In a world that is constantly evolving, L'Oréal’s goal is to offer each and every person the best of beauty. For over 110 years, the leading beauty player has devoted itself to fulfilling the beauty aspirations of consumers around the world.

With its broad portfolio of international brands and their exceptional sustainability commitments, L’Oréal is committed to advocate for beauty to be inclusive, diverse, empowering, innovative and responsible – and they do so by bringing positive changes to individuals, communities, and the environment through company-wide and brand initiatives.

“At L’Oréal, we believe that beauty is an essential human need. The desire for beauty has existed since the beginning of time, but beauty is more than skin deep. Beauty can be a powerful and inclusive force too,” said Tomas Hruska, Managing Director for L’Oréal Malaysia and Singapore.

Through diversity and inclusion, women empowerment, responsibility, and innovation, we create beauty which is dynamic and beneficial to all. This is our purpose at L’Oréal: We aspire to Create the Beauty that Moves the World.

L’Oréal’s bold sustainability targets for 2030

From very early on, L’Oréal became aware of the urgent need to address the challenges arising from the global environmental crisis. Hence, the beauty brand has been working towards reducing their impact on the environment and making a positive contribution to society.

Building on the belief that financial performance goes hand in hand with environmental and social performance, the Group renewed its commitment in 2020 by launching L’Oréal for the Future. This programme outlines the sustainable transformation that L’Oréal aims to complete by 2030 and embodies the three facets of the Group’s corporate responsibility goals:

• Transforming themselves and respecting planetary boundaries. 

  - By 2025, all of L’Oréal’s sites will have achieved carbon neutrality by improving energy efficiency and using 100% renewable energy;

  - By 2030, 100% of the plastics used in L’Oréal’s products’ packaging will be either from recycled or bio-based sources;

  - By 2030, L’Oréal will reduce by 50% per finished product, compared to 2016, its entire greenhouse gas emissions.

• Empowering their business ecosystem to be a part of the transformation by encouraging their partners, consumers, industry and beyond to become agents for change.

• Help solve the challenges of the world by supporting social and environmental needs. 

“With these objectives in mind, we have set ourselves bold and measurable targets for 2030 on climate, water, biodiversity, and natural resources. Our goals are in accordance with the scientific experts' demands and what our planet needs,” said Tomas.

Locally, L’Oréal Malaysia contributed to their global mission with the following initiatives: 

i) L’Oréal Malaysia is the first beauty company to join MAREA (Malaysian Recycling Alliance) to jointly improve collection and recycling rates for a greener, cleaner Malaysia and a more sustainable, waste-reduced future.

ii) They achieved Zero Waste to Landfill for all their office waste through their internal recycling program where the different packaging material waste are recycled while the food waste are composted through their recycling partner.

iii) To encourage responsible consumption with the consumers, their Lancôme, Shu Uemura and Kiehl’s stores have introduced recycling and rewards programs since October 2021.

iv) Garnier advocates for recycling with the Garnier Green Beauty school program. In partnership with Malaysian Nature Society and Ministry of Education, they nurture recycling habits and create the next generation of #HeroHijau with their 3R program. In 2022, they successfully reached out to an average of 340,000 students from 682 schools. 

v) Kiehl’s supported WWF-Malaysia with turtle conservation efforts through RM140,000 donation; incubation of 2,540 turtle eggs; removal of 895kg of waste and 36.5kg of Ghost Net.

Tomas further explained that the beauty brand will be having few upcoming projects to further reduce their carbon footprints, such as using electric vehicles (EV) to transport products and installing solar panels at their third party logistic partner warehouse. 

Discover the initiatives carried out by L’Oréal for social responsibility

On Group Commitments: L’Oréal Fondation supports and empowers women to shape their future and make a difference in society. Beauty for a Better Life equips underprivileged women with hairdressing and beauty skills to help transform their lives. They have assisted 134 Malaysian women since we launched the programme in Malaysia back in 2016.

Meanwhile, L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science supports women scientists with endowments for research because the world needs science, and science needs women. They kickstarted this locally in 2006 and have since disbursed RM1.5 million of endowment to help 51 women scientists. 

