Estée Lauder Companies Unveils 2020 ESG Goals

During its Investor Day in New York City this week, The Estée Lauder Companies announced additional Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) goals.
 
Fabrizio Freda, president and CEO, outlined these goals which were submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in a Form 8-K filing These additional goals, according to the beauty giant, will allow the company to continue to advance its legacy of responsible corporate citizenship.
 
“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 Environmental, Social and Governance goals  are:
 
Responsible Sourcing 
·  As part of its continuous efforts to address issues that may exist within complex supply chains, by 2025, ELC will have identified sensitive ingredient supply chains and developed robust biodiversity and social action plans for them.
·   At least 90% of ELC’s palm-based ingredients (palm oil and its derivatives) will be certified sustainable from RSPO physical supply chains by 2025.  
 
Emissions 
·   By 2020, ELC will build upon our current Net Zero carbon emissions commitment and set a science-based target covering Scopes 1, 2, and 3.
 
Packaging 
· By 2025, 75-100% of ELC’s packaging will be recyclable, refillable, reusable, recycled or recoverable.  In achieving this goal, ELC will increase the amount of post-consumer recycled material in our product packaging by up to 50%.
·   ELC’s ambition is to use responsibly-sourced paper products whenever possible with a goal to have 100% of our forest-based fiber cartons FSC certified by 2025.
 
Ingredient Transparency 
·   ELC will develop a glossary of key ingredients that includes descriptions of the ingredients’ purposes and will make this information available online by 2025.
 
Learning / Employee Safety 
·  ELC said that committed that by 2020, 100% of our employees worldwide will have access to training on basic sustainability and corporate social impact programs
·  ELC will drive safety to continue decreasing the total incident rate* to ensure continued world class-leading levels, with a goal of 0.15 by 2025.
 
Social Investments & Employee Engagement 
·  By 2020, ELC’s programs and grants focused on health, education and environmental programs will impact the well-being of 10 million individuals around the world.
·         By 2025, ELC’s will engage 50% of eligible employees in regional, brand or local volunteer programs such as ELC Good Works, the Breast Cancer Campaign and the MAC Global Volunteer program.
·         Each brand will focus on and support at least one social or environmental cause by 2025.
 
According to Nancy Mahon, SVP, global corporate citizenship and sustainability, the company’s brands “such as Aveda, M∙A∙C 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.  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.”