvin Burnett, Senior Sourcing Manager, Indirects –The J.M. Smucker Company: I'll say, 'cause I spent a lot of years in operations, maybe too many years. But anyway, I'm gonna say what we did, we did a lot of dumpster diving, right? It's a term for, you gotta go take that trash and understand what's the makeup? And once you really figure out, then from that perspective, you go back to your operation.

How do we segregate it? That's the low hanging fruit you gotta get. Not only yourself and that champion on board, you gotta get. The total employee base. They're, energized, separating now that you get clean. So it's not trash anymore. It's, it is something that can be upcycled. And so that's the low hanging fruit.

How do we segregate what we are disposing of in a way that makes it more impactful?

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): There are opportunities now with, metal to be used in 3D printing back as a ink, there, there's ways to look at your waste. Maybe. All right.

Audience: I can usually speak very loud. So I'm gonna go right into, I think something that's on the, on everyone's mind. At least it's been on my mind. The procurement is either a mouthpiece or it's muscle, but finance and operations are the checkbook. So they're gonna make a decision and procurement has to then engage and.

So last week we hear the statement that it's a con game, right? And so what I'm finding really interesting right now from a sustainability lens and procurement, right? Have you begun to navigate the waters with your procurement sustainability partners that may either say we want to focus on driving more savings from the CFO perspective.

Or from an operations perspective, if the E and ESG is now much lowercase as operations started to say, yeah, that was last week. We really wanna dial this back because we want either, we want some UNGA in some game. That's not sustainability. They wanna refocus. And now procurement who's been holding this banner for a decade.

Now it has to be, again, waving a different banner. Have you started to see that?

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): I think the short answer is probably yes, based on what I read about these companies. But I'll let you guys, you wanna go first?

Kelvin Burnett, Senior Sourcing Manager, Indirects –The J.M. Smucker Company: Oh I'm just jumping at the bit. Initially when we started on this journey we thought that wasted energy was our way to get to zero, and we realized that was not economically feasible.

And so we had to make other choices, right? So we had to get, strike a balance. And so to be, become green certified it's diversion from the environment because if you just, recycling and you're burning it, you really have to drive any value. You put you, em, emitting all those gases.

So it, so we were able to strike a balance that's driving real value because now we're not saying zero because that might be impractical, but the way that we're doing it now, we're seeing that diversion from landfill being a real value.

Tom Whitmore, Category Manager, Facilities and Real Estate – Hilti Group: So I technically work in the finance department, so I'm just a few steps away from CFO.

So everything I do, I report up. To your point is, back in 2007 at LED for reference, I take a very pragmatic approach to sustainability and ESG mainly. 'cause a lot of times the technology's just not there. You have to have the ROI on it. Even at Hilti, because we have the overarching global components which is very green.

They're European. And so I have to fight on my side, with what I do as far as heat pumps versus gas versus because they're pushing for one thing and it's not making sense here in the us. And so it goes back to the business case. I'm actually, I don't say I'm winning.

I've been loud enough in that as, the, as the flag bearer in that, Hey, this isn't necessarily the best thing for us because it's gonna cost more money. It's not gonna reduce our CO2. And so if that's your ultimate goal, then I have to make the case to say this isn't right. We're actually, if we do this, it's gonna reduce our carbon emissions, it's gonna reduce our, energy costs.

So you, you do have to, I understand what you're saying, but there there's an approach to it that, can be,

Stephanie Buntine, Senior Manager, Category Manager – Facilities, CAPEX & MRO – Bausch + Lomb: It's a dance. Really. Yeah. 'Cause to your point, some days it's a little bit more important and other days it's not. Top on the deck. I don't, I haven't necessarily experienced this with Bausch, but at a previous employer, we had a very aggressive sustainability goal for Net Zero by 2030.

I don't know how they're doing against that goal today. But I can tell you one of the regular challenges that we had was that we have all these grandiose ideas, talking about. Visualizing the waste stream as an example, we were talking about this a little bit before we came up here. How do we get our people to put the recycling thing in the recycling bin and not in the trash bin?

And at the end of the day, we didn't have internal resources to make that happen. So it's like we have this goal, we know that we need some kind of labor to help us manage this project. We don't have it internally, but we didn't want to pay a consultant to help us. So it's that, are we really serious about what we've said as a company from a sustainability perspective?

Do we, are we putting our foot behind what we've put out there to the public? Are we gonna miss our goal? And if we're not willing to spend money on a consultant, how do we get people engaged internally to help get done what we need to get done? It's common, give and take.

Kelvin Burnett, Senior Sourcing Manager, Indirects –The J.M. Smucker Company: S So really quick, through those partnerships, those procurement partnerships were talked about and I mentioned one, they've, we've tied our compelling business needs to their contract.

They're helping us meet our goals because they're the ones out there doing that heavy lifting and the way their model is set up is designed such that they can do that, leverage those contracts and drive cost out. So that's been one way we've been able to achieve our ESG goals and manage and profitability.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): Alright, maybe just

Kelvin Burnett, Senior Sourcing Manager, Indirects –The J.M. Smucker Company: to dance.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): Just to add to Stephanie points and what Tom mentioned. I think your employees, if you liberalize that, make it, everyone participate, you will find those resources that you think you didn't have, but they're actually out there.

Kelvin Burnett, Senior Sourcing Manager, Indirects –The J.M. Smucker Company: That's the key.

Dmitriy Monakhov, Procurement Leader – Industry Expert (Moderator): All right? So at this point, sorry guys, we have a clock here.

That's what we walk, all looking at and our time is up. So thank you very much for staying with us, and the session is coming to the end. Thank you. Thank

you. Alright. Thank you so much for the gray panel.