Hong Kong
Our Commitments
Beauty Inspired, Values Driven
Social Impact and Sustainability Reporting
To read more about our commitment to social impact and sustainability, download our fiscal 2022 Social Impact & Sustainability Report. Previous reports can be found in Resources & Reports.
At The Estée Lauder Companies, our success is deeply rooted in our core values and the positive impact we have on our employees, our communities and the planet. Beauty Inspired, Values Driven is our promise to accelerate progress in these areas of strategic importance in order to continue delivering long-term, sustainable growth.
Fabrizio Freda, President and Chief Executive Officer
We are committed to:
Inclusion, Diversity & Equity
Embracing the beauty of belonging by celebrating the diverse perspectives that make up our ELC family and promoting equity for all.
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Employee Engagement
Empowering employees to drive social impact and sustainability across our business, fostering a culture of global citizenship and amplifying our collective impact and shared culture of purpose.
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Social Investments
Contributing to the communities where we live and work, with a special focus in areas where we see opportunities to make a difference including: health, girls’ education and wellbeing.
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Environmental Responsibility
Applying ingenuity and innovation to create more sustainable, prestige beauty products, while working hard to contribute to a stable climate and a healthy, beautiful planet.
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Inclusion, Diversity & Equity Commitments
Racial Equity
Listening & Learning
- Fostering a stronger internal culture of advocacy and inclusion to help employees share their voices, be heard and collectively affect change.
Talent & Opportunity for our Black Employees
- Ensure that we are providing more equitable access to professional development and advancement for our Black employees in the United States and hold ourselves accountable for creating a workforce that is more representative and responsive to people of all backgrounds.
Representation
- Ensure that the end-to-end creative process accurately and consistently represents the Black experience, engages Black professionals and that our products meet the needs of our Black consumers.
Suppliers
- Ensure that we leverage our power to support Black-owned businesses. We commit to at least double the amount we currently spend on sourcing ingredients, packaging materials and supplies from Black-owned businesses over the next three years.
Investing in Change
- Meaningfully support external organizations and non-profits pushing for systemic changes and racial and social justice.
Gender Equity
Equality of Opportunity
- Level the playing field for all genders by strengthening our culture of inclusion and diversity, advocacy, flexibility and engagement.
Equality of Leadership
- Implement policies and programs that create equal opportunities for all genders, including a pipeline to leadership and access to the tools and support to help individuals achieve success.
Equality of Global Access to Health and Education
- All people around the world deserve equal access to health, education, and economic participation. Our aim is to help women and girls worldwide acquire the necessary tools and skills to become healthy and productive adults, to effect lasting change and break the cycle of poverty.
Employee Engagement Commitments
Employee Safety
- We will drive safety to continue decrease the total incident rate1 to ensure continued world class–leading levels, with a goal of 0.15 by 2025.
Learning & Development
- In 2020, we provided 100% of our employees worldwide with access to training on basic sustainability and corporate social impact programs.
Employee Engagement
- By 2025, we will engage and mobilize employees to contribute a total of $25 million, by completing actions such as donating or volunteering, to nonprofits through ELC’s social impact and sustainability engagement program, since its launch in 2015.
1 Total incident rate is the number of OSHA recordable incidents per 100 workers.
2 Goal language was updated in fiscal 2020 to include employee participation in giving programs to more accurately capture employee engagement.
Social Investments Commitments
- In 2020, we met our goal to impact the well-being of 10 million individuals around the world through our programs and grants focused on health, education and environment.
- Each brand will focus on and support at least one social or environmental cause by 2025.
Environmental Responsibility Commitments
Energy and Emissions
- In 2020, we achieved our carbon neutrality1 goal. We also sourced 100% renewable electricity globally for our direct operations, reaching the target we set on joining RE1002
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In 2020, we set science-based targets (SBT) for Scopes 1, 2 and 3, as follows:
- Reduce absolute Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 50% by 2030 from a 2018 base year3.
- Reduce Scope 3 GHG emissions from purchased goods and services, upstream transportation and distribution and business travel 60% per unit revenue over the same timeframe3.
- By 2030, 100% of our global corporate fleet vehicles will transition to electric.
Waste
- In 2020, we achieved zero industrial waste-to-landfill for 100% of our global manufacturing, distribution and innovation sites4.
Water
- By 2025, we are committed to reducing our water withdrawal from our direct manufacturing sites by 20%, from a fiscal 2019 baseline, focusing on our high and extremely high water-stressed sites.5
Packaging
- By 2025, 75-100% of packaging will be recyclable, refillable, reusable, recycled or recoverable.
- By 2025, we will increase the amount of post-consumer recycled (PCR) material in our packaging to 25% or more.
- Our ambition is to use responsibly sourced paper products whenever possible with a goal to have 100% of our forest-based fiber cartons to be FSC certified by 2025.
