THE 3Rs: L’ORÉAL’S SUSTAINABILITY MOTTO SINCE 2007
For more than 10 years, L’Oréal has been committed to making its production, and therefore our consumption, more responsible and sustainable, keeping in mind the three pillars of sustainable development. These are the famous 3Rs: reduce the volume and weight of packaging, respect the environment and replace some materials with alternatives that come from recycled or renewable sources.
And the L’Oréal Group is proud to have made numerous efforts that truly paid off: between 2008 and 2018, to limit the resources needed for packaging production, L’Oréal decided to reduce the weight of its packaging to use fewer resources. A new strategy which includes designing lighter packaging (for the DOP, Sanoflore, Lancôme, the essential Elnett hair spray products, and many more) or refillable packaging (such as the L’Oréal Professionnel’s Source Essentielle line or the new Or Rouge by YSL and its luxurious refillable case), has led to saving 5,477 tons of packaging materials! In 2018, 100% of the paper used for product leaflets and 99.9% of the cardboard used for boxes came from sustainably managed and biodiversity-friendly forests. Finally, 8,705 tons of recycled materials were used in 2018 to create L’Oréal product containers, which means the number of recycled materials used in the packaging has increased by 38% in a single year (from 2017 to 2018).
DEFINING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
If you’re new to the whole sustainability movement and it doesn’t make much sense to you, here is what you need to know to better understand L’Oréal’s commitments. What is sustainable development? It’s a concept of economic growth based on a long-term approach that integrates environmental constraints. According to the definition given by the “Brundtland report” (the report of the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development): “Sustainable development is a development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
SUSTAINABILITY TARGETS
Every year, L’Oréal measures its progress in figures, and the results are available to everyone. L’Oréal is engaged in a trend of continued progress and maintains a permanent dialogue with its stakeholders to share its sustainability strategy and co-build its projects. Our sustainability program Sharing Beauty with All, as well as our strong commitment to ethics, our diversity policy, or the patronage activities conducted with the support of the L’Oréal Foundation and by the brands, allows L’Oréal to contribute to 14 of the 17 global Sustainable Development Goals set in 2015 by the United Nations.
#target2025 : two new sustainability targets for L’Oréal
Building upon the success of its environmentally responsible progress, the L’Oréal Group has decided to set two new sustainability targets with a particular focus on eco-design. In more concrete terms, L’Oréal intends to have at least 50% of its packaging made from recycled or bio-sourced plastic by 2025. Regarding the end-of-life for waste, L’Oréal takes part in the discussions of the Ellen MacArthur foundation within the “New Plastic Economy” initiative and has decided to only offer refillable, reusable, recyclable, or compostable plastic packaging by 2025.
WHAT IS ECO-DESIGN FOR A COSMETIC PRODUCT?
The concept of eco-design puzzles you? Well, first of all, eco-designing a product, whether it is a cosmetic product or something else, means that we take into account all the environmental aspects of its production, starting with its design, to reduce its environmental impact throughout its life cycle until it is recycled. L’Oréal has put eco-design at the heart of its commitments because developing products in an eco-responsible way means that we act first to conserve exhaustible natural resources (such as oil and water). But it also means that we limit energy consumption and CO2 emissions due to extracting, transporting, and processing those resources. That is why the Group has developed SPOT, a tool used to measure the social and environmental impact of all the L’Oréal products. It can also quantify the social and environmental performance of a product throughout its life cycle based on four criteria: packaging, the ecological footprint of its formulation, the sourcing of its ingredients, and the social benefit of the product. By taking this responsible approach to product design, L’Oréal significantly reduces its ecological footprint and takes part in an even more advanced sustainable development framework.
L’Oréal signed the Plastic Pact
In line with its commitment to sustainable development, L’Oréal was one of the first companies to initiate the Plastic Pact. The purpose of the Plastic Pact is to eliminate problematic or useless plastic packaging, particularly in large retail stores, and to transition towards a circular plastic economy in France.
This commitment is part of L’Oréal’s approach to reducing the environmental impact of its packaging by reducing the weight and volume of its packaging and by promoting alternative materials such as recycled or bio-sourced plastic. But to lead this fight as well as possible, we need to encourage the development of a circular plastic economy which mobilizes the whole ecosystem of actors involved in making, distributing, and recycling products with plastic packaging in France, so it was essential to co-build this Plastic Pact with other industry players.
To know more about L’Oréal’s commitments
The cosmetic product recycling awareness campaign completes L’Oréal’s eco-design policy and gives a second life to its recyclable products.
