For Life
We address all our environmental impacts with our purpose in mind. This means managing air quality and reducing our carbon emissions, improving our packaging, waste and our water use and making the right sourcing decisions.
We measure, report and seek to improve our performance in the areas that we know are most important to the business, and where we have the biggest impact. This includes carbon emissions, water usage and landfill waste, plastic consumption and the sustainable sourcing of palm oil and paper. We operate a continuous improvement programme to make progress in these areas.
Plastic and packaging
We have established new targets which reflect our portfolio and business strategy and our desire to move away from plastic and explore opportunities beyond plastic.
We have worked to make our plastics governance and reporting more robust, and further updates are planned to improve our databases to track all packaging materials including papers, plastics, metals and glass.
Carbon and climate
Reducing carbon emissions is a priority for our business. Through our continuous improvement programme in our factories and facilities, we continue to incorporate energy reduction initiatives across our sites. We have set ambitious new carbon reduction targets for the business, reflecting our ongoing commitment to addressing the climate crisis.
Our operations in the UK, Australia and New Zealand are now carbon neutral through a combination of increasing energy efficiency, moving to renewable electricity and purchases of carbon offsets.
We have measured our Scope 1 and 2 emissions (direct emissions associated with our operations and the energy we purchase) for several years. We are working on plans to reduce these in line with science-based targets by 2030.
We have conducted a comprehensive Scope 3 measurement, looking at our extended carbon footprint to identify pathways for carbon reduction and determine how we will achieve our ambition to be carbon neutral by 2025 and net zero by 2045.
We continue to build our understanding of the footprints of our individual products so that we can apply the learnings to other products. To this end we have joined the EcoBeauty Score Consortium which aims to develop an industry-wide environmental impact assessment and scoring system for cosmetics products. We continue to participate in the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), reporting on our Scope 1 and 2 emissions. We are working hard to calculate, validate and set Scope 3 reduction targets for the business.
Waste
We aim to reduce the amount of solid waste sent to landfill year-on-year, and all our factories and locations have waste reduction programmes in place. We study and map our landfill waste and then use a standard waste hierarchy tool to identify improvement actions, which are implemented via our CI programme.
Water
In some of our markets, water is a scarce resource. Reducing the amount of water we use is important, and we do this through our CI programme. By 2030, we want to have reduced our water intensity by 30% from our 2021 baseline.
Biodiversity
We purchase and source raw materials that, in some cases, impact on biodiversity and forests. Our most significant purchases are paper-based materials and palm oil. Paper and cardboard are used in shipping cartons, pallet layer boards and some primary packaging and labelling.
We are committed to using 100% certified or recycled paper by 2025.
Reaching our palm oil target means using producers that do not contribute to deforestation, peat or exploitation (NDPE). We are committed to 100% NDPE compliant producers. Data on our performance is available in the reports published twice a year on our website.
We continue to monitor our performance using Starling satellite data. Our 2023 Palm Oil Action Plan focuses on supplier engagement, transformation and independent verification.
We continue to work with partners including Earthworm Foundation to support the Forest Conservation Fund with investment in conservation projects in Indonesia which are helping to secure standing forest, protect biodiversity and reduce carbon impacts in our supply chain.
Access our ESG policies, disclosures and reports including our Palm Oil Supplier Mill List here
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