During the Climate Week NYC, the French beauty products company L’Oreal proudly announced that it had managed to achieve carbon neutral status across all of its operations in the United States. These include everything from research, innovations, manufacturing, distribution and even administrative sites, all of which amount to a total of 25 facilities.
What makes the achievement even more satisfying is that it comes four years ahead of schedule and is aligned with the company’s global strategy to reach carbon neutrality across all facilities worldwide by the year 2025. And by 2050, L’Oreal strives to achieve net-zero emissions.
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Moreover, environmentally conscious consumers who are also customers of the brand can feel at ease about their purchases impacting the climate, as two thirds of all of the company’s products sold in the US are also manufactured in the country.
Now, all of L’Oreal’s US facilities run exclusively on renewable energy. But even with these achievements, L’Oréal USA President and CEO, Stéphane Rinderknech acknowledged that they are still not enough to mitigate the climate crisis and more efforts are still needed.
The journey to a carbon neutral L’Oreal
L’Oreal embarked on the journey towards a more sustainable future already in 2005 and along the way it deployed a series of green projects that helped bring today’s milestone closer.
Among them are a number of energy efficiency projects that slash energy consumption, such as LED lighting and vacuum pumps. Furthermore, about 70% of L’Oreal’s facilities in the US benefit from direct renewable energy projects, including a 1.4MW solar facility, which happens to the world’s largest by tonnage produced.
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And to meet its onsite heating needs, the company has been getting renewable natural gas (RNG) from RNG projects in New York and Texas that capture methane and convert it into natural gas.
Due to these and many other efforts made by the beauty company, L’Oreal has obtained a Triple ‘A’ rating from the CDP for the fifth consecutive year now – something no one else has managed to do.
