The US branch of the French cosmetics giant L’Oréal has been recognised as the top performing global company on sustainability in 2017.
Newsweek’s Green Ranking constitutes an annual assessment of the sustainability performance of the largest companies in the US, based on 8 sustainability and environmental indicators including energy use, emissions, water management, and third-party oversight mechanisms.
Honoured
Danielle Azoulay, Assistant Vice President of CSR & Sustainability at L’Oreal USA, said:
“We’re honored to be recognized for our sustainability practices, as these touch every aspect of our business”.
“Sustainability drives our research and innovation in exciting ways and reinforces our commitment to our employees and the communities in which we operate”.
“We’re continuously pushing ourselves to innovate, produce and develop more sustainably while also helping to empower our customers to make more sustainable choices”, she added.
L’Oréal launched its ‘Sharing Beauty with All’ global sustainability programme in 2015, setting out its 2020 objectives to reduce its environmental footprint, strengthen its positive social impacts and transform its operations and manufacturing activities.
This year, L’Oréal made it to CDP’s A-list report, which highlights companies that lead in environmental performance including climate change action, and water and forest management.
A in all three sectors
The A-list report is comprised of 160 global companies recognised by CDP, a non-profit global environmental disclosure platform, and L’Oréal was one of the only two companies to score an A in all three sections.
The company is committed to zero-deforestation by 2020 and already sources 100 percent of its palm oil derivatives from sources certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. To this end, it has designed the Sustainable Palm Oil and Traceability (SPOT) tool to evaluate the environmental and social performance of all its products.
In addition, through the Global Forest Watch tool it can identify risks further down its supply chain, such as palm oil mills’ commitments to zero-deforestation, in order to reduce risks associated with deforestation.
Green Power Partner
In October, L’Oréal USA received the 2017 Green Power Partner of the Year Award from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in recognition of its overall strategy and impact on the green power market.
By 2016, the company had already reduced its carbon emissions by 64 percent from the 2005 baseline year. Today, all its 21 US manufacturing and distribution facilities operate using 100 percent renewable energy partially supplied by its 17 large-scale solar and wind energy projects.
