Jeffrey S. Lorberbaum, Mohawk Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

A Message
from our
Chairman and CEO,
Jeffrey S. Lorberbaum

While many people may see the pandemic as a period of disruption, I view it as a time of resiliency based on our global team’s remarkable response to extraordinary challenges. In the face of great adversity, our organization has persevered by focusing on what was essential: keeping people safe and healthy; finding creative ways to ensure business continuity; and partnering with our communities to meet critical needs.

When countless people rediscovered the comfort and solace their homes represented, they turned to Mohawk for renovation of their properties and renewal of their spirits. We’re honored that millions of people in around 170 countries are choosing our products to upgrade residences and public spaces. We’re committed to providing them with quality and value, as well as products that are made ethically and responsibly with greater recycled content, reduced use of natural resources and longer life cycles.

Smart City, a Living Product certified carpet plank system, is made at our Glasgow, Virginia, facility.

As the world’s largest flooring company, our success brings with it a responsibility for leadership on critical issues, such as climate change, human rights, health and well-being and opportunities for everyone. In this report, you’ll learn more about how we are:

Decarbonizing our products
Reinforcing our commitment to diversity and inclusion and providing opportunity for all
Empowering people to lead healthier, more engaged lives
Strengthening our governance.

While our business decisions are driven by data, they also are driven by principles, some of which include:

Investing in our employees, respecting what makes each of them unique individuals and helping them find fulfillment through work that matters
Creating innovative products that lay the foundation for healthier, more inspiring spaces where people live and work
Reducing our consumption of water and energy, incorporating more recycled content into our products — including more than 30 billion plastic bottles in the past five years — and reusing and repurposing waste
Nurturing the quality of life in the communities where our facilities are located, which is good for our employees and their families and the overall community

When we make choices that benefit people and the planet, they invariably benefit our business. For this reason, we are amplifying our commitment to further reducing our carbon footprint through science-based strategies. Our businesses around the world have unique processes and use a wide variety of materials; each is defining its own best path to support our overall objectives.

We appreciate your interest in our sustainability journey, and we hope that you’ll learn even more about Mohawk through this year’s report. We are inspired by the work of individuals and organizations with whom we share a commitment to innovating for a better tomorrow. We are still listening, learning, growing, testing new ideas and striving for greater results. We have always embraced ambitious goals, and we are committed to the important work required to achieve them.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey S. Lorberbaum
Chairman and CEO

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Where We’ve Been:
Our 2010 Targets

For more than a decade, Mohawk has been working to reduce its environmental impact by focusing on our goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), water and waste-to-landfill intensity by 25 percent against a 2010 baseline.

Our rapid business growth around the world — both organically and through multiple acquisitions — has challenged our pursuit of these goals as we worked to integrate businesses and systems into our operations. These same acquisitions, however, have also brought new opportunities to make positive environmental impacts, most notably through our products.

Despite these challenges, we are pleased to report that we surpassed two of these goals and made measurable progress toward another. Since 2010, we have reduced water use intensity by 28 percent and waste-to-landfill intensity by 28 percent — well above goal. We also were able to achieve a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions intensity, which was short of our goal but still meaningful given the growth of our business over the past decade.

We are excited to introduce our new ESG strategy framework with a set of refreshed ESG goals and objectives.

Reducing Our Impact 2010-2020

28%
Reduction water
Use Intensity

28%
Reduction waste
to landfill Intensity

20%
Reduction GHG
Emissions Intensity

Around 5,500 solar panels cover the roof of our
insulation manufacturing site in Desselgem, Belgium.

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ESG Going Forward

Sustainability Vision: Building a better future for our people, our planet and Mohawk as the global leader in innovative, sustainable, healthy products designed to enhance and inspire people’s lives.

Sustainability Mission: Our future depends on the work we do today. At Mohawk, our commitment to sustainability extends beyond just products and processes: it’s how we challenge ourselves to do and be better every day, how we make decisions, how we reinvest in our people and our planet, and how we define what matters as we work to deliver value for generations to come.

