At its Investor Day, held March 6, 2019 in New York City, The Estée Lauder Companies announced additional Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) goals.
Outlined by president and CEO Fabrizio Freda, the goals were submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that same day.
“Consumers and employees are increasingly drawn to purpose-driven brands and companies,” said Freda. “We have a long history of giving back and improving the places where we live and work. We are proud of our many achievements in this area. We are taking our mission to a higher level and accelerating our ESG efforts by announcing new goals, which will be integrated into our strategy and our business operations.”
The ESG goals include:
Responsible Sourcing
- To identify sensitive ingredient supply chains and develop robust biodiversity and social action plans for them by 2025
- To source 90% of its palm-based ingredients (palm oil and its derivatives), which will be certified sustainable, from RSPO physical supply chains by 2025
Emissions
- To build on its current Net Zero carbon emissions commitment and set science-based targets covering scopes 1, 2, and 3 by 2020
Packaging
- For 75% of the company’s packaging to be recyclable, refillable, reusable, recycle or recoverable by 2025; to achieve this goal, it will increase the amount of post-consumer recycled material in its product packaging by up to 50%
- To use responsibly-sourced paper products whenever possible, aiming to have 100% of its forest-based fiber cartons FSC certified by 2025
Ingredient Transparency
- Develop a glossary of key ingredients that includes descriptions of the ingredients’ purposes, and to make that glossary available online by 2025
Learning/Employee Safety
- To provide employees worldwide access to training on basic sustainability and corporate social impact programs by 2020
- To decrease the total incident rate, with a goal of 0.15, by 2025
Social Investments & Employee Engagement
- To grow the worldwide reach of its programs and grants focused on health, education and environmental programs to 10 million individuals by 2020
- To engage 50% of eligible employees in the regional, brand or local volunteer programs—including ELC Good Works, the Breast Cancer Campaign and the MAC Global Volunteer program—by 2020
- For each brand to focus on and support at least one social or environmental cause by 2025
“Our brands such as Aveda, MAC and Origins have historically been leaders in sustainability and citizenship and have a strong record of delivering meaningful impact to our consumers, employees and the communities in which we source and make our products,” said Nancy Mahon, senior vice president, global corporate citizenship and sustainability. “Our company-wide ESG goals are part of our mission to create a more sustainable and beautiful world and underscore our deep commitment to innovate and embed sustainable principles and social purpose across every aspect of our business—for the long term.”
