Since we began our company journey in 2015, Edgewell has made steady progress towards becoming a more sustainable company.

As we look towards the next ten years, sustainability will be an important business driver for Edgewell’s future growth and provide our organization and brands with a huge opportunity for the taking.

We are determined to be a positive force in the world, with careful consideration for the well-being of both society and our planet.

To deliver on our ambitions, we have developed a sustainability strategy with clear commitments and targets to work towards.

Our new Sustainable Care 2030 strategy will ensure that we are a successful and responsible business not just today, but for generations to come. And, crucially, our ten sustainability commitments will enable us to deliver on our promise of well-designed and well-made personal care products while continuously improving, with careful consideration for the well-being of both society and our planet.

Our brands help people look, feel and be their best, while bringing joy to everyday life. We create products that people love to use to take care of themselves, designed with careful consideration for our planet and everyone who shares it.

We are committed to driving sustainable innovation across our brands and using them to enable and inspire responsible consumption. This means designing our products in ways that not only meet, but in some cases exceed, stringent safety standards from major regulatory agencies around the world.

“I am energized by the passion of our teams and progress across our brands to innovate for sustainability with every new product launch and reformulation. Our brands are well-loved because they are trusted and reliable, and it brings me joy to know that our consumers can also be confident in our efforts to make them sustainable.”
– Anne-Sophie Gaget
Chief Growth and Innovation Officer, Edgewell Personal Care

DESIGNING FOR SUSTAINABILITY

Creating more sustainable products and packaging is a priority for Edgewell. It is one of the greatest positive impacts we can make as a business. Considering circularity principles, reducing plastic waste and helping to protect the health of our environment and oceans are some of our priorities when designing and developing our products. We are committed to embedding sustainable design into our brands by using more recycled, renewable and recyclable materials, reducing overall material usage and reducing waste.

Improving our use of recycled and responsibly sourced materials

There is growing consumer demand for products and packaging made from recycled and responsibly sourced materials. At Edgewell, we are responding to this by strengthening our approach to sustainable design innovation and sourcing across our portfolio. This means rethinking the materials we use and considering how consumers dispose of or recycle the products when they are done with them.

Helping consumers recycle packaging

In addition to using less plastic overall and increasing our use of post-consumer recycled (PCR) materials where possible, we are helping consumers to recycle our product packaging through clear, simple instructions on packs. Helping consumers to understand the materials that products are packaged in — and how to dispose of them responsibly — makes recycling easier and more likely.

INGREDIENT SELECTION

All our products undergo thorough internal and independent safety evaluations to meet our high standards of product quality and safety. We constantly endeavor to find and create new solutions that meet consumer demand for performance, reliability and sustainability. Additionally, we actively monitor scientific research and changing regulatory requirements and strive to go beyond what regulations require where possible. We have rigorous safety and quality requirements that include the ingredients we use to formulate our products.

Suncare product stewardship

At Edgewell, we strive to develop the highest quality sunscreens that respect the well-being of people, planet and animals. We want our customers, distributors and consumers around the world to trust that our products protect from the sun – anywhere, anytime. We are dedicated to helping consumers make informed choices about sun protection because it is essential to ensuring health and wellness while enjoying the sunshine.

Reformulation in suncare ingredients

We work hard to ensure our consumers have access to a wide range of products across our suncare category with different combinations of ultraviolet (UV) filters that are safe, protect their skin from UV rays and allow them to enjoy more time outside. We are also committed to making 100% of our suncare formulas ‘reef-friendly’ by 2022 (Excludes existing SPF 100s sold only in select stores and markets.).

We believe we have a responsibility to do what’s right for the planet and actively seek ways to reduce our environmental footprint across our global operations. We strive to embed sustainability in our day-to-day decisions and work to ensure our suppliers uphold the same social and environmental standards to which we hold ourselves.

Our global operations and supply chain encompass how we source ingredients, raw materials and components from suppliers; how we use these to manufacture products; how we manage our production facilities; and how we ship our products to retailers so that consumers can, in turn, buy and enjoy them. As we continuously improve our environmental practices and expand our sustainability efforts, we will grow our overall business and better serve our customers and consumers.

“We are challenging ourselves more than ever before and setting ambitious goals across our global operations – from regionalizing our manufacturing and moving production and warehousing facilities to be closer to our customers and reduce our carbon footprint to pursuing 100% renewable energy use and zero-waste-to-landfill by 2030. These are complex undertakings and certainly won’t be easy, but our talented and innovative teams are up for the challenge.”
– Paul Hibbert
Chief Supply Chain Officer, Edgewell Personal Care

Environmental, health and safety management systems

At Edgewell, we focus on continuously improving our operations and reducing our environmental impact. Our practices are guided by a comprehensive set of global Health, Safety, Environmental and Sustainability (HSES) policies and standards, which we have developed in alignment with industry best practice as well as legal, regulatory and customer requirements. These policies and standards provide a systematic and consistent approach to drive positive change and improve the HSES systems of our sites around the world.

