As a pioneer in the field of sustainability, Henkel wants to drive new solutions for sustainable progress and develop its business responsibly and economically successfully. This 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, climate-neutral future. We are focusing on climate change mitigation measures, a functional circular economy, and the protection of nature and biodiversity.
Climate
Become a climate-neutral business by decarbonizing our operations and raw materials.
- 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 2022, Henkel fully transitioned production in 23 countries, including in Columbia and France, to electricity that is 100 percent renewable. Today, Henkel stands already at 70 percent renewable electricity usage
- To achieve climate positivity in our own operations, we are planning to replace all of the fuels we need to generate energy at our sites with zero-GHG or reduced-GHG 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-neutral 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
Advance circularity through our products, packaging and technologies.
Our ambitions & targets for packaging
- By 2025, 100 percent of Henkel’s packaging material will be designed for recyclability or reusability*.
- We aim to reduce the amount of virgin plastics from fossil sources in our consumer products by 50 percent by 2025. We will achieve this by increasing the proportion of recycled plastic to more than 30 percent and reducing the volume of virgin plastic.
- We want to continuously help ensure that all packaging waste is properly disposed of and recycled, thereby preventing it from entering the environment. In order to achieve this, we are supporting waste collection and recycling initiatives. We are investing in innovative solutions and technologies that support improved infrastructure and consumer information to drive the recycling process.
By the end of 2022, 87 percent of Henkel's packaging was already designed for recycling or reuse*. The proportion of recycled plastic in its consumer goods packaging was 16 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: reducing plastic waste in nature as well as providing new opportunities for people living in poverty. Within the partnership, Henkel supports projects in Egypt, where it has already set up 14 collection centers for plastic waste together with Plastic Bank. In 2022, around 5,100 metric tons of Social Plastic® were collected and reprocessed into new packaging at Henkel, among others.
Commitment of our employees
We not only want to impart knowledge about sustainability to our employees, but also encourage them to commit themselves to sustainability. With their skills and knowledge, they can make important contributions to sustainability as ambassadors at our sites, with our customers and with other partners in our business environment.
Sustainability Ambassador Programme
- In 2012, Henkel initiated the "Sustainability Ambassador Program" to encourage employees to learn more about sustainability.
- Since then, Henkel has qualified more than 50,000 Sustainability Ambassadors worldwide - through targeted e-learning programs and team training.
- Within the scope of our school project, our Sustainability Ambassadors also visit schools in order to familiarize children with sustainable action in everyday life. By the end of 2020, we had informed more than 175,000 schoolchildren in 54 countries about sustainability.
Other initiatives
- As part of the Sustainability Ambassador program Henkel has launched a global employee initiative. It is part of its commitment to foster a functioning circular economy and reduce plastic waste in the environment: Around 1,300 Henkel employees around the world have so far taken part in clean-up events and removed waste from riverbanks, parks and cities. The aim of the ‘trashfighter’ initiative is to further raise awareness of waste in the environment.
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 2022, we had saved 25 percent.
Thriving Communities
We do everything we can to help people live better lives. Our social responsibility is to promote equity, 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, equity and 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 38,500 smallholder farmers who cultivate around 347,000 hectares of land.
Education
Support lifelong learning and education, and motivate people 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 30 million people by 2030 as part of this commitment (base year 2010) in 2022. Since 2010, we have reached more than 30 million people.
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. In 2022, 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
Reliably deliver best-in-class product performance and chemical safety as the foundation 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 121 percent in 2022 (compared to the base year 2010).
Transparency
Integrate sustainability into our business governance 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 2022, we increased the traceability rate to the mill to 89 percent and the traceability rate to the plantation to 50 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:
- 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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