BlogSustainabilitySustainability
Peter Marshall Send an email October 17, 2023
8 minutes read

L’Oréal on Sustainability Exclusive Interview With Kim Rowney, L’Oréal’s Global Sustainability Director

Introduction by: Peter Marshall

This is an important and very comprehensive interview with Kim Rowney at TFWA Cannes recently and pretty much defines L’Oréal’s global position on sustainability – highlighting all the various actions they have taken and will be taking in the coming years. There are many learnings here for the industry as a whole and I am delighted to have had this opportunity to publish this exclusive interview on trunblocked.com.

Peter Marshall (PM):  Kim, welcome to trunblocked.com. You’ve been in your role for almost a year now. What have you found to be the most significant trends in sustainability in the beauty sector?

Kim Rowley (KR): Thank you, Peter. It has been a great adventure so far. Post COVID we have really seen an increase in consumers’ growing demand for more sustainable products – whether it is through less packaging, fewer ingredients as well as social awareness of the impact of products. There has generally been a shift to more purposeful purchases.

We see refillable beauty as the future, linked closely to packaging waste and the beauty of our products. Why would we throw away a beautiful fragrance bottle?

Within the industry, more and more retailers want to discuss sustainability, are publishing ESG ambitions and reports – providing transparency.

PM: As with most consumables, we all recognise that cosmetics leave behind an environmental impact. For beauty the key areas, as you’ve mentioned, are all about packaging waste and materials. But there’s also water waste, carbon production, microplastic production and animal cruelty. Have I missed anything out?

KR: Yes, you’ve named a number of the key topics. But the reality is that, to reduce our environmental and social impact, we must start at the beginning with eco-design and consider the full value chain: from sourcing abundant and traceable raw materials, manufacturing them using green energy in plants and factories, using recycled or recyclable packaging materials, delivering them to eco-designed POS and allowing the consumer to generate less CO2 in their final consumption.

As you can see, this is quite a long list. But involving our entire ecosystem goes beyond our value chain, for instance, by informing our consumers so that they make more sustainable consumption choices through our environmental and social impact labelling system.

This is a mechanism which compares the environmental and social impact of a product which is currently already available in 27 countries and for 8 brands.

We are also working with more than 60 stakeholders of the beauty sector in the EcoBeautyScore Consortium, which aims to adopt an industry-wide environmental impact assessment and scoring system for cosmetics products.

PM: What, then, are L’Oréal’s own sustainable practices? Should we start with packaging?

KR: Sure. Plastic pollution is a major environmental problem and managing plastic waste is a huge challenge. This requires a holistic overview – from product design to recycling of packaging after use. With our L’Oréal For The Future programme, we are tackling the problem of reducing, replacing and recycling. Innovation, science and creativity are our strongest assets in shaping a forward-looking cosmetics industry in which plastic derived from fossil fuels will be a thing of the past.

Our targets are far-reaching. We are continuing our efforts to reduce plastic waste by 2030 and we are innovating in the type of packaging we provide – the way it is used and the materials it contains. 100% of the plastic used in our packaging will be either from recycled or biobased sources – we will reach 50% in 2025 – and the figure was 26% in 2022. Importantly, 100% of our plastic packaging will be refillable, reusable, recyclable or compostable. We were at 38% last year.

We will also reduce by -20% in intensity the quantity of packaging used for our products, compared to 2019. Again, we were at -3% in 2022.

PM: So clearly the company places much stock behind its development of reuse and refills? Refills are expensive to produce though, aren’t they? And I understand that there is not much scope for profit. The company appears to be carrying a torch for refills across key brands. Is it putting product sustainability ahead of profit?

KR: At L’Oréal we believe – and we have shown – that it is possible to balance the financial results of a company with the extra financial costs we incur. It’s what drives us forward with both performance and purpose. While it’s our passion to provide the best of beauty in terms of efficacy, safety and quality to serve the diverse needs of our consumers, we also look for excellence in terms the environmental and social impact of our activities. So for us financial performance and being a good corporate citizen are inextricably linked.

Just going back to packaging and its importance to our sustainability ambitions when buying. Lancome Absolue is an excellent example. By using a refillable, we are able to save 32% plastic. So, too, with the Prada Paradoxe fragrance. Here we have reduced 29% glass, 67% metal, 46% plastics and 39% cardboard.

Sustainable beauty products  do not take away from the luxury of the product – in fact they enhance the experience and purpose for our consumers.

PM: What about ethical and local sourcing?

KR: We strongly believe that fairness and inclusivity are part of building a more sustainable world. Sharing our growth with both internal and external stakeholders is a priority. Through our inclusive sourcing programme, we direct a proportion of the Groupe’s global purchases to suppliers who employ people from social and economically disadvantaged communities to help them find work and receive a sustainable income. Last year that number was 85,000 people.

We strive to be an exemplary leader and actively work with business partners to help them improve their performance and meet our sustainable development objectives.

We also believe large companies have a duty to play their part in the fight against poverty – building on the value generated to create a fairer and more inclusive society, using powerful tools such as the ability to ensure a living wage to their employees. In 2020, the L’Oréal Groupe introduced a new compensation tracking system to adjust the pay of permanent Groupe employees where needed to guarantee them a living wage. This year we were accredited as a Global Living Wage Employer. And, building on our commitment to secure a living wage for all of our employees, we have also pledged to ensure all our strategic suppliers also pay their employees a living wage by 2030.

