Plastics

At The Estée Lauder Companies, citizenship and sustainability are embedded at the core of our business. We know that plastic is among the most pressing sustainability issues today and we are committed to tackling virgin plastic use and working to minimize plastic waste.

As part of our commitment, we have developed internal plastic guidelines to help drive the reduction of virgin and non-recyclable plastic in our packaging, products, offices, facilities and retail spaces. Our guidelines include options such as pursuing more sustainable alternatives to single-use virgin plastic packaging, replacing plastic applicators used in our retail stores with paper or wood versions, reducing plastic water bottles and cutlery in our spaces and reducing virgin and non-recyclable plastic used in our visual merchandising.

Our internal guidelines aim to incorporate sustainable practices, innovation and design across our business and within our brand portfolio, as outlined below.

Packaging

We continue to innovate our prestige packaging, incorporating more sustainable concepts into our designs in an effort to reduce the potential environmental impacts of our packaging across its lifecycle. We are striving to reduce and remove virgin plastic packaging when deemed unnecessary through a variety of methods: removing unnecessary packaging components, reducing the weight/size of the packaging and replacing petroleum-based plastics with bioplastics where possible and available and if the bioplastic can be recycled and does not contaminate traditional recycling streams. We are also working to reduce single-use virgin plastic packaging and reduce plastic from secondary and tertiary packaging.

Our plastic commitments support our goal that by 2025, 75-100% of our packaging will be recyclable, refillable, reusable, recycled or recoverable. In achieving this goal, we will increase the amount of post-consumer recycled material (PCR) in our packaging by up to 50%.

We are also incorporating circularity—reducing plastic use from the outset and finding ways to capture waste as input to new materials. We believe our track record of innovation and creativity can advance solutions for our consumers and also promote progress in the personal care and cosmetics industry as a whole.

Products

We are constantly evaluating and reviewing the latest scientific and environmental data and regulations, ensuring that our ingredients and product formulations meet all necessary standards.

The Estée Lauder Companies voluntarily stopped producing and shipping products made with plastic microbeads since mid-2018. As we strive for continuous improvement, we are pursuing bio- or mineral-based materials for our product formulations. We are also continuing to transition to biodegradable materials for our wipes.

Retail

Our commitment to minimizing plastic use also extends to our retail stores and channels. To minimize the use of plastic and PVC in our visual merchandising displays, we are prioritizing recycled and recyclable materials over virgin and non-recyclable plastics for visual merchandising and store design. We will partner with our vendors, retailers and with recyclers to identify and implement solutions for recycling of visual merchandising displays at end-of-life.

In addition, we are committed to reducing single-use plastics used in our retail stores, including bags, hygienic product applicators and print and promotional items. One example is replacing items such as promotional bags and clutches with non-plastic alternative items or items that contain recycled plastics or bioplastics. We are also working to replace single-use virgin plastic tools and applicators, such as plastic cotton swabs, spatulas and make-up applicators, with plastic-free options made of paper or wood.

Offices and Facilities

We value our employees and recognize the importance of implementing sustainable practices in our offices and other facilities to minimize our plastic footprint. We are doing this, in part, by reducing plastic water bottles and pursuing non-plastic, bioplastic or reusable tableware and cutlery to replace virgin plastic single-use, disposable items in our pantries. Plastic and paper recycling are available in our office spaces.

Partnering with Industry

To complement this work, we remain committed to working collaboratively with our peers, suppliers, NGOs and other stakeholders through partnerships that are instrumental in our journey of reducing plastic. We are members of the following collaborative initiatives:

• Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which brings together leaders and innovators in business, governments and academia to contribute to society’s transition to a circular economy.
• Sustainable Packaging Initiative for CosmEtics (SPICE), a cohort of organizations in the cosmetics industry collectively shaping the future of sustainable packaging.
• Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR), the North American trade association representing companies who acquire, reprocess and sell the output of more than 90 percent of the post-consumer plastic processing capacity in North America. Becoming a member of the APR provides us access to industry experts to better understand how to design plastics for recyclability.
• Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC), of which we are proud to be a founding member, brings together businesses, educational institutions and government agencies to collectively strengthen and advance the business case for more sustainable packaging. Through the SPC, our package developers and marketing and creative designers are using an online learning platform, accessing training courses on topics such as the essentials of sustainable packaging, composting, bioresin, ocean plastic and chemical advanced recycling.

We recognize that reducing plastic waste is a journey and we are committed to continuously seeking new ways to contribute to the global effort to reduce plastic waste.