- By 2030, we will reduce the amount of virgin petroleum plastic in our packaging to 50% or less.
Ingredient Transparency
- We will develop a glossary of key ingredients that includes descriptions of the ingredients’ purpose and will make this information available online by 2025.
Responsible Sourcing
- As part of our continuous efforts to address issues that may exist within complex supply chains, by 2025 we will have identified sensitive ingredient supply chains and developed robust biodiversity and social action plans for them.
- By 2025, at least 95% of our palm-based ingredients6 (palm oil and its derivatives) will be certified sustainable from RSPO physical supply chains.
Travel Retail
Emissions8
- Achieve carbon neutrality for transportation to Travel Retail customers by the end of fiscal year 2023.
- Achieve carbon neutrality for all Corporate Travel Retail Worldwide Business Air Travel by the end of fiscal year 2023.9
Packaging
- Transition all Travel Retail Exclusive (TREX) paper cartons to responsibly sourced FSC-certified board by 2025. Reduce plastic usage by removing plastic film-wrap from Travel Retail Exclusive outside cartons by 2023.
Store Design and Visual Merchandising
- Incorporate sustainability practices in Travel Retail new store design and visual merchandising across all brands, including with respect to materials starting in fiscal year 2021.
Sustainable Building Operations
- Deploy sustainability practices across all Travel Retail office locations by the end of fiscal year 2023.
1 THE CARBON NEUTRALITY COMMITMENT COVERS ELC DIRECT BUSINESS OPERATIONS (SCOPE 1 AND 2 EMISSIONS).
2 ELC joined the RE100 campaign in 2017. Please see www.there100.org for more information.
3 For SBT goals, the base year is fiscal 2018 and completion year is fiscal 2030.
4 Waste goal includes industrial waste from global manufacturing, distribution and innovation sites with ELC operational control. Industrial waste includes the solid component of the waste stream arising from commercial and industrial activities (not collected as Municipal Solid Waste), but does not contain Hazardous Waste.
5 Reduction is from a fiscal 2019 baseline of 1.5 million cubic meters water withdrawal at ELC operated manufacturing sites. Excludes brands acquired by ELC during or after fiscal 2020 and any manufacturing sites that are not fully operational within the target timeline.
6 Excludes palm-based ingredients not directly procured by ELC, such as those procured by Third-Party Manufacturers (TPMs) and certain acquired brands not yet fully integrated into the relevant ELC systems.
7 Fiscal 2019 baseline = 8.7% PCR material in our packaging.
8 Travel Retail’s business air travel and transportation emissions contribute to ELC’s Scope 3 footprint.
9 Excludes travel by counter beauty advisors.
The Estée Lauder Companies is a different kind of company.
For 75 years, we’ve continued to delight and inspire our consumers with transformative products and experiences, thanks to the challenger spirit of our founder, Mrs. Estée Lauder, and our talented and diverse workforce.
As we’ve grown into the global house of prestige beauty, with a portfolio of beloved brands, some things have remained constant:
a culture of belonging for all employees and consumers that creates a sense of family and fosters inclusion, diversity, and equality,
an unwavering commitment to quality and excellence from exceptional products to high-touch experiences
and our continued focus on social impact and sustainability.
This is in our DNA.
The Estée Lauder Companies is the leading global house of prestige beauty that is a Beauty Inspired, Values Driven business.
This means that we value and promote inclusion, diversity, and equity for all,
embed sustainability ever more deeply into everything we do,
deliver long-term value,
and bring positive impact to everyone we touch.
We are managing our business for the long-term, with family ownership allowing the company to be guided by the principle of patient capital, and this has been true since our founding. This long-term, strategic approach sets the company’s direction by regularly looking out 10 years into the future to inform our continuous transformation.
Our commitments to social impact and sustainability are no different, helping drive innovation, growth and efficiency, across our business and within our brand portfolio, with our goals reflecting the link between our commitments and business value creation.
We are proud of the overall progress we have made, but we also recognize that we have more work to do in order to accomplish greater results. We pledge to live our shared values, every day, and hold ourselves accountable to this commitment and the actions we take at our company and in our communities.
Family values are at the core of The Estée Lauder Companies. It’s who we are and who we have always been. As the company continues its journey to create a brighter future, the collective vision of our ELC family around the world and our spirit of community, will continue to propel us forward.
William P. Lauder, Executive Chairman
We invite you to explore our goals and commitments further:
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Aug 10, 2023
The Science of Skin Care: ELC Scientists Shine at WCD 2023
At the World Congress of Dermatology in Singapore, ELC shared new preclinical and clinical findings in skin care research.
Aug 3, 2023
For the 2nd year in a row, ELC has received a top score on the Disability Equality Index® and was named to Disability:IN’s list, “Best Places to Work for Disability Inclusion.”