Introduction

Whirlpool Corporation is the world’s leading manufacturer of major home appliances. Our winning portfolio includes trusted appliance brands throughout the world.

For 104 years we have been persistent in our commitment that there is “no right way to do a wrong thing.” It is Whirlpool Corporation’s unique sense of responsibility that has guided us to conceive, design and build innovative home appliances that not only meet our consumers needs, but also conserve the resources so important to our planet. While our products and time-honored innovative solutions that save energy and water have made the greatest positive impact on the environment, it is our industry leadership across our entire supply chain that enables us to proudly commit to doing things the right way.

In 2015 we continue our journey of being a responsible company by saving time, energy, money and resources for people in their homes while investing to lessen our overall operational footprint. Whirlpool Corporation does this by creating purposeful innovation allowing for consumers to choose our high performance products also contributing to a reduced environmental impact. This enables people to spend more time doing the things they choose like spending time with family and friends and making moments that matter within their lives.

We proactively reduce the footprints of our facilities by using renewables, cutting the resources we use to make products, reusing waste and recycling our products at the end of life. By looking at the entire lifecycle of our products, we are able to address the needs of today’s consumers by creating a clear path toward continuous improvement in our operations to benefit the environment. We work closely with our trade customers, suppliers, academia, governmental and nongovernmental agencies to create a spirit of collaboration that spurs innovation to help people live more sustainably without compromising the performance of their products.

We are passionate about bringing innovative solutions into the home for our consumers while engaging with local agencies and organizations to build better communities for all residents and not just a few. Doing things the right way means we accept the responsibility of global leadership in our industry to make this world a better place. Whether it’s through our brands working directly with national charities, support of local non-profit organizations or the thousands of hours volunteered by our employees each year, we believe the people, products and processes within Whirlpool Corporation are truly making a difference. Our global enterprise spurs economic commerce while our commitment of doing so the right way helps make a collective impact by which the environment and society in general benefit.

Letter from the CEO

Jeff M. Fettig Chairman of the Board and
Chief Executive Officer

Whirlpool Corporation has a long history of creating opportunities for people and the communities in which they live. To achieve this success, Whirlpool has operated on a simple guiding principle — “There is no right way to do a wrong thing.” As we stated in 1969, one cannot separate the products we make from the communities in which they operate. How we connect with our consumers in the home and provide them the time- and effort-saving convenience of appliances, while improving performance and lowering their impact, is at the core of what we do.

Whirlpool Corporation helps build better communities by bringing meaningful and innovative solutions to the challenges our consumers and society face everyday. This is essential in growing as a company. We launched several key product innovations last year to deliver on that fundamental promise. In North America, we launched the next iteration of the heat pump dryer delivering approximately 70 percent energy savings,* while reducing cost, and in a slimmer size to fit in more places like urban living spaces and smaller homes. We launched our Supreme NoFrost refrigerator in Europe that achieves A+++ –10% energy level, while being No. 1 in food preservation. In addition, the product uses our 6th Sense Live connected technology, which gives food preservation tips and helps families achieve even better results, as well as energy management through access to the smart grid.

Taking that purposeful innovation further, we continued our work on the Retrofitted Net-zero Energy, Water, and Waste (ReNEWW) house collaborative, live-in research facility at Purdue University. We are in our second phase of the program and have completed retrofits in the water systems to achieve net-zero water usage in addition to the net-zero energy systems installed in 2014. The ReNEWW house now has over ten collaborators from various industries such as home building, plumbing and HVAC industries. Our successes have been shared with numerous home building, academic, architectural, and designers around the U.S. and we have recently joined the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s Sustainable Lifestyles group to facilitate more cross industry collaboration and make the ReNEWW concept global.

By bringing technology and people together to achieve purposeful, meaningful and positive change, Whirlpool Corporation is unique in the industry in addressing large societal challenges. We embrace innovation that leads to technology that isn’t in conflict with building lives, homes and communities, but rather brings them together. In this report you will see many examples of this throughout the globe.

Compared to pre-2004 traditional dryers, when paired with matching washer, normal cycle only.

Timeline

We have been focused on sustainability since 1969, long before it became the norm, and we continue to integrate sustainability into our everyday work.

KEY SUSTAINABILITY EVENTS
2015
June

Ground breaking on Whirlpool Corporation’s first wind farm

June

Whirlpool Canada is named 2015 ENERGY STAR® Manufacturer of the Year for the tenth time in the last thirteen years

September

ReNEWW House, the world’s first lived-in, fully retrofitted, net-zero energy, water and waste home achieves near net-zero energy and net-zero water

December

Achieved net-zero waste to landfill in all Latin America Region (LAR) facilities — manufacturing and offices

2014
March

Whirlpool Corporation began full production use of Next Generation Solstice® Liquid Blowing Agent in U.S. refrigerators

April

Inauguration of the ReNEWW House, an initiative in which Whirlpool engineers are working with Purdue University to be the first to transform an existing home into a net-zero energy, water and waste structure

September

The Refresh and Recycle Water Filter Program is launched to provide consumers an option for recycling their used refrigerator water filters

