Contribute to a sustainable and circular society

Essity strives to reduce resource consumption and toward efficient recycling or composting of our hygiene and health products. As part of innovation activities, we develop offerings and business models to contribute to a sustainable and circular society, which also creates new business opportunities for Essity.

Sustainable and circular innovations

Essity’s Tork PaperCircle^®, the world’s first recycling service for paper hand towels, is one example of a unique circular customer offering that a growing number of customers joined in 2019. In tissue production, Essity is investing in alternative fiber technology at the facility in Mannheim, Germany, to manufacture tissue based on alternative fibers from plant-based agricultural by-products.

Science Based Targets

Essity’s targets for carbon emissions are approved by the Science Based Targets initiative, which means scientific methodology shows that our targets are in line with the global climate target set by the Paris Agreement concerning global warming. The target is linked to energy use and purchased electricity (Scope 1 and 2), and our indirect climate impact from material use, transportation and waste management, which includes emissions from suppliers and consumers (Scope 3).

Packaging, fiber sourcing and suppliers

Essity has set additional targets for packaging in 2019 and is aiming for 100% recyclability of our packaging. Our target for sourcing of fresh fiber means all wood-based fresh fiber in our products and packaging is to be FSC^® or PEFC™ certified. All wood-based fresh fiber must fulfill the FSC Controlled Wood standard, as a minimum, to be eligible for purchasing. Essity’s target for responsible sourcing is that 100% of all strategically important sourcing categories and sourcing from high-risk areas, which corresponds to 90% of Essity’s total purchase cost, is to comply with Essity’s Global Supplier Standard.

 

¹⁾ Outcome of Scope 3 is for 2018.

Read more about our targets and outcomes for 2019, 2018 and 2017 in non-financial notes.

Our contribution to the UN Sustainable Development Goals

Goal 12 – Responsible consumption and production

Together with our customers, consumers, suppliers and other business partners, we are working toward a sustainable and circular society. Our innovation activities develop offerings that create value for our customers and consumers while we reduce the impact on the environment through smarter product designs and materials as well as greater resource efficiency in our production. We also strive to increase the use of renewable or recycled materials and to expand the recycling of our packaging and products.

Goal 13 – Climate action

We address the challenges of climate change through innovation and cooperation with others to reduce resource consumption and environmental impact. We have Group targets for the climate impact of our innovations, materials and production. Our targets to reduce carbon emissions have been approved by the Science Based Targets initiative and are in line with the ambition in the Paris agreement to reduce global warming.

Goal 15 – Life on land

We are a global purchaser of fresh fiber and communicate a clear commitment that all wood-based fresh fiber raw material should originate from responsibly managed forests. This means we require our fresh fiber suppliers to maintain and safeguard the principles of biodiversity and forest conservation. We prioritize FSC^® as certification system and encourage all suppliers to strive for certification. This is part of our work to increase the percentage of certified and sustainable forest operations in the world.