The risks of serious damage to the environment are those associated with the consumption of resources or that could cause damage to soils, water, air and biodiversity (habitats and species) in the context of normal operation or the occurrence of an incident at a site of the Subsidiaries or Suppliers:
The Group’s Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) policy aims to minimise the impact on the environment and guarantee the health and safety of the employees of its Subsidiaries and Suppliers, its customers and the communities in which L’Oréal carries out its activities.
For the Subsidiaries, this policy is built on an EHS management system composed of standards with stringent requirements that set the principles of L’Oréal’s EHS policy, which is all included in the EHS guidelines.
In addition to the actions resulting from the risk analysis on the activities of the Group and the Suppliers, L’Oréal conducts actions on Environment, Health and Safety in the workplace in addition to those implemented in the context of the French law on Duty of Vigilance, which are described in Chapter 4 “L’Oréal’s Social, Environmental and Societal Responsibility” of this document.
L’Oréal’s commitment to Environment, Health and Safety in the workplace is supported at the highest level of the Company by its Chief Executive Officer who renews L’Oréal’s commitment to the United Nations Global Compact each year.
For example, this includes the following additional actions and commitments:
At its own sites, L’Oréal implements the LIFE (Life threatening Incident or Fatality Event) programme, which covers activities on all its sites that, if not controlled, could result in potentially serious injury and illness. The Group extends the ambition of moving towards “zero accidents” by ensuring the sustain ability of actions and defining post-incident emergency preparedness requirements.
Furthermore, the Sharing Beauty with All programme has helped to reduce the environmental footprint of the Group’s sites, in particular by defining and disseminating best practices regarding energy efficiency, reducing CO2 emissions, contributing to the preservation of water, biodiversity and resources, and improving waste treatment.
The new commitments made by the Group for 2030 as part of its L’Oréal for the Future programme are aimed at ensuring compatibility of the Group’s activities with a planet that has limited resources (the commitments and achievements of the programme are detailed in Chapter 4 “L’Oréal’s Social, Environmental and Societal Responsibility” of this document, specifically in section 4.4. “L’Oréal for the Future: 2021 Results”). The main environmental objectives of the programme concerning Subsidiaries are as follows:
These objectives are accompanied by monthly reporting of detailed indicators used to monitor evolutions in results in each of these areas and to identify potential anomalies and incidents.
Furthermore, the Group is engaged in a process of continuous improvement of EHS performance through its operated sites in order to sustainably anchor the EHS policy: ISO 45001 for the management of employee health and safety and improvement in their working conditions; ISO 14001 for the management of environmental impacts and improvement in environmental performance; and ISO 50001 for energy management and energy performance improvement.
Moreover, “culture” audits are conducted by internal EHS specialists in order to assess the deployment level of the EHS culture with all employees at Subsidiaries: the results of these audits provide information on the level of knowledge of EHS management tools and the maturity of audited sites with regard to the safety and environment culture at all structural levels.
Detailed information on these additional actions is available in Chapter 4 “L’Oréal’s Social, Environmental and Societal Responsibility” of this document.