Strategy

Creating more value for our customers and consumers, for the communities we operate in, and for the company – while reducing our environmental footprint at the same time. This is the idea at the heart of our sustainability strategy and its related ambitious targets.

For a long time, growth and resource consumption seemed to go hand in hand and impossible to attain one without the other. Whenever population and living standards increased, it meant using up more and more of the earth's resources. With expected population to grow to about nine billion people by the year 2050, this trend will not change anytime soon. Resource consumption will accelerate in the coming decades as natural resources such as fossil fuels or water are consumed much faster than the planet can keep producing them.

While these developments are challenges for the future, they also offer great potential: Innovating and achieving more with less will be a key to becoming sustainable. We need solutions that allow people to live a good life yet use less and less materials. This idea is at the heart of Henkel's sustainability strategy, as we strive to find new ways of growing and improving quality of life without using up more resources. We want to improve our products and solutions through innovations and smart thinking – to create more value at a reduced ecological footprint.

Value & definition

Our corporate value

One of our five corporate values: We are committed to leadership in sustainability. For example, we provide products, technologies and processes that meet the highest standards. We are committed to the safety and health of our employees, the protection of the environment and the quality of life in the communities in which we operate.

Sustainability

In 2050, about 9 billion people live well and within the resource limits of the planet ‏(Vision 2050 of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development).

Leadership

We pioneer new solutions to sustainability challenges while continuing to shape our business responsibly and increase our economic success on the basis of a long-term goal, clear targets for the years 2011 to 2015, and strategic principles.

Becoming three times more efficient by 2030

20-year goal for 2030

Triple the value we create for the footprint made by our operations, products and services. We summarize this ambition to become three times more efficient as “Factor 3”.

Factor 3

We can triple the value we create while leaving the footprint at the same level.

Or we can reduce the environmental footprint to one third of today’s level while achieving our improvement in efficiency by delivering the same value.

In many cases, we will approach from both sides, reducing input and improving output at the same time.

Our contributions in six focal areas

We concentrate our activities along the value chain on six focal areas that reflect the challenges of sustainable development as they relate to our operations. Innovating and achieving more with less will be a key to a sustainable development that does not sacrifice people’s quality of life. To drive progress along the entire value chain through our products and technologies, we concentrate on a fixed set of areas that summarize the challenges as they relate to our operations. We have subdivided these focal areas into two dimensions: “more value” and “reduced footprint”. In order to successfully establish our strategy and reach our goals, both of these dimensions must be ever-present in the minds and day-to-day actions of our employees and mirrored in our business processes.

Safety and Health

At Henkel, the safety and health of employees, neighbors, customers and consumers has always been a toppriority. We market safe products that do not impact the health of consumers or the environment. The safety and environmental compatibility of our products and technologies conform to recognized scientific criteria and are based on assurance programs in every stage of the product life cycle

Performance

High quality and excellent performance are the primary value propositions of our brands and technologies, and the basis for our economic success. Therefore, we focus on developing products that provide even better performance, e.g. in terms of quality, functionality, reliability, convenience, durability, or cost efficiency. We also enhance our value proposition towards our customers and consumers by enabling them to improve their own sustainability performance.

Social progress

As a local employer and business partner, we make an important contribution to the social progress of society as a whole: We create jobs with fair conditions of employment, provide ongoing training for our employees and customers, and value the diversity of our workforce. We purchase goods and services, cooperate in a spirit of partnership with our suppliers, and transfer knowledge and technologies. We also support the social involvement of our employees. In this way, we stimulate regional economic development and social equality worldwide.

Water and wastewater

We strive to create water-efficient products and technologies to enable also our consumers and customers to protect water resources worldwide. Our consumer products such as detergents, household cleaners or shampoos that pass into sewage systems after use are optimized for biodegradability so they will not impact the quality of surface waters. Wastewater from industrial applications is pretreated using state-of-the-art technology to remove harmful substances and professionally disposed of.

Materials and waste

We use resource-conserving production techniques and optimize the packaging of our products to lower material consumption and waste. We use ingredients based on renewable raw materials wherever this is compatible with ecological, economic and social considerations. Many of our products contribute to extending the service life of durable goods, thus also preserving values and resources. We thereby contribute to the worldwide conservation of resources.

Energy and climate

At Henkel our focus is on the efficient provision and utilization of energy, to lower energy use of our worldwide operations and prevent greenhouse gas emissions. We also strive to create energy efficient products and technologies to also enable our consumers and customers to save energy and contribute to climate protection.

