ELC Unveils Fiscal 2024 Social Impact and Sustainability Report & Climate Transition Plan Progress Update

Press Release, Oct 24, 2024

Today, The Estée Lauder Companies (ELC) released its Fiscal Year 2024 Social Impact and Sustainability (SI&S Report). The report showcases the company’s continued work toward achieving its social impact and sustainability commitments. It highlights ELC’s efforts in its focus areas including climate and energy, sustainable packaging, responsible sourcing, ingredient transparency, employee experience and equity, well-being and safety, and impactful social investments. 

In addition, ELC published its 2024 Progress Update to its Climate Transition Plan, highlighting its efforts to address climate change. This update outlines ELC’s latest strategic actions, challenges and progress aimed at reducing total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across its value chain. 

"In fiscal 2024, we achieved several sustainability goals ahead of schedule, including surpassing our water withdrawal targets, publishing our new corporate ingredient glossary, and reaching our palm oil objectives before our 2025 deadline,” said Nancy Mahon, Chief Sustainability Officer, The Estée Lauder Companies. 

"Our environmental and social efforts are integral—enabling innovation, value creation, and operational efficiency, while engaging with current and future talent," said Fabrizio Freda, President and Chief Executive Officer, The Estée Lauder Companies. “In the past year, we continued our efforts, taking important steps to align our practices with our goals and seek opportunities to further embed these principles into how we do business." 

"As we endeavor to build a stronger and more agile company, we remain guided by the values that have shaped us over the years—generosity of spirit, innovation, willingness to challenge the status quo, and commitment to acting responsibly,” said William P. Lauder, Executive Chairman, The Estée Lauder Companies. “Our social impact and sustainability efforts reflect these values and are made possible by the creativity and resilience of our talented teams around the world.” 

Key highlights from the FY24 SI&S Report include:

Our products and ingredients 

• Achieved 2025 ingredient transparency goal ahead of schedule by publishing a new corporate ingredient glossary. The glossary features more than 100 key ingredients, providing consumers with greater transparency into the products they love.  
• Achieved 2025 palm oil sustainability goal ahead of schedule by ensuring 95% of palm-based ingredients are certified sustainable by RSPO physical supply chains.¹
• Maintained packaging sustainability efforts, with 71% of packaging in fiscal year 2024 being recyclable, refillable, reusable, recycled, or recoverable, and moved closer to the 2025 target of 75-100%.²

Our business operations 

• Achieved 2025 water withdrawal goal ahead of schedule by reaching a 23% reduction in water withdrawal from direct manufacturing sites, from our fiscal 2019 baseline.³
• Diverted 99.8% of industrial waste from landfills across global operations.⁴  
• Integrated new sustainability practices across ELC operations, including completing new LEED-certified locations, adding new solar installations in Belgium and Japan, accelerating efforts to transition 100% of our global corporate fleet to electric by 2030⁵, and expanding ELC’s Responsible Store Design program around the world. 

Our people and advancing equity

• Maintained and expanded pay equity⁶ across ELC employees globally.⁷  
• Exceeded the global gender average of STEM workers⁸; 70% of scientists and tech professionals across ELC are women, and women lead all R&D and Innovation Centers.
• Progressed toward ELC's 2025 goal of mobilizing employees to drive a total of $25 million to nonprofits of their choice. Through employee engagement initiatives such as donating, volunteering, and participating in company matching campaigns, fiscal 2024 brought the total to $24.2 million donated since 2015.^{9, 10}
• Supported more than 60 organizations worldwide through ELC's Breast Cancer Campaign, addressing the needs of local communities and advancing the mission to help create a breast cancer-free world.
• Expanded the WRITING CHANGE initiative, established in partnership with poet, activist, and Estée Lauder Global Changemaker Amanda Gorman. Met the initial funding goal to support a total of 10 nonprofit organizations across the United States that enable access to literacy and education resources, advocate for representation in literature, and encourage artistic expression.

Visit ELCompanies.com to read the Fiscal Year 2024 Social Impact & Sustainability Report and the Climate Transition Plan 2024
Progress Update.

¹Excludes palm-based ingredients not directly procured by ELC, such as those procured by third-party manufacturers (TPMs) and directly procured and received by DECIEM. 

²Product packaging is defined as any item to be used for the containment, protection, handling, and presentation of products and delivery to ELC’s distribution centers that is included on the bill of materials. Excludes DECIEM. 

³Reduction is from a fiscal 2019 baseline of 1.5 million cubic meters water withdrawal at ELC-operated manufacturing sites. Excludes any manufacturing sites not fully operated by ELC within the target timeline.

⁴Excludes DECIEM.

⁵Global corporate fleet vehicles include sales, executive, benefit, and employee perquisite passenger vehicles that are owned or leased by ELC and provided to employees pursuant to their role within the organization. Electric vehicles are defined as battery-electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles with an all-electric range of at least 50 km. 

⁶For purposes of this commitment, the Company defines pay equity as a pay gap of less than 1% and/or not statistically significant between women and comparably situated men included in its pay equity review process. 

⁷With the exception of non-discretionary pay populations (i.e. where we are restricted from making such adjustments), all employee populations are now included in our pay equity review process.

⁸According to the World Economic Forum, women remain underrepresented in STEM roles, comprising only 28.2% of the STEM workforce compared to 47.3% in non-STEM sectors.

⁹Metrics reflect information self-reported to ELC’s employee social impact and sustainability engagement program, the ELC Good Works platform, used to report employee volunteerism, employee monetary donations, and ELC charitable matching gifts. The platform was available in 17, 31, and 31 markets at the end of fiscal 2022, 2023 and 2024, respectively. Eligible employees are those who meet certain criteria, which varies by market, and have access to the platform. Excludes DECIEM. 

¹⁰Metric includes total cumulative ELC employee donations and amount matched, inclusive of volunteer rewards, by ELC since the launch of the ELC Good Works platform in November 2015.