French cosmetics firm L’Oréal (Clichy; www.loreal.com) has unveiled a new sustainability programme, setting out it latest ambitions for 2030. As part of its “L’Oréal for the future” initiative, the company aims to ensure that 100% of the plastics used in its products will be made from either recycled or bio-based sources by 2030. By 2030, it plans to also reduce its entire greenhouse gas emissions by 50% per finished product (compared with 2016).

On L’Oréal’s website, the company says the plastic packaging of its products is “close to 60% of the volumes of materials used by the group to produce its packaging.” This consumption amounted to 140,000 t of plastics in 2018. Through its packaging optimisation initiatives, L’Oréal claims it reduced the consumption of 13,204 t of virgin materials in 2019 (up 52% against 2018), primarily due to its efforts to integrate recyclate within the plastic component of its packaging.

In addition, L’Oréal has allocated EUR 50m to fund projects linked to the circular economy, one of three major environmental issues that it is fighting. The other two are preservation of biodiversity and sustainable water management.

In order to assist its consumers in making more sustainable choices, the beauty giant has also developed a labelling scheme that ranks products on their environmental impact. The “Product Environmental & Social Impact Labelling” mechanism scores on a scale from A to E, with A considered as best in class in terms of environmental impact. L’Oréal said the method has been endorsed by independent scientific experts and data have been verified by independent auditor Bureau Veritas (Piraeus / Greece; https://group.bureauveritas.com).

Hair care range Garnier will be the first brand to implement the new labelling during 2020. It will then be progressively extended to other countries, brands and product categories. L’Oréal’s chief corporate responsibility officer, Alexandra Palt, said that with its new commitments, the company is entering a new phase of acceleration, “going beyond our direct environmental impact, helping consumers to make more sustainable choices, as well as generating positive social and environmental contribution.” The group’s portfolio comprises 36 brands.

L’Oréal was, nevertheless, noted in a report published last year by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF, Cowes / UK; www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org) in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP, Nairobi / Kenya; www.unep.org), for not releasing data pertaining to its use of plastic packaging, despite signing up to the EMF’s “New Plastics Economy Global Commitment” (see Plasteurope.com of 20.03.2019).