What we want to achieve by 2030

To reach our goal of becoming three times more efficient by 2030, we will have to improve our efficiency by an average of 5 to 6 percent each year. We reached our targets for 2011 to 2015, improving the relationship between the value we create and our environmental footprint by 38 percent overall, and there was an efficiency increase of 43 percent by 2017. On the way to achieving our long-term goal of “Factor 3”, we also want to improve our performance further in these areas in the coming years. To help us achieve this, we have defined new medium-term targets:

Deliver more value...

We want to actively contribute to social progress.

For

1 million

workers, by improving their workplace conditions.

Reach

10 million

people through our social engagement activities.

Reach

200,000

children through our educational initiatives.

We want to promote social engagement by inspiring and training

all

employees in sustainability.

We want to deliver more value and increase our sales.

+22% ‏(per ton of product)

Each new product must make a contribution to sustainability.

We want safe workplaces and improved health and hygiene.

+40% ‏(per million hours worked)

Zero accidents

is our long-term goal.

90%

coverage by global health campaigns per year.

... at a reduced footprint

We want to reduce our energy consumption and our climate-damaging emissions.

-30% ‏(per ton of product)

-5%

Logistics emissions

"Climate-positive" vision

50%

electricity generated from renewable energy sources

"Climate-positive" vision

-50 million t

CO₂ generated by our customers and consumers

"Climate-positive" vision

100%

electricity generated from renewable energy sources by 2030

"Climate-positive" vision

-75%

CO₂ footprint of our production by 2030

We want to use less raw materials and generate less waste.

-30% ‏(per ton of product)

Sustainable palm oil

100%

mass balance

Sustainable palm oil

100%

traceability

Sustainable palm oil

Increasing

availability

of sustainable palm oil through cooperations.

Packaging

-20%

weight ‏(per sales unit)

Packaging

+33%

recycled PET in EU

Packaging

+9%

recycled aluminum

Packaging

300 million

consumers informed about recycling

Packaging

Zero

landfilled waste by 2030

We want to reduce water consumption and wastewater.

-30% ‏(per ton of product)

We want to reduce water consumption

during production and when our products are used.

How are we implementing our strategy?

We concentrate our activities on six focal areas that reflect the key challenges of sustainable development as they relate to our operations. To successfully implement our strategy and reach our targets, we want to strengthen our foundation, boost the engagement of our employees and maximize our impact.

Strengthen foundation

In order to reconcile people’s desire to live well with the resource limits of the planet, and to allow us to build on our economic success, we will have to significantly improve our efficiency. In light of the global challenges of sustainable development, Henkel has set itself a long-term goal: Taking 2010 as the base year, our aim by 2030 is to triple the value we create through our business operations in relation to the environmental footprint of our products and services.

In Deutschland halfen 50 Henkel-Mitarbeiter von verschiedenen Standorten bei den Special Olympics in Hannover.

Boost engagement

When it comes to implementing our sustainability strategy, our people play a key role – through their dedication, skills and knowledge. They make their own contributions to sustainable development, both in their daily business lives and as members of society. They interface with our customers and drive innovation – and give Henkel its unique identity. Therefore we want to further develop and boost the engagement of our people.

Henkel is actively engaged in projects and partnerships that support smallholder palm oil farmers worldwide in driving sustainable practices.

Maximize impact

We want to strengthen our contribution toward overcoming major global challenges, and to maximize the impact we can achieve through our operations, our brands, and our technologies. In light of the clear need to reduce emissions, Henkel is striving to become a climate-positive company. We have a clear target to reduce the carbon footprint of our production by 75 percent by 2030 and to leverage the potential of our brands and technologies to help our customers and consumers to reduce CO2 emissions. To do so, we also want to continually improve our energy efficiency by using more energy from renewable sources.

What we have achieved

To reach our long-term goal of becoming three times more efficient by 2030 ‏(“Factor 3”), we had set ourselves concrete interim targets for the five-year period from 2011 to 2015, which we achieved. Here is the current status:

Overall efficiency

more net sales per ton of product

safer per million hours worked

less energy/CO₂ emissions per ton of product

less waste per ton of product

less water per ton of product

Sustainability Management

Chaired by a Management Board member and reflecting all areas of the company, the Sustainability Council steers our global sustainability activities as a central decision-making body. Its members represent the business units and corporate functions responsible for putting our sustainability strategy into operational action.

Find out more on henkel.com