“Carbon neutral”: At the end of 2023, the Group replaced the internal “carbon neutral” status with a commitment to achieving 100% renewable energy(1)On the Group’s operated sites, excluding safety and security installations as defined in paragraph 4.5.1.3. “Environmental data”. for all operated sites by 2025. However, it is still monitored to ensure compliance with the commitments that have already been made. It is defined as follows: a site must meet the following requirements: Direct CO2 (Scope 1) = 0, with the specific exception of the gas used for catering, the fuel oil used for sprinkler tests, the fuel oil (or diesel) used temporarily by backup units, fossil energy consumed during maintenance of on-site renewable facilities and cooling gas leaks if they are lower than 130 tonnes CO2 eq./year; and indirect Market Based CO2 (Scope 2) = 0. It should be noted that renewable energy sources no longer need to be located less than 500 kilometres from the site.
The Vichy and La Roche Posay sites are part of a single company (CAP), but are recognised as two Group factories, including in the recognition of sites that use 100% renewable energy (formerly known as “carbon neutral” status).
Safety equipment: This primarily includes the operational use or maintenance of:
Wastewater: for industrial sites, the Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) covers the volumes of wastewater leaving the plant, whether or not they have been treated on the site.
Waterloop: see the Waterloop Factory concept in subparagraph 4.3.1.1.4. Exceptions to the definition of Waterloop status may be authorised if they are approved by the Operations Department. These exceptions relate to regulatory constraints such as the requirements of the US Food and Drug Administration, or the Group’s Quality requirements or accidents or maintenance. For example, in 2023, this was the case for the Settimo site due to a new product mix that led to the installation of an additional osmosis plant.
Waste: L’Oréal classifies as transportable waste everything that comes out of a factory or a distribution centre that is not a finished or semi-finished product for consumption. For a factory, this includes, for example, raw materials packaging or packaging materials, broken pallets etc. In order to improve the system of waste performance monitoring and exhaustively record the waste generated by the use of returnable packaging, a system of recording returnable packaging at source was put in place in 2014. L’Oréal thus records the weight of its returnable packaging at source in transportable waste. Each site maximises the number of times returnable packaging is used. Recording the weight of returnable packaging at source is intended to encourage rotation of this returnable packaging and contributes, through its reuse, to increasing its useful life. Sites that no longer send any waste for destruction or to landfill are considered to have attained a 100% recovery rate(2)The material recovery index corresponds to the quantity of waste, reused or recycled, divided by the total amount of waste generated, excluding returnable packaging at source, including the returnable packaging in rotation and excluding waste sent to landfill due to regulatory obligations. The recovery index corresponds to the quantity of waste recovered, whether material or energy, divided by the total amount of waste generated excluding returnable packaging at source, including returnable packaging in rotation, excluding waste sent to landfill due to regulatory obligations. To obtain a more accurate understanding of the recovery and material recovery indices, these indicators are calculated excluding the transport pallets that would represent a significant share of the returnable packaging in rotation..
Since 2021, waste generation no longer includes the sludge from the wastewater treatment plans at the Group’s sites.
Biodiversity inventory: inventories that describe the actual situation of the sites in terms of species and habitats present in the zone studied, must be carried out by a external organisation at least every three years.
Land occupancy: a standardised approach has been developed with the support of The Biodiversity Consultancy to enable the land-use biodiversity footprint of bio-based ingredients to be calculated each year. This approach is based on three parameters: (1) the ground surface required, (2) the loss of biodiversity due to land use and intensity of agricultural practices and (3) the significance of biodiversity in the ecosystem in question. The first two parameters are multiplied to represent a ground surface area in which 100% of biodiversity is lost (value expressed in Mean Species Abundance per hectare, MSA.ha).
Land-use biodiversity footprint =
The required ground surface (1) is estimated in three steps:
Ingredients whose traceability is not currently known (plants and/or countries) have been integrated into the footprint using their relative contribution distribution when the data is known.