In 2021, with the appointment of a new Vice President of Sustainability, Mohawk launched a refreshed sustainability strategy, highlighting how innovation at the heart of our business yields efficient operations and sustainable product design. This strategy centers around the three pillars of People, Planet and Performance.

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better for
people

Performance-Driven Workforce

Building and developing a high‑performing team with diverse backgrounds and experiences

Continue to build out comprehensive, accessible talent development programs across all levels and career stages to achieve maximized business results by growing our sustainable internal talent pipeline.
Develop an enterprise-wide Human Rights Policy that incorporates existing business segment standards and practices by 2022.

Zero-Harm Workplace

Creating safe, hazard-free environments that support employee health and well-being

Further the reduction of workplace injuries by lowering our incident rate to 1.0 by 2030. Safety is a core Company value that is continual, driven by leadership commitment and embraced by all levels of employees in their daily activity.

Connected Communities

Partnering locally and globally with organizations to improve lives where our team members, customers and stakeholders live and work

Attract best-fit talent by continuing to build community partnerships and leverage our employer brand to yield an applicant pool that reflects the diversity of our communities.
Continue investing in and engaging with local nonprofit partners to improve the quality of life in the communities where our employees live and work.

better for the
planet

Climate-Positive Future

Being part of the climate change solution by implementing a decarbonization strategy through measurable science-based targets

Reduce Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 25 percent by 2025.
Develop consistent process for measuring and assessing Scope 3 emissions to help develop science-based emissions targets and report Scope 3 emissions by 2024.

Water Restoration

Improving efficient and responsible use of water in all processes and products

Reduce water intensity by 30 percent by 2025.

Product Circularity

Thoughtfully minimizing environmental impact across product life-cycle through sustainable design, innovation, extended use and responsible reuse

Release a product circularity goal for each business segment by 2025.
Reduce waste-to-landfill by 30 percent by 2025.

Responsible Sourcing

Selecting suppliers and partners that meet our ethical, sustainable and socially conscious standards

All manufacturing locations adhere to wood sourcing principles, such as FSC®, PEFC™ or other third-party validation, to ensure 100 percent of our wood fiber comes from responsibly managed forests by 2030. These programs are validated through an annual audit process.
Engage in carbon reduction partnerships with our supply chain as part of the process to develop science-based targets.
Improve spend with diverse suppliers year over year. Develop a strategy to grow supplier diversity in 2022 via a cross-functional Supplier Diversity Committee.

better for
performance

Sustainability Leadership

Aligning business direction and decision-making with sustainability goals via a multi-level council of key stakeholders

Policies

Maintaining clear, accessible and consistent ethics, compliance and other ESG-related policies, such as environmental and human rights, across the organization and ensuring feedback can be provided by stakeholders through anonymous platforms

Mature our existing global, enterprise-wide Sustainability Council to grow and develop our ESG objectives and goals with an immediate focus on a climate-positive future and performance-driven workforce.

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A Conversation
with Malisa Maynard, Vice
President of Sustainability

You joined Mohawk earlier this year.
What attracted you to the Company?

Three things attracted me: the people, the innovative culture and the Company’s strong desire to grow in sustainability. There is a real willingness to take our sustainability performance to the next level. I also was impressed by the breadth of the global portfolio. There’s an amazing opportunity for impact.

View Our ESG
Goals & Commitments

What is your assessment of
where Mohawk is currently on
its sustainability journey?

Mohawk is a decentralized organization, which helps us better meet the needs of our customers who differ across each business and region. There are best practices that have been developed within each of the businesses that focus on their respective stakeholders’ needs. As a result, ESG strengths differ among business units. The culture to collaborate is absolutely here. The desire to make our products and processes even more sustainable is very strong. We need, however, to apply best practices from each of our businesses in a more holistic way so that we can amplify our results.

What are you thinking
about goals and targets?

Mohawk has spent the past decade working toward 25 percent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, water and waste-to-landfill intensity. There has been great progress. We are continuing to work on the goals and will refresh them, including expanded ESG metrics, as we execute our new governance process.

How did you go about developing an enterprise‑level ESG strategy?

