We’re working hard to be a more sustainable resilient business, from how we create our products through to lowering the environmental footprint of our operations. 

We’re on an ambitious journey to reduce the packaging our of products, move to 100% sustainable paper, and increase use of recycled and recyclable materials.  We’re working towards more renewable and natural ingredients and biodegradable formulas for our beauty products.  And we’ve committed to full traceability and/or certification of our critical supply chains by 2025. 

Making our beauty products more sustainable

We’re working hard to make sure that the ingredients in our products and the packaging we use are designed with the health of our planet and communities in mind.

Embedding sustainability across all of our products in all of the countries where we sell is difficult and will take time.  We are aiming for progress over perfection: we have vision and commitment, and promise to be honest and transparent about where we are on our journey.  

Responsible ingredient sourcing

Sourcing ingredients responsibly has always been important to us and we’re working hard to improve further.  This starts with ingredient sourcing.  We’ve committed to using at least 90% renewable or natural ingredients, and 95% biodegradeable formulas by 2030.

We’re working on transparency and traceability across all our products, including those ingredients that have particular social or environmental concerns.  For example we use small amount of palm oil, and are long-term committed members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), and the Action for Sustainable Derivatives (ASD). 

We’re now going further and have pledged that our critical supply chains for the palm oil, mica, paper, alcohol, soy and cotton will be fully traceable and/or certified by 2025. 

Making our packaging 100% recyclable, reusable or compostable

We’re making progress on our ambitions to make all of our packaging recyclable, reusable or compostable by 2030.  We’re increasing the amount of  recycled plastic we use and decreasing the amount of packaging overall.  More than two thirds of our Plastic Packaging is already Recyclable, Reusable or Compostable, but we recognise that we still have more to do to reduce the environmental impact of our packaging.

We’ve already reduced plastic content in our Care and Senses brands, and are making positive progress with our Clearskin range.  Clearskin is now vegan with less plastic packaging and reduced packaging overall, including moving to a solid cleansing bar format.  

Distillery is a range of skincare and make-up products composed of concentrates crafted through a rich distillery process that delivers nature’s potency at its fullest, including several waterless formulas.  The products combine high-performance, vegan-friendly ingredients with environmentally conscious packaging, including FSC certified cartons and compostable cello-wrap.

Reducing carbon emissions

We continue to focus on reducing our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy consumption, as well as increasing the use of renewable energy to reduce our carbon footprint. Having surpassed our 2020 target (with 53 percent GHG emissions reductions from 2005 baseline), we aim to achieve net zero emissions by 2030 and to continue the use of renewable energy where possible.

Water stewardship

We achieved our target water reduction of 40% by 2020. This was a bold ambition when it was set, and we’re pleased with the progress we have made towards this, through continued optimisation of equipment cleaning practices. We’ve set a new goal to further reduce our water intensity by 5% from 2020 levels by 2025.

Waste and recovery

Our recycling rate globally is now 93.4 percent, which means we have exceeded our target of 90 percent by 2020. We continue to educate and train our manufacturing associates around the world on the importance of a responsible approach to waste reduction. We’ve also implemented waste reduction programmes, such as converting waste into energy and reusing wastewater sludge. Our goal is to increase recycling to 95 percent by 2025 and strive for zero waste to landfill.  Our sites in the UK and Brazil have already achieved zero waste to landfill.

You can read more about our work to be more planetkind and humankind here in our corporate responsibility report
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Recycling tips

Small changes can make a big difference.  There are things we can all do, every day to reduce our environmental footprint.  Here are our top recycling tips.

Do you recycle your Avon brochure? Once you’ve finished with it, be sure to share it with someone who might like to use it or, put it into your paper recycling.

Plastic bottles, like shampoos, conditioners and shower gels, are accepted by most recycling programmes - make sure that you have emptied and cleaned them out before placing in the appropriate recycling bin.

Aerosols like hairsprays and deodorants can be recycled in most household collection schemes - make sure they’ve been completely finished before recycling
DON’T FORGET: trigger heads and pumps must be detached and put in your normal bin.

Glass bottles (except nail varnish) are widely recyclable – again, make sure they have been emptied and cleaned before putting them in the recycling bin.

The carton boxes and paper inserts your beauty products come with are accepted by most recycling programmes, so pop them into your recycling bin