December

Whirlpool LAR achieved zero waste to landfill from all manufacturing operations in Brazil

2013
March

Whirlpool brand introduced the first smart-grid enabled appliance suite

May

AHAM announced new sustainability standards for clothes washers and Whirlpool Corporation had the first front load and top load washer certified to the standard

November

Whirlpool Corporation converted first refrigerator line to use Honeywell Solstice® Liquid Blowing Agent (LBA) for foam insulation*; the Honeywell Solstice® LBA offers a 99.9% decrease in global warming potential based on the GHG Equivalencies Calculator

2012
January

Whirlpool brand announced it will bring connected appliances to the marketplace

April

Whirlpool Corporation officially opened the LEED Gold-certified Cleveland, Tennessee manufacturing facility that included energy-efficient and technologically advanced manufacturing processes

June

AHAM announces new sustainability standards for refrigerators; Whirlpool Corporation experts play a key role in development

August

Whirlpool Corporation and Honeywell announced the development of the most environmentally responsible and energy-efficient insulation available at the time in U.S. to make refrigerators

December

Whirlpool Corporation officially established a zero waste to landfill goal for all of our global manufacturing facilities

2011

Began partnering with AHAM, UL and CSA to develop the first industry sustainability standards for appliances

Based on EPA comparisons of previously used insulation blowing agents, hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) 245fa with global warming potential of 950 and Honeywell solstice liquid blowing agent, a hydrofluoro-olefin 1233zd (e) with global warming potential of 1.

For earlier years, please go to our previous sustainability reports at http://whirlpoolcorp.com/environmental-sustainability/.

Performance Scorecard GRI G4 EC1 EC7

Financial
  • $20.9B

    RECORD REVENUES OF $20.9 BILLION.

  • $12.38*

    RECORD ONGOING EARNINGS PER SHARE OF $12.38, AN INCREASE OF 9%.

  • $620M*

    STRONG FREE CASH FLOW GENERATION.

ENVIRONMENTAL
Note: Intensity numbers per major appliances
2015 data affected by acquisitions of Hefei Sanyo and Indesit in 2014. Global goals under review to address these acquisitions.


Social
  • 2015
  • 1 in 3

    Employees volunteered (salaried population)

  • 316,500

    Employee volunteer hours (salaried population)

  • 300+

    Nonprofit organizations impacted globally through volunteerism and donations

  • 100+

    Whirlpool Sons & Daughters Scholarships and award recipients currently attending colleges and universities across the U.S.

Please see the Additional Financial Information section for a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures.



Signature Charities
  • United Way
  • $4.2M

    Employee and retiree United Way® campaign totals in the United States and Canada (including dollar-for-dollar match by Whirlpool Foundation)

  • Habitat for Humanity
  • 87,000

    Families helped throughout the globe since 1999

  • 45

    Countries in which Whirlpool Corporation employees have helped provide affordable housing

  • 170,000+

    Donated ranges and refrigerators in the U.S. and Canada since 1999

  • Cook for the Cure
  •  

    More than $10 million+ in support from KitchenAid brand for Susan G. Komen since 2001

  • Boys & Girls Clubs of America
  • 66,000+

    Youth served through the Maytag Dependable Club Awards in 2015

  • 75+

    Total Maytag Dependable Awards granted since 2010

  • Instituto Consulado da Mulher®
  • 5,168

    People in Brazil who, directly and indirectly, benefit from income generated through the program

  • 101

    Small businesses being advised by Instituto Consulado da Mulher

  • 16

    States in Brazil where small businesses are being advised by the program

Our Strategy

  • 90%

    FULL MATERIAL TRANSPARENCY.
    Achieve 90 percent full material transparency on all new products by 2020.

  • 15%

    REDUCTION OF ENERGY AND WATER USE IN MANUFACTURING.
    Reduce energy and water intensity from manufacturing by 15 percent from 2014 levels by 2020.

  • zero

    REAFFIRM OUR GOAL OF ZERO LANDFILL WASTE FROM MANUFACTURING BY 2022.

We incorporate sustainability programs into our products and processes while nurturing the communities where we operate, delivering value to our consumers and reducing our environmental impact.

Building on our commitment to establish a dedicated sustainability team globally, Whirlpool Corporation is proud to continue to raise the bar. By establishing goals, initiating projects and focusing on our impacts, we are delivering value to our customers, stakeholders and the environment. In addition to driving projects, our team is focused on continuous improvement throughout our operations, products and services. We’ve reduced our water and energy use, cut emissions and waste at our manufacturing facilities, and designed efficient products — all of which we believe are the right things to do for all stakeholders. To that end, we established global goals to improve our environmental performance:

  • Full Material Transparency: by 2020, Whirlpool Corporation aims to achieve 90% full material transparency on all new products.

  • Reduction of Energy and Water Use in Manufacturing: by 2020, Whirlpool Corporation aims to reduce energy and water intensity from manufacturing by 15% from 2014 levels.

  • Reaffirm our goal of zero landfill waste from manufacturing by 2022.

