L’Oréal operates in many countries where the risk of corruption can be significant and could lead L’Oréal's employees, as well as third parties acting in its name or on its behalf, directly or indirectly, voluntarily or involuntarily, to adopt practices contrary to the Group’s ethical principles and the prevailing regulations. Corruption takes a variety of forms that are not necessarily easy for employees to identify. For instance, the exchange of gifts or invitations of excessive value could be perceived as corruption.
The assessment of corruption risk is materialised by specific mapping, carried out at the Group level and by each country in its local context.
The Group’s activities involve in particular relations with:
Any breach of the Group’s corruption prevention principles may be detrimental to L’Oréal and its partners. Equally, any failure of a partner may be detrimental to L’Oréal.
The Group’s policies, described in this section, address the need to prevent the main CSR risks and mitigate their impact. By contributing to preventing and controlling the risks to which the Group is exposed, these policies are intended to contribute to the Group’s sustainable growth in a controlled environment suited to its business lines. There are however limits inherent in any system and process. These limits result from several factors, in particular the uncertainties of the outside world or malfunctions that may occur due to technical or human failures.
These policies also reflect a proactive approach by the Group that considers stakeholder expectations (see section 4.1.2.“Constant dialogue with stakeholders” of this document).
L’Oréal, whose strategy is Glocalization, sees its economic performance and its environmental and social performance as being inextricably bound. Long committed to reducing its environmental footprint, the Group has the ambition to appear among the exemplary companies in the field by proving that it is possible to decorrelate growth and impact, and to contribute positively to its ecosystem, throughout the world.
In 2013, L’Oréal intensified its environmental ambitions by launching the Sharing Beauty With All programme based on four pillars: “Innovating sustainably”, “Producing sustainably”,“Living sustainably” and “Developing sustainably”. In 2015, the Group announced its aim of becoming a Carbon Balanced company by the end of 2020. In 2016, a programme was rolled out within Sharing Beauty With All: Working sustainably. It brought administrative sites and research centers into the process of improving L’Oréal’s environmental and social impacts. In 2017, through its membership of the Science-Based Targets programme, an initiative of the CDP, the United Nations Global Compact, the World Resources Institute and WWF, L’Oréal signalled its goal of reducing its global greenhouse gas emissions by 25% compared to their 2016 levels by the end of 2030 and of going one step further by putting its environmental policy at the service of a major collective challenge, namely efforts to fight climate change. To progress further, in 2018, in the context of the individual Act4nature commitments, L’Oréal set a goal of 100% renewable raw materials coming from sustainable sources by 2030. Also in 2018, L’Oréal became a partner of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, with the aim of adopting refillable, reusable, recyclable, or compostable plastic for 100% of packaging by 2025. Finally, in 2019, L’Oréal was one of the first companies to sign the Business Ambition for 1.5 °C pledge of the UN Global Compact, thereby committing to reach “zero net emissions” by 2050 over its entire value chain, in accordance with the 1.5 °C paths of the IPCC(1).
All these programmes have allowed L’Oréal to broaden the scope of its actions. Beyond its commitment to preserving the health and safety of its employees and reducing the impact of its sites on their environment, the Group has implemented an ambitious policy to reduce its environmental footprint by preserving natural resources (energy, water, materials, biodiversity) on all sites operated and throughout the product life cycle, from the supply of raw materials to the end of life of products. L’Oréal is increasingly involving its suppliers in this process, sharing its ambitions and best practices, with the vision of a comprehensive and inclusive environmental policy.
In June 2020, L’Oréal announced its new L’Oréal for the Future sustainability programme built on three pillars: “Transforming ourselves”, “Empowering our business ecosystem”, and “Contributing to solving the challenges of the world”. In order to reconcile the Group’s needs to preserve a planet with limited resources, L’Oréal has raised its goals and defined targets for improvement by 2030 that cover all its direct and indirect impacts, related for example to the activity of its suppliers or the use of its products by consumers.
L’Oréal’s commitment is to ensure that its activities respect the “planetary boundaries”, meaning what the planet can with stand, as defined by environmental science.
(1) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