Conserving energy use

We continuously seek ways to reduce our energy use because it is not only good for the environment, but also good for business. Our goal is to further reduce our total global energy use by 10% by 2030 based on a FY19 baseline.

Managing our carbon footprint

We will continue to refine our global operations processes and policies to keep focus on energy improvement and conservation. We will work hard to ensure we reduce our GHG emissions and remain focused on our long-term energy goals.

Waste reduction and recycling in our operations

We are committed to limiting the amount of waste that goes to landfill, reducing our global environmental footprint and preventing loss of resources that could be reused or recycled. We aim to recycle and divert the by-products of our production processes from landfill to the extent possible.

Conserving water

Due to the nature of the products we manufacture, water is not a primary input or widely used in our operations. Even though our water use constitutes just a small part of our impact, we still strive to reduce it.

Logistics

Optimizing how we get our components and products from one place to another is at the heart of our supply chain. As our supply chain involves transporting materials and products around the world, optimizing logistics presents an opportunity to reduce our environmental impact, cutting emissions by reducing the distance materials and products need to travel and the number of trips needed to transport them. Two innovations have been central to our strategy to drive improved sustainability through smarter logistics: a shift to regional manufacturing and new collaborations with other suppliers and retailers.

Ethical and responsible sourcing

We partner with suppliers to ensure they meet our environmental and social standards and that all workers in our value chain are treated with decency and respect. We are committed to responsibly sourcing the ingredients and materials that we use to produce and package our products which is essential for us to help protect the natural environment, and forests in particular, one of our planet’s best technologies for fighting climate change.

At Edgewell, we are committed first and foremost to people: our colleagues, the consumers who use our products, the suppliers and retailers who partner with us and the communities that we operate in. Ensuring a positive, purposeful working experience for our colleagues, ethical partnerships with our stakeholders and making positive contributions to the communities where we operate is central to our business operations.

We strive to embed a culture of respect and responsibility in our company. We do this through progressive human resources policies, learning and development, recruitment and hiring, workplace health and safety and community engagement and support activities.

“The Edgewell team is built of world-class talent who are passionate, not only about the work we do and the brands in our portfolio, but also about their relationships with each other, engagement with local communities and drive to leave things better than they found them. When we invest in our people with policies and programs that nurture their passion, we see the return reflected in our business success.”
– John Hill
Chief Human Resources Officer, Edgewell Personal Care

CULTURE

People

We are more than just employees here at Edgewell. Our teams of resilient, forward-thinking people are the backbone of our success and give our business the competitive edge. It is our responsibility to provide our people with a safe work environment where they have ample opportunities to grow and excel professionally. Our culture embraces diversity and inclusion and nurtures our colleagues’ passions, while encouraging curiosity and inspiring innovation in their work. Most of all, we understand that to attract and retain great people, we must listen to and engage them regularly.

Parental leave

Our goal is to have happy and healthy colleagues. With this in mind, we understand the importance of parental leave so that parents can spend time with the new addition to their family and cherish those irreplaceable moments. The retention rate of U.S. employees that took parental leave was 85% for females and 81% for males.

Global wellness program

The ‘well’ in our name reflects our goal to deliver wellness as a priority within the workplace, as this promotes health and happiness among all our people. The wellness of our people remains a primary focus and we believe that the most productive people are those that are at their best, both physically and mentally. In FY19, we rolled out a wellness program across all our global regions. A total of 13 sites participated in a vast range of wellness activities that encourage a happy and healthy lifestyle inside and outside of work.

Work-life balance

We understand that every person has their own view of work-life balance. Although there’s no one size fits all, we believe that our people are at their most productive when there are policies in place that allow for flexibility. Just as cultural and personal preferences vary, so do our strategies to achieve this balance within our global footprint. These include flex-time; remote working arrangements; four-shift rotations; family days; parental leave; and well-appointed break areas to decompress during working hours.

LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT

At Edgewell, we encourage an environment where people feel safe to take on new roles and challenges. Learning and development is built into our long-term growth plans. To support our people’s career aspirations, we continue to expand our range of learning and development programs to help enhance their skill sets.

SAFETY

At Edgewell, we are committed to maintaining a safe workplace for all our people. Our ‘Alive and Well’ program helps provide a safe workplace for all our manufacturing sites and ensure safety is embedded in Edgewell’s everyday culture. The program promotes a ‘safety starts with me’ mindset, helping colleagues make safety a habit and reinforcing our safety standards. Our goal is to maintain our world-class injury rate of less than 1 per 100 full-time workers. This year, not only have we maintained an overall injury rate of <1.00, but we decreased the rate by 16%, from 0.75 in FY18 to 0.63 in FY19.

VOLUNTEERING AND CHARITABLE GIVING

We are committed to making a positive contribution to the communities where we do business. Many of our activities are led by the people onsite and are shaped by the areas that motivate our colleagues and the organizations they believe will provide the most impact to the local community. Edgewell’s people contribute to our community causes in many ways, including volunteering their time and donating money for important causes around the world.