As clear demonstration of our progress, we are proud to announce that we met our 2022 goal for zero manufacturing waste to landfill in one of our largest regions, Latin America. All four manufacturing plants in Brazil were able to achieve zero manufacturing waste to landfill and we are making great progress around the globe to replicate that success going forward.

We have built upon our ability to demonstrate both our resolve and results in our operations and in the home environment. We have made significant progress in addressing the right partnerships and collaborations with the focus on bringing system efficiencies to all homes, both new and existing. Last year we announced our collaboration with Purdue University on the ReNEWW House live-in research lab and collaborative sustainable living showcase. It is the first live-in, retrofitted net-zero energy, water and waste research home. We committed to exploring new technologies and partnerships to address the large existing residential housing stock around the world. We were happy to announce the installation and implementation of our deep energy retrofit in September 2014, with over eight partners, designed to achieve net-zero energy.

The home also completed hosting two engineers and welcomed three new engineers to work on energy recovery and water systems design along with monitoring data from the newly installed energy systems, including geothermal, solar electric and thermal systems, as well as new foam insulation infrastructure updates. We are proud to announce progress toward the goal of this project, which is to learn more about sustainable home systems and demonstrate how any home can become resource efficient with the right modifications. At present, the home is capable of collecting over 100 channels of data every second serving both Whirlpool research and the research of our partners. As a continuation of these ongoing sustainability efforts, these results will also inform future product design throughout Whirlpool Corporation’s global portfolio.



Our Areas Of Focus Are:

EFFICIENT MATERIALS AND OPERATIONS
  1. Create transparency on our critical materials in products
  2. Use materials that minimize total life cycle impacts
  3. Improve facility efficiency by applying technology improvements and renewables use (LEED, etc.)

UNCOMPROMISED PERFORMANCE
  1. Deliver consumer driven innovations that exceed consumer expectations for performance while meeting expectations on energy and water efficiency
  2. Participate in voluntary standards that drive consumer value and improve environmental performance
  3. Develop life cycle data and measures to define sustainable products
RECYCLE AND REUSE
  1. Facilitate the responsible recycling of appliances at the end-of-life around the globe
  2. Develop new business models to capture value at the end-of-life of our products, packaging and consumables, especially finding secondary usage for wastes

GOVERNANCE
  1. Deploy automated data management systems to support sustainability metrics in our business operations
  2. Ensure transparent communication on key metrics and progress

Community

Continue working with local organizations to support the communities where we operate through a collective impact strategy



SUSTAINABILITY TOP 10 ISSUES
Click to Zoom In
  • Product Quality and Safety
  • Product Innovation
  • Customer Environmental Issues
  • End-of-Life
  • Occupational Health and Safety
  • Compliance
  • Energy Conservation
  • Responsible Sourcing
  • Restricted Controversial and Toxic Materials
  • Community Investment

MATERIALITY PROCESS

Whirlpool Corporation initiated a process to undergo a formal review of the company’s most important sustainability related issues, conducted by an external consultant and included both internal and external stakeholders globally. Through this process, we intend to gather relevant information to contribute to our sustainability strategy. The new process reflects the maturity of our sustainability journey, highlighting our achievements and our ability to progress in an ever-changing environment.

This process is ongoing in 2016 and will consider benchmarking opportunities, gap analysis on our previous sustainability reports, internal and external expert interviews and an online survey with a broad range of internal and external leaders.

Combining these inputs, we will reinforce our goal alignment and project prioritization, while making continuous improvement on the critical work we have initiated.

Awards



  • Innovation Awards at CES 2015 — Our Whirlpool brand earned six awards at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2015 Innovation Awards for the Whirlpool® Front Load Washer and Dryer with Nest Technology, Whirlpool® Double Drawer French Door Refrigerator, Whirlpool® Hybridcare™ Heat Pump Dryer, Whirlpool® Smart Top Load Washer and Dryer, and the SWASH™ system.

  • 2015 Newsweek Green Rankings, ranked 108 out of 500 in U.S.

  • Whirlpool Corporation added to Dow Jones Sustainability Index, North America

  • Whirlpool Corporation received a perfect score from the Human Rights Campaign on the 2015 U.S. Corporate Equality Index — this is the 13th consecutive year that we attained a perfect score on the index, the first appliance company to do so

  • Whirlpool Corporation in North America has received 37 ENERGY STAR® Awards since 1998. We are the most awarded appliance manufacturer by both the U.S. and Canadian ENERGY STAR® programs for continued commitment to energy and water efficient products

  • Whirlpool Latin America was named in the top five electro-electronic sector companies in sustainability in the Guia Exame de Sustentabilidade, by Exame magazine, the most prominent sustainability award in Brazil

  • Whirlpool Corporation named one of Corporate Responsibility magazine’s 100 Best Corporate Citizens 12 out of 15 years

  • Whirlpool Corporation has been named to Ocean Tomo 300 Patent Index since its inception in 2005; the equity index is the first based on the value of corporate intellectual property

  • From 2008 to 2015, we have been named one of the Most Respected U.S. Companies by Forbes magazine and the Reputation Institute

  • For the fifth year in a row, Whirlpool Corporation has finished first in the Home Equipment, Furnishings industry sector of Fortune magazine’s World’s Most Admired Companies