The first step was to understand each business team, their vision and how they define sustainability in order to identify their strengths. Then, we looked for commonalities among the businesses and started to build a framework that truly defines what sustainability means at Mohawk. Finally, we have addressed governance of the strategy by building cross-functional teams for people and for the planet that will collaborate to define goals and initiatives going forward.

What is the key to successfully executing that strategy?

Our businesses have the autonomy to incorporate the strategy in a way that uniquely drives success for them. We have a wide variety of products spanning a multitude of markets around the world. That means ESG priorities will vary and will be addressed differently by every business. Collectively, we will drive improvements for Mohawk, though we may have different paths to reach our North Star.

What advantages does Mohawk’s decentralized business bring to sustainability?

Innovation is our common language. There is tremendous passion and creativity around continuous improvement and a desire to better execute every aspect of our business. That translates very well into solving sustainability challenges by thinking in unique ways.

In terms of initiatives, what are your priorities?

On the planet side, we need to expand our decarbonization strategy. This is going to require every business to identify and support creative carbon reductions. On the people side, the Company’s global footprint provides us with an opportunity to define and highlight diversity in truly unique ways. We can leverage diverse backgrounds and experiences around the world to benefit our many stakeholders, including customers, employees and investors.

How do you see your role in
supporting these efforts?

We are the bridge builders. It’s our job to foster the inherent culture of innovation that exists at Mohawk to create new possibilities and business value. My team helps the business have visibility into sustainability best practices and standards. We want this to be an inclusive process with every Mohawk employee around the world having the opportunity to contribute their ideas. Innovating for a better tomorrow requires support from across the enterprise, and the enthusiasm I have seen at Mohawk is inspiring.

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Women in Leadership:
5 Questions with 5 Leaders

In 2020, women comprised 28 percent of our workforce, including 22 percent of our leadership team. Our success at promoting women to leadership positions is in large part due to the extensive leadership development programs that we have introduced to cultivate skills among high‑performing employees. Meet five of these leaders.

Veronique Hoflack
President
Unilin Panels
Flooring Rest of World Segment

Carley Ferguson
Vice President
Internal Audit
Mohawk Industries, Corporate

Tania Pauling
President
Mohawk Flooring Oceania
Flooring Rest of World Segment

Katie Engleman
Vice President
Human Resources
Flooring North America Segment

Larissa Novikova
President
Kerama Marazzi, Russia
Global Ceramic Segment

1 Why does Mohawk need women
in leadership?

VH

Having diversity on the executive team helps different views to be considered and ensures a balanced approach. “How do you attract and keep the best talent?” is the right question, and the only right answer is that you need to create an inclusive workplace, open for women and minority groups in leadership positions. This is all about the Company culture you install and promote.

TP

For any role, the person who is best able to perform that role should be appointed — regardless of gender. But women must be a part of the candidate pool considered. If only men are considered, then we would be missing out on utilizing the talents and perspective of 50 percent of the population, which would be to the detriment of the business.

KE

Women contribute to the overall success of Mohawk every day and play a major role in leadership. They also play a pivotal role in our customer base and in our communities. Having women in leadership positions ensures that we develop solutions from different perspectives, ultimately driving us to better business results and a better experience for our employees.

2 How has Mohawk supported you as a leader?

CF

During my 24-year tenure, I have been provided opportunities for stretch roles and growth in finance and acquisitions teams. Mohawk is very supportive of professional development, allowing me to increase my technical knowledge and soft skills in the areas of communication, investigation and negotiation. As Mohawk grew into a global company, I worked with an executive coach to identify ways to capitalize on my strengths while building a team with the right skill set.

LN

Mohawk trusts us as leaders. Mohawk gives me the opportunity to take ownership of a situation, which means freedom and great responsibility at the same time.

3 How do you help develop other women in
Mohawk’s workforce?

TP

The key to developing women within our business is getting capable women involved in the first place. It is not always easy to present a manufacturing business located in the outskirts of town as an attractive place to work, and women are unaware of the fantastic opportunities our industry offers. To recruit the next generation of leaders, we have implemented a Graduate Recruitment and Development Programme in Australia and New Zealand. The appointed graduates are then mentored by segment leaders within the Oceania business.

