L’Oréal, the French personal care company which boasts of a range of personal care products such as hair color, skincare, sun protection, makeup, perfumes, and hair care has come out with the next phase of its sustainability goals, under its new program known as “L’Oréal For the future”.
This skincare and makeup, french based giant began its move toward sustainability as early as in 2005 and created its ” Sharing beauty with all ” program in 2013. This program, which intends to modernize the brand mainly focused on internal operations, supply chain, and manufacturing. The latest update not only adds to its thrust business areas, but it also focuses on customer’s reactions and awareness.
Through these plans, the company intends to respond to the sustainability of ecology and society along with its endeavor to reduce environmental impacts as per its Executive group VP and chief corporate responsibility officer Alexandra Palt .“Our vision of sustainability for 2030 is two dimensional: transforming our business activity, but also contributing to solving the most urgent environmental and social challenges,” said Palt.
The L’Oréal Group has focused on reducing its carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions, as well as its water usage over the past seven years, but this did not adequately take into account the impacts of suppliers or consumers. L’Oréal will now focus on cutting carbon emissions per finished product unit by 50% by 2030, she said.
In the process of achieving this environmentally friendly target, all of its supply chain sites 100 %, manufacturing plants, its distribution centers, and offices will be carbon neutral by the year 2025. Consumers can reduce their personal greenhouse gas emissions by 25%, by using green products by the year 2025.
The is a worthwhile milestone to achieve as the average American citizen produces over 16 tons of carbon emissions per year, according to 2017 data from Our World in Data.
Garnier will be the testbed for many environmental initiatives, including a new product labeling program that would be informing customers of the environmental and social texture of products. It will begin in 2020 and expand to its 65 markets by 2025. The program, touted as Environmental & Social Impact Labelling will include an alphabetical score on a scale from A to E, with an “A” product considered as “best in class” in terms of environmental impacts, E being lowest.
The testing standards are set by Bureau Veritas Certification, an independent auditor. L’Oréal also moving towards achieving 100% post-consumer plastic or bio-sourced plastic packaging by the year 2030.
Worldwide, through this Sharing Beauty With All program, the L’Oréal Group reduced carbon emissions by 78% as of 2019 and aims to achieve 80% by the end of 2020. Consequently, the company has increased its production by 37%, demonstrating that companies can grow and remain profitable while achieving sustainability, said Palt.
The company’s first-quarter results declared in April showed a 4.3% year-over-year fall in global sales, largely due to COVID-19, to $8.1 billion. However, sales from online platform grew 52.6% and now comprises nearly 20% of all global sales.
Danielle Azoulay L’Oréal USA head of corporate social responsibility and sustainability said “Companies who aren’t yet focusing on sustainability think that better environmental practices are a hindrance to economic growth. What we’ve shown is that we’re able to decouple our economic growth from our environmental footprint.”
