Sustainability Director Celebrates 20 Years at Rheem

While Rheem is celebrating its 100-year anniversary in 2025, Rodrigo Cedeno, director of global sustainability, is celebrating his 20th year at the company while taking on a newly established role.

What was your first role at Rheem?

I started my career with Rheem as a manufacturing project engineer in the Nuevo Laredo Water Heater plant, back on February 7, 2005. This was my first job right after college and it essentially involved end-to-end execution of capital investment projects for the facility and driving readiness for New Product Introduction initiatives.

It was a very dynamic and interesting experience as this role required interaction, collaboration, and communication with all manufacturing plant functions plus division-level areas. With effective guidance from my first managers, I appreciated the importance of systems thinking, balancing both technical and business aspects, and the value of relationship building as a key element of genuine engagement and more effective execution towards our goals.

What has inspired you to remain with Rheem as long as you have?

I believe three key consistent aspects have been:

1) Long Term Vision and Strategy

I have consistently seen the long-term mindset of our “Invest to Grow” strategy throughout changes in organizational structure, leadership successions, and economic downturns. As a key example, it has been particularly exciting to witness the level of acquisitions Rheem has made in the past 12 years.

2) Culture and Leadership Style

I’ve always appreciated Rheem’s culture of collaboration and respect, the approachability of our Senior Leadership, and the opportunity to have good managers along the way who had a positive influence on my development.

3) Growth and Mobility Opportunities Across Different Business Functions

Finally, the openness for growth opportunities across different functions in both Air and Water divisions, which has led to a diverse path for me in Operations, R&D Engineering, Product & Program Management, and now Global Sustainability. It continues to be a rewarding journey as I’ve enjoyed “connecting the dots” across the business and being a part of other colleagues’ career growth.

You have taken on a newly elevated role with the establishment of the director of global sustainability. What interested you in making that move?

I view Sustainability as a key element of our long-term strategy to drive positive impact as Rheem continues to pursue profitable and sustainable growth. All of this while continuing to reduce negative impacts on the environment as a consequence of that growth. I believe this role is a unique and exciting opportunity to work with both of our Global Air and Water divisions and learn about priorities and perspectives from our Business Units and functional leaders.

Sustainability can bring increased business value through our products, operational processes, employee engagement, and best-practices sharing with customers and suppliers while challenging the status quo and working collaboratively. Additionally, from a personal standpoint, I truly value the opportunity to leverage the relationships with colleagues I’ve worked with during my tenure at Rheem, as well as building new ones.

2025 is a pivotal year for the sustainability program. What accomplishments can you share?

There are major accomplishments to celebrate and recognize, related to the ambitious goals we publicly announced at the beginning of 2019.

We have delivered on our Product Goal of launching a line of heating, cooling, and water heating products that boast a 50% reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.¹ Check out our new webpage to learn more about this lineup of heat pump innovations.

We have also achieved our Zero Waste to Landfill goal across our global manufacturing facilities and are closer to reaching our 50% GHG reduction from our Operations.²

Finally, We have continued to exceed our training-the-trade goal expectations, now at almost 700,000 trained vs. 250,000 original target.

Beyond these facts, the credibility, momentum, and engagement built around Rheem’s Sustainability program are extremely valuable aspects and another reason for celebration during 2025. We sincerely appreciate the effort of everyone involved in reaching this point. As a final highlight, we are looking forward to our Pro Partner Conference and excited to host our customers and employees in the Sustainability booth!

What are you most excited to work on this year?

I’m excited about the challenges for this year in three main Sustainability areas:

1) Regulatory Compliance Readiness

Rheem has risen to the challenge through major product-related regulations on both our Water and Air divisions, most recently the launch of the new Residential and Commercial product portfolios with Low Global Warming Potential (GWP) refrigerant. In terms of disclosure, we have a solid plan in place to comply with upcoming regulatory reporting requirements on emissions from Rheem’s global operations.

2) Definition of Our Next Set of Goals

There has been a major collaborative effort since 2024 to help define our next generation of Sustainability goals around our key pillars of Product, Processes, and People, and my team and I are excited about fully finalizing these goals this year in preparation for launching in 2026.

3) Further Advancement of the Sustainability Function

Beyond the definition of these major goals, I’m looking forward to further advancing our function’s strategy to identify increased value to our business and find additional opportunities to incorporate a sustainability mindset into our product design, operational processes, facilities optimization, and increased training impact.

How do you see the next generation of sustainability at Rheem taking shape?

I officially started my new role in Sustainability on November 1, 2024, and quickly learned about the progress made up to that point in research and benchmarking efforts to draft our next generation of goals in the framework of our Product, Process, and People pillars.

Directionally, we are building on the strong foundation and achievements of the past six years and focusing on amplifying our impact within each pillar but with an intentional increased emphasis on our Products.

More specifically, we want to focus on opportunities to reduce energy consumption and emissions per unit over the full life cycle of our Air and Water products. We also want to drive innovative solutions for our packaging, increase the number of smart, connected products in the market to enable enrollment in energy management programs. In general, we aim to further incorporate Sustainability in our product design and development in the same way we think about quality, reliability, ease of maintenance and installation, and customer experience enhancement.

From a Process standpoint, we will commit to continue our Zero Waste to Landfill programs and seek ways to further design out waste in our factories to emphasize being the best stewards of our resources. On our People pillar, we certainly will continue our momentum in training the trade while pursuing to elevate its impact on promoting our more sustainable solutions. In alignment with Rheem’s 100-year anniversary, Next Starts Now for our impactful Sustainability program!

¹Rheem’s goal is to release by 2025 a line of heating, cooling, and water heating products that reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% as compared to products available in 2019. Reduction calculations will be based on the products’ use phase emissions only and utilize average emission factors to account for variability in electricity grids. Reduction calculations will not consider upstream or manufacturing impacts, but use phase emissions account for the majority of the products’ impact. At this time, these figures have not been independently verified by a third party. ²Rheem’s goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2025 from a 2018 baseline. This metric will be based on intensity emissions normalized by units produced and includes Scope 1, 2, and elements of Scope 3, as defined by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. At this time, these figures have not been independently verified by a third party. A Rheem plant is considered to have reached Zero Waste to Landfill when it achieves a rate of at least 90% diversion of nonhazardous solid waste away from landfill, waste-to-energy (WTE) and incineration, in line with the Zero Waste International Alliance standards and TRUE Zero Waste standards. At this time, these figures have not been independently verified by a third party.