KE

Mohawk is a performance-based culture focused on adding value, driving results and delivering to the best of your ability. We ensure women, and all employees, have access and the opportunity to develop and demonstrate these skills, every day. We invest in our employees’ development and give them exposure to all facets of the business through developmental programming such as our ASCEND, ASPIRE, RISE and LEAD programs and other developmental opportunities.

LN

I am a trained teacher, and a good leader is the same as a good teacher: they know how to ask questions, listen to answers and help others to learn. These qualities are also indispensable in growing other female leaders in the company

4 Why is sustainability important to your business?

VH

As a president, I need to work on it today if I don’t want to be out of business in five years. I also believe we have a responsibility toward future generations. Of course, there needs to be an economic rationale in the initiatives you undertake. It doesn’t make sense to make your products more expensive if the market is not willing to pay for it, but I truly believe that sustainability and business priorities can go hand in hand.

CF

Sustainability ties into the principle of ‘Leave No Trace’, whereby you leave things better than you found them. Every day, my team looks for ways to improve processes and controls. I strongly encourage reducing our impact, looking for new ways to use our resources.

KE

Sustainability means being good stewards of the planet for future generations, balancing what we consume with what we contribute while meeting the needs of our customers. And it means prioritizing continuous improvement to ensure we stay connected to how those things change and evolve over time. Those efforts benefit not just the business, but our people and our communities — today and tomorrow.

LN

Sustainability is about our responsibility as a company to our employees and our clients, collaborators, consumers and the local environment where we operate. Sustainability is about finding an equilibrium between profitability and concern for the environment and social commitment. It is vital to diminish any negative effects our business might have on the environment and maximize the positive effect on society, always remembering that sustainability solutions need to make business sense.

5 How are you integrating sustainability into your
business today?

VH

We aim to be leading in sustainability in the wood-based panels sector. We focus on the raw material mix and closing the loop of our products. Our particleboard production today already consists of more than 95 percent post‑consumer wood, and we are the first producer in the world who is recycling MDF and laminate flooring waste in our production of MDF/HDF panels.

CF

Since 2016, we have identified ESG risks and action items in our annual risk assessment. We are considering the impacts to our operations, communities and people. My team has specifically helped groups around the enterprise find ways to enhance their processes while working more sustainably.

TP

By asking myself regularly, “Is this sustainable? What are the positive and negative impacts that will flow from any action, and how will that impact short- and long-term on our business, environment, and community?” It is a check that I now do almost subconsciously.

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Recycled Product Inputs

Mohawk uses post-consumer
recycled content in more than
500 product collections worldwide.

Slide 1: Dal-Tile Tile

Almost 100 percent of Dal-Tile manufactured tile collections contain recycled or reclaimed materials.

Slide 2: LVT

100 percent of our luxury vinyl tile (LVT) and carpet tile produced in Europe contains a high percentage of recycled content.

Slide 3: Rubber door mat

Mohawk Home, the Company’s North American rug business, upcycles rubber tires to create door mats, recycles plastic bottles into the fiber used to tuft bath rugs and converts waste carpet fibers into rug pads. In 2020, we diverted more than 23,000 rubber tires from landfills, a 9 percent increase from 2019.

Slide 4: Malino Gres Porcelain

Marazzi uses pre-consumer recycled content to reduce raw material requirements in the production of its Malino Gres Porcelain products by almost 17 percent.

Slide 5: Parquet floors

In Malaysia, we use end-of-life trees from the local rubber industry to create the core of our parquet floors.

Slide 6: Boards

We are committed to keeping wood in circulation for as long as possible. Our Unilin particle board business gives a second life to 700,000 tons of reclaimed wood per year. Similarly, our laminate and medium-density fiberboard (MDF) panels use wood fibers that are unusable for other applications. Our chipboard panels are composed of 90 percent recycled materials. With our own new innovative recycling technology, we have become the first in the world to recover MDF and HDF to produce new panels.

