Commercial Restroom Reflections: A Focus on Sustainability

Sustainability is under the microscope more than ever as we kick off 2023, and the commercial restroom is playing a major role in the sustainability arena. From transparency reports and ESG to the WELL Building Standard and beyond, there are many evolving trends to help make the restroom more sustainable.

Paul Sambanis, Sloan’s new Vice President of Sustainability, brings a unique perspective to these efforts as both a seasoned professional through years at several major corporations, as well as his role as an adjunct professor for over a decade. We sat down with Paul for his perspective on a number of hot topics in sustainability, while catching up on his early progress at Sloan.

You’ve focused on conserving energy and water throughout your 15-year career. How do you look to continue that focus at Sloan?

I live with the adage of ‘the wise man knows nothing.’ That’s why I’ve spent my early days at Sloan just learning our existing process and the great work that we’re already doing. One of our goals at Sloan is to focus on conserving both energy and water through the transparency reports we've developed for a lot of our products, which help our end users understand the global warming potential of the products that they’re utilizing. We’ve also recently been able to develop optimization reports from our renewals mode, which is great because it lowers the potential impact of global warming.

I'm excited to develop a plan to continue these efforts. I'm working closely with Sloan leadership because sustainability touches so many elements, how we source our products, how they are being utilized, how we develop our products, and more. First and foremost, I want to develop a baseline and understand where we are and then develop a strategy of where we’re going.

What led you to want to work at Sloan?

I was really excited for the opportunity to work at Sloan. The idea of developing a sustainability program that can reach the whole lifecycle of a product and our end use is awesome. Even though I’m new to the role, it’s already been great to work with Sloan’s new product development team to ensure new products and existing supply chains are optimized to ensure we consider all of our environmental impacts – like moving away from embedded carbon and working with operations to implement initiatives from our facilities like zero waste landfill, water reduction projects, and more.

The most appealing part about being at Sloan from my perspective is being a trusted partner for our customers. Since our products help reduce water for many building applications there’s a huge opportunity to help reduce water impacts, which the world needs more than ever with ongoing droughts.

You have a passion for climate change action. From your perspective, what role does the restroom play when it comes to this topic?

Typically, 40% of a building’s water use takes place in the restroom. And as companies begin decarbonization of their emissions, water has a place in that conversation. The Department of Energy understands this, so they’ve rolled out guidance on how to develop what they call a net zero water building. I think that with the amount of water that restrooms account for, Sloan will become a trusted partner when it comes to how we work with these companies or these various buildings to really develop a net zero water building in the future.

Additionally, Sloan’s Internet of Things (IoT) offering will help a lot of customers, especially in the sustainability world, as they begin to measure the water in their restrooms. We have the ability to measure activations at both the faucet and flushometer level and we can see how much water is being utilized.

What is Sloan currently working on in relation to Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)?

ESG is a huge opportunity for Sloan. There are a lot of regulations and frameworks around it and it’s really being pushed as a requirement going forward. We're currently working on our first ESG report and I’m very excited about it. We’re first gathering all the information and developing a baseline to understand where are we at Sloan, but there’s also an important social factor as well.

Our DEI leadership is doing a phenomenal job and we’re proud of all the charitable work that we’re doing as a company through our partnership with the Chicago Cubs and beyond. Governance is an important factor as well for Sloan, as we have a lot of metals and associated properties that compose our products.

We really want to establish a holistic approach on developing our first ESG report that really touches upon all three elements and really sets the baseline as to where we stand as a company and something that everyone can point to and be very clear on what Sloan is doing and what our strategy is when it comes to ESG.

The SEC recently proposed a rule that would require public companies to disclose their direct and indirect carbon emissions in their registration statements and filing reports. How will this impact the restroom?

This ruling was proposed recently. When we look at sustainability and an organization’s overall emissions, you have scope one and scope two, but there’s also scope three. There’s a whole life cycle of logistics in terms of transporting products, how they’re used, and beyond. In many cases for a lot of our customers, we’re that scope three element, as we’re providing them the products that go into restrooms.

Even though Sloan is a privately held company and we don't necessarily need to do that same type of reporting, we know that we have a place in that overall element and strategy, and we want to be a trusted partner that really gets ahead of the issue. We want to be transparent with our emission sources, and everything required when it comes to making a particular product—as well as some opportunities to offset that.

The WELL Building Standard has gained a lot of momentum in recent years. Where do you see the trend going from here?

There’s a new program currently being rolled out titled: “Work With WELL.” With such a huge rise in the demand for transparency in regard to the health of both people and the planet, there’s been a huge uptick in the number of WELL projects that become certified. This new program is really geared around the idea that, of course we have the standard, concepts, and strategies associated with it, but what are the particular products that you could use in your project that are already in alignment with WELL?

Sloan is now trying to work through the product certification process for the “Work with WELL” program. We’re now in the process of validating our products and have submitted a bunch of information with our transparency reports and all other publicly available information about our products for them to validate. We’re also working with the International Well Building Institute to amplify and showcase our products.