French wellness company L’Occitane Group has developed its updated biodiversity strategy, which calls for a move towards a ‘nature-positive’ world. It presented the strategy at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Marseille, France. The roadmap foresees the development of an action programme that embraces the entire value chain.
L’Occitane Group is a Platinum Partner of the upcoming Virtual Travel Retail Expo (11-15 October).
L’Occitane Group’s biodiversity strategy reinforces the company’s long-standing commitment to the environment. It covers five key biodiversity loss factors: use of land and seas, resource exploitation, pollution, invasive species and climate change.
The roadmap was formed based on the recommendations of the Science Based Target Network (SBTN).
L’Occitane Group’s ‘nature-positive’ ambition requires no net loss of nature from 2020, a net positive state of nature by 2030 and a full recovery by 2050.
The biodiversity strategy is being jointly implemented alongside the company’s climate and human development goals. L’Occitane Group is currently on its way to achieving Net Zero carbon emissions by 2030 and becoming B Corp certified by 2023.
Commenting on the ambitious plan, L’Occitane Group Sustainability Officer and L’Occitane en Provence International Director Adrien Geiger said: “This biodiversity strategy is our first contribution to a more comprehensive nature-positive ambition. To help us along the way, we must rely on science to ensure that our actions match our impacts and the planet’s limits. As stated by the Science Based Targets Network (SBTN), ‘the transformation required to reach a nature-positive future is immense’, but it is possible, and it is not only nature that would gain.”
Following the SBTN’s Action Framework, the group’s approach assesses the company’s impacts and dependencies, prioritise actions, apply a mitigation and transformation framework and track progress against targets.
L’Occitane Group’s biodiversity strategy focuses on five key pillars: measure, avoid, reduce, restore and regenerate and transform.
Measure
L’Occitane Group has committed to quantifying its biodiversity impact and set a global baseline by 2022. It has also pledged to complete a biodiversity assessment for all new active ingredients for L’Occitane en Provence and Melvita products by the same year.
By 2025, L’Occitane aims to have the capacity to trace back all the countries of origin of 90% of the plant-based raw materials for the L’Occitane en Provence and Melvita brands and extend traceability efforts to other group brands.
Avoid
By 2025, L’Occitane wants to source all plant raw materials from crops farmed through positive biodiversity-enhancing methods and meet a 95% threshold of readily biodegradable ingredients across 90% of its rinse-off formulas.
Reduce
By 2025, the group has committed to reducing the total volume of virgin plastic packaging for the L’Occitane en Provence brand by -10% and use recycled material for at least 40% of its total plastic consumption.
By the same year, it has pledged to implement a circular model across all factories in France by recycling 100% of the water used in industrial processes and to offer in-store recycling across all group stores.
Restore and Regenerate
L’Occitane Group wants to promote regenerative agriculture practices by partnering with regenerative farming communities in Burkina Faso and Provence. By 2025, the group has pledged to cultivate all main raw materials through sustainable farming methods. By the same year, the Group wants to establish a Sustainable Management Charter for wood products and set up 1,500 beehives.
Transform
The group acknowledges that a collective effort is required to achieve a nature-positive future. It is a member of numerous local and international organisations such as the One Planet Business for Biodiversity (OP2B) Coalition, among others.
“Stopping nature loss and halting climate change are two of the biggest business opportunities of our time,” Geiger added. “This is a sizeable challenge for a group as large and multi-local as ours. But, as we strive to achieve our mission of ‘empowering entrepreneurs and communities to cultivate natural beauty and well-being and to regenerate nature’ every day. We are convinced it is the right — maybe the only — path to take. And I’m grateful for the committed teams who are leading this change with us.”
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