Slide 7: Everstrand Carpet

Each square yard of our EverStrand™ line of carpets contains on average 63 reclaimed plastic bottles, adding more than 6 billion recycled bottles in 2020 alone.

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Daltile Chord in Rhythm Brown from the Concrete Collection.
Made in our Muskogee, Oklahoma, facility.

Mohawk Sustainability Recognition

Global

Forbes’ World’s Best Employers (2020)
Training Top 100 (16 consecutive years)

U.S.

2020

Edison Awards, Bronze, Consumer Good category for Air.o soft surface flooring
Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals, MarCom Awards, Platinum, Writing/News Release, “Mohawk Cushions the Fight”
Floor Covering Weekly GreenStep Awards, Promotion category for Mohawk’s Continuum (EnviroStrand/EverStrand) “Overflow” Art Installation
Floor Covering News TISE Best of Award, Sustainability category, EverStrand
Fast Company Innovation by Design, Sustainability Honoree for Continuum (EnviroStrand/EverStrand)
Good Design Award for Smart City

2021

Floor Covering Weekly GreenStep Awards, Product Winner for EverStrand
Floor Covering Weekly GreenStep Awards, Practice/Process Honoree, ReCover Recycling Program
Metropolis Planet Positive Awards, Flooring Product honoree for Data Tide
Best of NeoCon Awards, Sustainability category for Data Tide
HiP Awards, Green Materials category, honoree for Color Pulse
HiP Awards, Health + Wellness Flooring category, honoree for Crossing Current
HiP for Greater Good, Honoree for Ramie Vagal
Green Builder Media, Eco-Leader for Mohawk Flooring
Green Builder, Hot 50 Products for UltraWood
Forbes’ Best Large Employers
TOP EMPLOYER certification since 2017
Forbes’ Best Employers for Veterans since 2020

Europe

TOP EMPLOYER in Italy certification since 2017
TOP EMPLOYER in Belgium certification since 2018
ITALY’S BEST EMPLOYERS since 2021

Australia

2021

Lendlease Supplier Awards winner in Sustainability

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Global Partnerships

Although nearly half of our employees live in the U.S., Mohawk is active in communities wherever we have manufacturing operations. The map below showcases examples of our engagement.

Select a location to learn more.

United States

During the height of the pandemic, Mohawk Home sewing machine operators leveraged their skills to produce medical gowns when protective equipment shortages were rampant. Hundreds of gowns were donated to regional medical centers.

Mexico

Dal-Tile donated discontinued tile products to churches, schools, healthcare facilities and charities to support renovation efforts.

Brazil

Eliane donated basic baskets for underprivileged families, coverings to the São José Hospital and medical gowns to health professionals.

Italy

Marazzi supported local COVID-19 recovery centers by donating ceramic tiles and other materials necessary for their renovations.

Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany and France

Unilin organized emergency relief funds to assist victims of extreme flooding.

Russia

Since 2009, Kerama Marazzi has supported 300+ orphanages that participate in the “You Will Have A Child” project, which is affiliated with a national television program. The business also provides product donations to help nursery schools renovate.

Australia

Employees from Godfrey Hirst’s commercial sales team volunteered to clean up a local beach with nonprofit organization Take 3 for the Sea. The team collected nearly 2,500 pieces of trash that were otherwise bound for the ocean.

Northwest Georgia is home to Mohawk’s corporate headquarters and almost half of our U.S. employees. In 2020, Mohawk was named a five-star champion by the United Way of Northwest Georgia, a designation reserved for top donors. Two employees also serve on the organization’s board of directors. Many are also involved with the United Way of Gordon County, a smaller United Way chapter that includes Calhoun, Georgia. Through employee contributions and the Company’s annual gift, Mohawk provides almost 20 percent of that chapter’s annual funding. We have also donated $600,000 over three years to the Atlanta-based Latin American Association to help it expand services to Dalton, where the population is almost one-third Latino.

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Innovating for a better tomorrow

Learn more

Learn more about what our brands are doing to advance sustainability and corporate responsibility:

Innovating
for a better
tomorrow