The commitment to sustainability has been an integral part of Henkel's corporate culture for decades. As a leader in sustainability, we aim to pioneer new solutions for sustainable development while continuing to shape our business responsibly and increase our economic success. This ambition encompasses all of our company’s activities – along the entire value chain.
Sustainability
2030+ Sustainability Ambition Framework
Henkel’s sustainability strategy is a direct reflection of the company’s commitment to “Purposeful Growth”. We are committed to creating more value for our stakeholders, developing our business responsibly and successfully, and building on our leading role in sustainability. Our new sustainability strategy revolves around implementing our ambitions through concrete measures and projects to achieve practical progress. With our 2030+ Sustainability Ambition Framework, we have developed new long-term ambitions in the three dimensions of Regenerative Planet, Thriving Communities and Trusted Partner to drive further progress.
Regenerative Planet
We are on a journey toward an environmental transformation of our business model. To achieve this ambition, we intend to transform our processes, products and use of raw materials in the direction of a resource-efficient, carbon-neutral future. We are focusing on climate change mitigation measures, a functional circular economy, and the protection of nature and biodiversity.
Climate
We are always exploring ways to achieve climate neutrality faster for selected sites. Based on our progress in these areas and the experience we have gained, we have decided to bring forward our ambition for 2040 by ten years: By 2030, we intend to achieve a climate-positive carbon footprint for our production sites.
- Along the journey toward this ambition, we are still pursuing our target of making a 65-percent reduction in the carbon footprint of our production sites by 2025 compared to the base year 2010.
- We continue to strive towards our existing goal of sourcing 100 percent of the electricity we purchase for production from renewable sources by 2030. In parallel, we also want to continuously improve our energy efficiency. By the end of 2021, Henkel fully transitioned production in 21 countries, including in Columbia and France, to electricity that is 100 percent renewable. Today, Henkel stands already at 68 percent renewable electricity usage
- To become climate-positive in our own operations, we are planning to replace the fuels we need to generate thermal energy at our sites with CO2-free alternatives such as biogas or biomass by no later than 2030.
- In line with our ambition, the sites will become climate-positive in terms of their carbon balance when surplus CO2-free energy that Henkel does not need for its own purposes is supplied to third parties.
- On top of that, we aim to set a net-zero pathway for Scope 3 emissions (from source to shelf) in line with the Science Based Targets initiative.
- We want to reduce the footprint of the raw materials and packaging that we use by 30 percent by 2030 compared to a 2017 baseline.
- Additionally, we want to leverage the potential of our brands and technologies and save 100 million metric tons of CO2 over the ten-year period from 2016 to 2025 together with our customers, consumers and suppliers.
Circular Economy
We have set ourselves ambitious targets as part of our packaging strategy and have already made much progress in the area of sustainable packaging.
Our packaging targets for 2025
- 100 percent of Henkel’s packaging material will be designed for recyclability and reusability*.
- We aim to reduce the amount of virgin plastic from fossil sources in our consumer products by 50 percent. We will achieve this by increasing the proportion of recycled plastic to more than 30 percent, by reducing the plastic volume, and by using bio-based plastics.
- Henkel wants to help prevent waste from entering the environment. That is why we support waste collection and recycling initiatives. We invest in innovative solutions and technologies to promote closed-loop recycling, and we aim to enable contact with more than 2 billion consumers per year by providing targeted information about recycling.
By the end of 2021, 86 percent of Henkel's packaging was already recyclable or reusable* and the proportion of recycled plastic in its consumer goods packaging was 18 percent globally.
Initiatives and partnerships
Progress towards sustainability in packaging is only possible if companies along the entire value chain work together. Therefore, Henkel is engaged in various partnerships and cross-industry initiatives. A few examples:
- We participate in the New Plastics Economy initiative of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which brings together stakeholders to rethink the future of plastics and provide ideas to foster a circular economy.
- In the Plastic Waste Coalition of Action, which was formed from the Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) in 2020, Henkel is working with other companies on the basis of Golden Design Rules to develop a more circular approach to the design and processing of plastic packaging in the consumer goods industry.