On Brand Commitments: All of their brands aspire to make positive changes globally, and have committed to champion causes surrounding sustainability, empowerment, and social issues. A few of the brands are working with local NGO partners to introduce programmes to champion mental health and domestic violence, which will be shared to the public soon.

On Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI): L’Oréal strives to be the most inclusive beauty leader and contribute to a society in which everyone can live safely, peacefully, and equally. Internally, they implemented policies so that their employees can thrive regardless of their age, race, or gender – among others, they are proud to share that in Malaysia they offer 16 weeks of maternity/adoption leave and 6 weeks of paternity leave. Additionally, they work with their logistics partner to employ 66 differently abled individuals; as well as organise regular DEI workshops and training.  

Governance practises L’Oréal have in place to ensure accountability and transparency 

“L’Oréal has always considered social and financial reporting as a strategic tool to monitor our progress in the field of sustainability. Reporting is not perceived as a tick-box exercise but rather an indispensable working instrument which guides our internal transformation and that of our stakeholders,” explained Tomas.

“Every year, we communicate transparently, providing data on our corporate social and environmental responsibility strategy, challenges, and results in several reports such as our Group’s Annual Report. L’Oréal’s social and environmental performance and our reporting via robust, reliable indicators verified by statutory auditors, have enabled us to be recognised by the most demanding global organisations in this area”.

L'Oréal has also been recognized by Standard & Poor's Global for its sustainability performance, with a solid ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) rating of 85 points out of 100. This recognition is based on an ESG profile score of 77 out of 100, combined with an excellent Preparedness Score of 8. This rating reflects L'Oréal’s exemplary environmental and social performance, which places sustainable development issues at the heart of product innovation. It also underlines their sustainable transformation towards a more responsible and inclusive business model through the implementation of an ambitious sustainability strategy.

Incorporating technology and innovation in your commitment to sustainability

In a fast-paced changing world, all industries are being transformed by tech, and beauty business makes no exception. L’Oréal is the first in the beauty industry to pioneer the concept of Beauty Tech, bringing beauty revolutions to our fingertips – from AI-powered skincare solutions to personalised makeup devices through to new codes of beauty, L’Oréal is a Beauty Tech powerhouse, driving positive impact at a collective and individual level. 

“We believe that by tackling sustainability and inclusion challenges (Beauty For All), we can simultaneously provide unparalleled, comprehensive and integrated beauty experiences for everyone in their infinite diversity and their individual aspirations (Beauty For Each),” added Tomas. 

For example, we partnered with Swiss start-up Gjosa to develop the L’Oréal Professional Water Saver showerhead to conserve water at hair salons. It is the first showerhead leveraging patented water fragmentation technology to save up to 69% water at the backbar. The showerhead is now linked to a live dashboard to accurately measure the cumulative amount of water saved by using the technology. To date, it has saved salons more than 72 million litres of water – equivalent to 28 Olympic-sized pools.

L’Oréal recently inked a 5-year MoU with Ministry of Education to empower vocational training locally

“We heeded the Government’s call for industry partnership in resolving graduates’ skills mismatch by partnering with the Ministry of Education (MOE) through its Technical Vocational Education and Training Division (Bahagian Pendidikan dan Latihan Teknikal Vokasional /BPLTV),” said Tomas.

This MoU will see L’Oréal Malaysia and BPLTV working together in introducing various initiatives for the 17 national vocational colleges specialising in cosmetology. This partnership aims to ‘future-proof’ cosmetology students for the job market through training and upskilling, facilitation of knowledge transfers, as well as opportunities for industry exposure. We also see this partnership as part of our social responsibility commitments because we’re helping to upskill and empower Malaysian youths. 

Sustainability development at L’Oréal is a longstanding commitment

“We started it more than a decade ago when we formalised our first industrial environmental targets in 2009 – since then, we have introduced two sustainability programmes, first with Sharing Beauty with all in 2013 and now with L’Oréal for the Future. Each with bold and measurable goals that are aimed to improve our environmental challenges,” explained Tomas.

Sustainability is an important part of our organisation, and it goes hand in hand with our business performance. We see it as a continuous journey, one where we are constantly assessing our efforts and tracking our results to ensure we make the most impact for the people and planet. 

After all, our purpose at L’Oréal is to Create the Beauty that Moves the World.