Sustainability

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Health and Safety is our #1 core value and as such is at the forefront of our sustainability program. Safety is not just the hallmark of our Company but is also at the heart of what we provide to customers. Our programs and procedures focus on delivering services with unparalleled safety to our employees, our customers, local communities and other key stakeholders. Several of our U.S. sites have been recognized by the U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration’s Voluntary Protection Program ("VPP") for their effective safety management systems and low injury and illness rates. To put that in context, only approximately 2,100 workplaces in the U.S. have earned VPP recognition.

As a company we have established a goal to improve our safety performance reducing our Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR), a measure of accidents and injuries relative to hours work, to less than <1.0 by the year 2030. 

Technologies and operational improvements have allowed Clean Harbors to develop initiatives that focus on minimizing the Company’s and our customers’ impact on the environment. As a leading provider of environmental and industrial services throughout North America, we help our customers prevent the release of chemicals and hazardous waste streams into the environment. We also are the leading service provider in the recovery and decontamination of pollutants that have been released. This includes the safe destruction or disposal of hazardous materials in a manner that ensures these materials are no longer a danger to the environment.

We support our customers providing tailored waste solutions that manage waste responsibly while also supporting each customer’s unique sustainability goals and targets. When providing these services, we are committed to the recycling, reuse, and reclamation of these waste streams whenever possible using a variety of methods more fully explained below in the sections describing our general operations. Many of our branded services exemplify our commitment to sustainability and providing environmental solutions to the marketplace. Where possible, liquids such as solvents, chemicals and used oil are continuously recycled to industry standards and made into useful products. Tolling programs provide a closed-loop process in which the customer’s spent solvents are recycled to their precise specifications and returned directly to them.

Our Safety-Kleen OilPlus® Program, unique to the oil industry, is designed to help companies manage their oil needs in a more sustainable way. By collecting used motor oil from customers and delivering new re-refined oil products, customers are implementing a closed-loop process for sustainability in the oil industry. We deploy our fleet of trucks, tankers, railcars and barges to collect used oil.

In 2021, we gathered more than 226 million gallons of used oil in North America and our state-of-the-art processes enable us to fully realize oils' remarkable capacity to be recycled, re-refined and reused. Our plants have re-refined more than 4.1 billion gallons of used oil since their opening, allowing such oils to have a second life as high-quality recycled lubricants and avoiding more than 32.1 million metric tons of greenhouse gases.

With one of the 20 largest private motor carrier fleets in North America (15,000+), we have a significant opportunity to apply environmentally sustainable business practices. Our Asset Refurbishment Program is a comprehensive effort to rebuild key assets to "like-new" quality while reusing or recycling as much of the material as possible. On average our refurbished trucks have 20% better fuel economy and replace vehicles that are 15 years old. Our goal is to refurbish more than 100 highly technical vehicles used in our operations, like vacuum trucks, industrial air movers and waste oil trucks, every year.

At Clean Harbors we help our customers prevent the release of chemicals and hazardous waste streams into the environment. We also are the leading service provider in the recovery and decontamination of pollutants that have been released. Everywhere industry meets environment, Clean Harbors is there.

Our Company’s footprint, people, and assets, allow us to perform critical mitigation activities that protect our environment. Our work is focused on activities that include management of hazardous waste, recycling of used motor oil and other products and facilitating the proper destruction of ozone-depleting substances and other hazardous and harmful substances. Much of what we do directly benefits the climate often through the reduction of customer and partner emissions through our services. In 2021, we supported our customers in avoiding more 3.2 million metric tons of emissions. To put this emissions avoidance into context as calculated by the Net Climate Benefit Factor, we avoided twice (2x) the emissions we generated as a company.

Clean Harbors makes fleet energy management a key focus, beginning with ongoing reviews by our logistics team to reduce total miles driven. We also evaluate options for reducing fuel costs including routine use of rail and barge transportation, implementation of alternative fuel vehicles and using our Performance Plus® re-refined engine oils throughout our fleet. Clean Harbors is constantly upgrading our truck fleet with the most fuel-efficient systems and parts and has also designed custom, multi-compartment trucks that can be used to collect and deliver oil at the same time, decreasing fuel consumption.

DOWNLOAD OUR CORPORATE ENVIRONMENTAL, HEALTH AND SAFETY COMMITMENT

Clean Harbors believes that by staying engaged with our customers, communities and other stakeholders, we can contribute to the long-term health of the environment, society and the economy. We are dedicated to being a good neighbor in the communities in which we work. When warranted, we utilize formal reporting platforms to inform customers and other stakeholders of our sustainability efforts, including CDP, EcoVadis and SP Global, among others.

We develop partnerships with key environmental programs to build awareness, while fostering more sustainable business practices. One of our most highly visible public programs for various government and community entities is known as our Household Hazardous Waste service line. Communities trust us to collect paints, solvents, batteries, fluorescent lamps, pesticides, cleaners and other hazardous materials during one-day, multi-day and mobile programs that otherwise might be improperly disposed of or become dangerous to the communities where they are stored.

Our commitment and our business go hand in hand as we work to provide services and products that complement our customers' sustainability plans and hold ourselves and others accountable to environmental, social and corporate governance standards and best practices.

We believe in holding ourselves to high standards for sustainability and human rights practices and have taken efforts to drive sustainable practices through rigorous supply chain oversight. We monitor for practices that are not in line with our corporate vision and work to drive change. Clean Harbors recognizes its responsibility to assist in the development and use of small business suppliers of goods and services. Consistent with legal and ethical obligations to all suppliers, the Company will strive to seek out small businesses capable of supplying the materials and services that the Company requires. Details on our program to engage small business can be found at Small Business Supplier Program Our Vendor Code of Business Conduct and Ethics establishes the minimum standards that must be met by all vendors regarding treatment of workers, safety, environmental impact and ethical business practices.

We are committed to fundamental human rights principles. Respect for human rights is essential to our interactions with employees, customers, shareholders and the public at large. In 2020, we published a comprehensive Human Rights Policy to formalize the standards to which we hold ourselves and others accountable. We have incorporated human rights into our Vendor Code of Business Conduct and Ethics.

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At Clean Harbors, our people are our greatest asset. We are committed to the safety and well-being of our more than 20,000 employees and strive to cultivate a culture of inclusion that values diverse perspectives across our global workforce. The 2021 acquisition of HydroChemPSC (HPC) and the continued growth of our Global Capability Center (GCC) in India have expanded and further diversified our employee population and our culture. We value every voice at Clean Harbors and conduct employee surveys to listen to our people and take action to improve their lives and our business. More than 72% of our employees participated in our most recent global employee survey (2022) marking the best response rate in our company’s history.

Employee-led resource groups (ERGs) are helping to support diversity efforts within our workplace. In 2021, we established seven ERGs with the purpose of increasing a sense of belonging, inclusion and collaboration among our employees. These groups contribute suggestions, leadership and passion to areas such as onboarding, recruitment, retention and culture.