- In 2017, Henkel became the first global consumer goods company to cooperate with the social enterprise Plastic Bank. The common goal: to stop plastic waste in the oceans and at the same time create new opportunities for people living in poverty. Within the partnership, Henkel supports projects in Egypt, where it has already set up 10 collection centers together with Plastic Bank. The local population has the chance to earn money or services by removing plastic waste from the local environment – before it enters waterways or oceans. The collected and recycled material – Social Plastic® – is used by Henkel in its own product packaging. In 2021, 723 tons of Social Plastic® were processed at Henkel. Since the start of the partnership in 2017, the total has been more than 1,480 metric tons.
Nature
Protect and restore biodiversity, with focus on forests, land and water, through more regenerative ingredients and resource stewardship:
- We are committed to sourcing our raw materials sustainably and not through deforestation. Our goal is to prevent the deforestation of primary and secondary forests with significant ecological value.
- By 2025, we want to cover 100 percent of our demand for palm oil and palm kernel oil with oils that are certified or externally confirmed as responsibly sourced.
- In addition, we have set ourselves the goal of reducing water consumption per ton of product by 35 percent by 2025. By the end of 2021, we had saved 28 percent.
Thriving Communities
We will help people live better lives. Our social responsibility is to promote equal opportunity, strengthen diversity and respect human rights. We offer our employees lifelong learning opportunities, and an attractive and healthy working environment. We advocate for social progress and access to education worldwide, and we provide assistance in emergency situations.
Equity
Strengthen Diversity & Inclusion, respect human rights and enhance the livelihoods of people:
- We are convinced that a diversified workforce, as well as an open and appreciative corporate culture, are important success factors in a globalized world.
- Our goal is to continuously increase the ratio of women in the company at all levels, and we have the ambition to achieve gender parity across all management levels by 2025.
- Additionally, we want to improve livelihoods of smallholders. Together with the development organization Solidaridad, we have so far been able to reach around 36,400 smallholder farmers who cultivate around 340,000 hectares of land.
Education
Support lifelong learning and education of employees and communities and enable consumers to take action for sustainability:
- We want to further promote our employees' commitment to sustainability and have expanded our existing training offerings to include a holistic engagement program.
- We also want to motivate and encourage our employees to actively engage in sustainability in their work environment and in their private lives.
- In addition, we are committed to further expand our community education programs and volunteering. We have already exceeded our overarching goal of reaching 20 million people through this engagement by 2025. Since 2010, we have reached more than 26 million people. For 2030, we have set the new target to contribute to improving the lives of 30 million people (base year 2010) worldwide.
Wellbeing
Foster health and wellbeing of employees, partners and consumers, and help drive social progress through our brands:
- We strengthen the health and vitality of our employees as the basis for an agile and efficient organization. To this end, we apply uniform global standards for health protection and offer targeted health promotion and prevention programs. As a key objective of our sustainability strategy, we aim to reach more than 90 percent of our employees worldwide.
- We remain focused on our long-term objective of zero accidents and want to improve our occupational safety by 60 percent by the end of 2025 compared to 2010. We have anchored this overarching goal as a key performance indicator in our new sustainability strategy. In 2021, we recorded 0.7 occupational incidents per million hours worked by our employees. This is an improvement of 42 percent over the base year 2010.
Trusted Partner
We draw on our value-oriented corporate culture and our scientific and technological expertise to strengthen our performance while maintaining our integrity. We deliver safe and best-in-class product and technology solutions to our customers and consumers. We integrate sustainability in our portfolio and in our business processes, and provide transparent reporting on this to our stakeholders.
Performance
Deliver best-in-class product performance and chemical safety for our customers and consumers, as foundations of our business success:
- Every new product makes a contribution to sustainability.
- Our goal for 2030 is to triple the value created relative to the environmental footprint of our operations. The efficiency improvement totaled 74 percent in 2021 (compared to the base year 2010).
Transparency
Integrate sustainability in our business governance, processes and policies with transparent reporting, disclosure and engagement:
- One of our palm oil targets for 2025 is to establish full transparency and traceability for palm (kernel) oil. In 2021, we increased the traceability rate to the mill to 84 percent and the traceability rate to the plantation to 42 percent by engaging with our suppliers to map our joint palm-based supply chain.
Collaboration
Scale sustainability impact with our partners, leading to responsible business practices in our supply chains:
- In our ambition, we commit to 100 percent responsible sourcing together with our partners.
*Excluding products where ingredients or residue may affect recyclability or pollute recycling streams.
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