Renewable beauty: L’Oréal North Asia becomes carbon neutral

25 Jul 2022 --- L’Oréal’s North Asia business is the first in the entire company to achieve carbon neutrality for all operated sites, plants, distribution centers, offices as well as research and innovation centers spanning the five geographic markets of mainland China, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

The achievement was mainly fueled by renewable energy solutions and sourcing energy locally.

“With the United Nations warning that every country, city and organization should adopt plans for net zero – the call to action has seen L’Oréal North Asia Zone rise to the challenge,” says Fabrice Megarbane, president of North Asia and CEO of L’Oréal China.

“As a company, we recognized the gravity of the global environmental crisis and began reducing our environmental footprint in our manufacturing plants and distribution centers back in 2009.”

“With the launch of our sustainability commitment in 2020 – L’Oréal for the Future – which states that all L’Oréal sites worldwide must reach carbon neutrality by 2025, the North Asia Zone accelerated its efforts to achieve its goals.”

Also speaking on the carbon neutral distinction, Pankaj Gupta, SVP for North Asia and China Operations at L’Oréal’ says: “In North Asia, each L’Oréal product is produced and stored in plants and warehouses that are carbon neutral.”

“Going forward, we will further collaborate with our stakeholders to reduce CO2 emissions along the entire industry value chain through product innovation and consumer empowerment programs, transportation upgrading and collaboration with strategic suppliers.”

Achieving carbon neutrality in Asia and US
According to the company’s roadmap for reducing CO2 emissions, the L’Oréal North Asia zone has achieved several firsts.

The L’Oréal Group aims to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 and cut all its greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2030.For all L’Oréal facilities, mainland China was the first market globally to reach carbon neutrality in 2019. Now that the Japanese market has achieved carbon neutrality for all of its sites in July 2022, L’Oréal North Asia has become the first region of the L’Oréal Group to do so.

To achieve carbon neutrality for each of its facilities in North Asia, L’Oréal has employed dynamic measures and a variety of strategic approaches across those sites.

Last year, all 25 of L’Oréal’s US sites located across 12 states – including its manufacturing and distribution centers, office buildings and R&D facilities – achieved carbon neutrality for scopes one and two emissions.

Renewable energy solutions
In mainland China, L’Oréal reduced its CO2 emissions by installing on-site renewable energy generating facilities.

Additionally, in-house solar panels have produced 1.2M kWh of electricity annually at the L’Oréal BeautyCos facility in Suzhou, China, since 2015. Similarly, since 2019, the rooftop solar panels installed at L’Oréal’s Suzhou distribution center have supplied all its 4.4 million kWh electricity requirements.

According to the company, its BeautyCos facility is an example of how several renewable energy options can be combined to reduce CO2 emissions. A Combined Heat and Power (CHP) system was constructed on-site to use biogas to efficiently produce steam, electricity and heat in addition to its solar power generating system.

Meanwhile, L’Oréal’s Yichang Tianmei Plant achieved carbon neutrality in 2018 by utilizing only hydropower. Collaborating with a renewable energy project in Jiangsu Province, other L’Oréal China offices and campuses developed strategies to reduce CO2 emissions.

Locally sourced
L’Oréal sites in South Korea and Japan similarly sought the best approach to get regional renewable energy and have on-site facilities producing it.

L’Oréal sites in North Asia implemented approaches for regional renewable energy, with its on-site facilities producing it.In 2021, L’Oréal Korea began participating in the RE100 scheme in Korea (a global program promoting the use of renewable energy). In the same year, KEPCO certified that all of the company’s offices and distribution hubs were using renewable energy.

L’Oréal has also installed electrical boilers that use renewable electricity in its Gotemba, Japan, facility.

Meanwhile, L’Oréal Taiwan is the “first company in the market” to use Power Purchasing Agreements with local government agencies and the owner of the commercial building where it operates to direct its efforts toward renewable energy. With this in practice, the business became carbon neutral by the end of 2021.

Environmental moves: carbon capture tech and solutions
PersonalCareInsights previously reported on carbon capture and utilization (CCU), an emerging technology poised to “revolutionize” how companies and governments work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with L’Oréal applying this innovation to its products.

With the use of CCU, producers can stop waste carbon from escaping into the atmosphere and use it to create chemicals like ethanol.

In other developments, researchers from Cornell University, US, have discovered a sponge-like substance that can trap carbon dioxide (CO2) in its pores. Limiting CO2 levels gives companies new options to lessen their carbon footprint and meet their 2030 climate goals.

Within the detergent sector, Unilever made strides toward removing virgin petrochemicals from its cleaning and laundry formulas by introducing carbon-negative solutions, while LVMH Beauty signed an agreement with Origin Materials to purchase carbon-negative PET for fragrance and cosmetics packaging.

Among other green moves, L’Oréal, Total and LanzaTech created plastic packaging for cosmetics using recaptured and recycled carbon emissions.

By Nicole Kerr