Further than that, L’Oréal is conscious of the influencing power of our brands leveraging awareness to key social and environmental challenges facing the world. The L’Oréal Paris Stand Up Against Street Harassment training programme has 800,000 people trained in 41 countries in 2022 and YSL’s Abuse Is Not Love programme support to prevent and fight against intimate partner violence, through education on the warning signs of abuse, has trained more than 377,000 around the world.

PM: So has the company streamlined its own supplier and distribution base to better marry your declared sustainability criteria?

KR: We are convinced that we need to bring our suppliers with us, onboarding and supporting our suppliers’ sustainable transformation. In fact, one of the pillars of the L’Oréal For the Future programme is to involve the Groupe’s entire ecosystem.

Indeed, L’Oréal supports suppliers as they optimise their environmental and social footprint and share the Groupe’s advances with them. As part of the support, we also offer webinars, tutorials, training and dedicated events – such as Spread the Green Vibes, where we share the progress of results on key subjects such as water management or carbon emissions, to help define priorities with suppliers and, as I’ve just said, to support them in optimising their environmental and social footprint.

CDP awarded L’Oréal an “A” rating in the Supplier Engagement category in 2022 for encouraging all players in its supply chain to reduce their environmental impact.

We also provide clear expectations and, by 2030, our strategic suppliers will reduce their direct emissions (Scopes 1 and 2) by 50% in absolute terms compared to 2016, and will use water sustainably in the areas where they operate.

Finally, as you saw during today’s presentation at TFWA here in Cannes, we announced an exciting partnership with our partner Gebr. Heinemann where we will work together with a Joint Green Roadmap to bring a more sustainable vision to Travel Retail. Focusing on providing consumers with more sustainable product options, reducing CO2, eco-designing our Point of Sales  and transforming the way we do business to be more sustainable together.

PM: Moving on, is sustainable beauty actually compatible with the advancement of beauty tech? Just how green are your cosmetics? We know how much greenwashing there is around at the moment. But L’Oréal does actually stand out because the company is very transparent and that centres on the ingredients it uses. Here, Green Science comes into play, and I think it might be worthwhile for you to spend a little time to clarify what Green Science actually means and how it applies to L’Oréal. 

KR: Well, before I tackle the point of the role of Green Science in L’Oréal, let me take a moment to discuss the importance of transparency and independent evaluations. These independent recognitions and acknowledgements are important in the eyes of the public as they are proof of our commitments and results achieved. This year we were awarded the EcoVadis Platinum award, which puts us among the top 1% of leading global companies in terms of environmental and social performance. This is from out of 100,000 companies included in the assessment and, again, we were recognised with a Triple A rating from CDP. L’Oréal is the only company in the world to have achieved this score seven years in a row.

PM: That’s impressive. Let’s just take a break to look at a short film on the company and transparency.

PM: And what about Green Science?

KR: As a company, we are committed to creating a more responsible beauty to limit our impact on climate, water and biodiversity. This starts with Green Sciences. It’s a complete revolution in the way we approach science and it is based on 4 key pillars.

The first is sustainable cultivation, which is the cultural practice and techniques aiming to manage water resources, respect biodiversity and soil quality, limit land occupancy footprint and carbon emissions while providing biomass for innovation. A great example is the centella picking in Madagascar. It’s a small leaf which grows in the wild and has anti-inflammatory properties.

Here we’ve teamed up with our suppliers to allow them to increase their harvesting capacity with more eco-friendly means. While increasing the ease of extraction of the plant, we have minimised the footprint of the production process to ensure the preservation of the resource.

The second pillar is green chemistry, which favours non-petrochemical solvents and integrates notions of environmental impact, energy reduction and sustainability of products and processes.

Third is green extraction. This is an eco-respectful technology leading to a final ingredient without any (bio)chemical transformation of natural resources (plant, algae, mushrooms. microorganisms, cells or abundant materials).

Finally, there is biotechnology. This makes it possible to obtain an ingredient through the culture of microorganisms (bacteria, yeast, microalgae, fungi) or of plant cells in bioreactors or in a controlled environment to preserve natural resources.

 
PM: I think it might be helpful to show another short film here to explain further.
 

 

PM: Moving on, how important is it for your front line ambassadors and consultants to be in tune with all sustainability issues? What does L’Oréal do to keep them advised and included in all aspects of company product developments?

KR: Beauty advisors play a very important role in engaging with our end consumers. We know sustainability can be a complicated topic, so ensuring we pass clear and accurate messages is critical.

We do have an amazing and award-winning tool called My Beauty Club that we use to interact with beauty advisers, providing important information on sustainability and many other topics. It really became invaluable during COVID, where we were unable to meet in person and it continues to play a vital role in educating beauty advisers and, in turn, our end consumers.

PM: So, Kim, what is the journey now – the company’s own ambitions on sustainability – up to 2030?

KR: We are 3 years into our L4TF transformation and although we have made great advancements, there is still a lot more to be done. We will continue with our science-based targets, continue to focus on packaging, the education of consumers, supporting disadvantaged communities, using green science to innovate and, of course, bringing our partners with us on this transformation.

 

Tags
Peter Marshall Send an email October 17, 2023
8 minutes read

Peter Marshall

Founder: trunblocked.com/Marshall Arts
Back to top button