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Drive growth & enhance experience while reducing material use

How to drive business growth and consumer experience while reducing material use

The Challenge

Kimberly-Clark is a multinational personal care company that manufactures sanitary paper products including Kleenex facial tissue, Andrex toilet paper and Huggies disposable diapers and baby wipes.

Its EMEA Family Care division recognised a more disruptive sustainability approach was required to meet its 2030 Corporate goals, especially with respect to Scope 3 Carbon emissions. In particular it identified a paradox it would need to resolve:

How could it reduce material use per occasion while improving the consumer experience and driving business growth?

Our Approach​

We worked together to define the team’s key questions and screened dozens of peer companies from outside its industry with a mix of products, geographies, cultures and sustainability experiences.

From these we identified a shortlist from which Kimberly-Clark felt it could learn the most and arranged eight virtual meetings with corporate innovation and sustainability leaders at these international consumer product businesses.

Through these meetings we’ve talked with more than twenty senior leaders on a broad range of sustainability and innovation topics driven by Kimberly-Clark’s learning objectives.

Our Impact

Following the meetings and supported by our own team’s experience and complementary research we distilled the key conclusions and developed an updated strategy and action plan to meet its 2030 Corporate Goals.

Kimberly-Clark EMEA Family Care now has the tools required to build a strategy for transformational sustainability. Key learnings gained through the process are being reapplied in its business to reduce the use of materials, persuade consumers to change behaviour and drive these business changes internally.

It was incredibly helpful to speak with other companies about their experience of going through sustainability transformations – especially as we discussed how they overcame complex challenges and secured alignment amongst a diverse array of stakeholders. It was very inspiring and motivating to everyone on our team, empowering us to drive change faster as we deliver Kimberly-Clark’s purpose of Better Care for a Better World.

R&D Director

Kimberly-Clark


an image of our technical paper
Ku-Band Metamaterial Flat-Panel Antenna for Satcom

This technical paper by Dr. Rabbani and his team presents research on metamaterial-based, high-gain, flat-panel antennas for Ku-band satellite communications. The study focuses on leveraging the unique electromagnetic properties of metamaterials to enhance the performance of flat-panel antenna designs, aiming for compact structures with high gain and efficiency. The research outlines the design methodology involving multi-layer metasurfaces and leaky-wave antennas to achieve a compact antenna system with a realised gain greater than +20 dBi and an operational bandwidth of 200 MHz. Simulations results confirm the antenna's high efficiency and performance within the specified Ku-band frequency range. Significant findings include the antenna's potential for application in low-cost satellite communication systems and its capabilities for THz spectrum operations through design modifications. The paper provides a detailed technical roadmap of the design process, supported by diagrams, simulation results, and references to prior work in the field. This paper contributes to the advancement of antenna technology and metamaterial applications in satellite communications, offering valuable insights for researchers and professionals in telecommunications.

an image of our technical paper
Non-Invasive Auditory Sensing with Affordable Headphones

This paper presents a sensor for measuring auditory brainstem responses to help diagnose hearing problems away from specialist clinical settings using non-invasive electrodes and commercially available headphones. The challenge of reliably measuring low level electronic signals in the presence of significant noise is addressed via a precision analog processing circuit which includes a novel impedance measurement approach to verify good electrode contact. Results are presented showing that the new sensor was able to reliably sense auditory brainstem responses using noninvasive electrodes, even at lower stimuli levels.

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