Henkel has published its Sustainability report 2023, highlighting the results and strategies it has adopted to move towards a circular economy.
Last year, the Germany-based chemical and consumers good company increased the share of recycled plastic in its consumer goods packaging to 19% worldwide. Plastic makes up 45% of its packaging, followed by paper with 40%.
Henkel aims to reduce the amount of virgin plastics in its consumer products by 50% by 2025. The strategies it has developed to achieve this goal include increasing the proportion of recycled plastic to more than 30% and reducing the volume of virgin plastic.
Henkel reported that 82% of its production sites do not send any production waste to landfill. Moreover, 87% of its packaging is designed for recyclability of reusability. By 2025, the company wants to increase this figure to 100%.
“Global initiatives in the plastics value chain create positive momentum toward a circular economy,” said Wolfgang König, member of the management board consumer brands. “These initiatives support sustainable packaging solutions for Henkel brands including Pril, Persil and Schauma. They also enhance the use and recycling of plastics.”
Henkel supports the operation of 56 packaging collection and recycling systems in Europe, North America, Australia, and North Africa. It has introduced a tendering process for countries where there is more than one collection and recycling solution. In Mexico, it has partnered with Mexico Recicla, a company that produces HDPE recyclate from household packaging waste. This partnership has enabled it to introduce 50% recycled plastic for its entire universal liquid detergents portfolio in Europe, such as Persil.
The company also said it intends to discontinue the use of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and other potentially harmful substances that are suspected of harming the environment and endangering health. Henkel still uses PVC in a ‘few exceptional cases’ (0.02% of its global packaging volumes), for which it has ‘not yet found a workable alternative’.
Overall, Henkel reduced its CO2 emissions in production by 61% per tonne of product (compared to the base year 2010), and it increased the proportion of electricity purchased from renewable sources to 89%. In 2023, it converted 14 more sites to carbon-neutral production.
“Sustainability is a central pillar of our Purposeful Growth Agenda,” said Carsten Knobel, CEO of Henkel. “Especially in challenging times like these, sustainable action is more important than ever. We are therefore working continuously on the implementation of our sustainability goals, and I am proud that we made very good progress again in the course of 2023. Our excellent results in leading external ESG ratings, for example the repeated EcoVadis Platinum achievement, show that we are on the right track and that our progress is recognised,” he added.
In 2023, Henkel also received a AWA (Alexander Watson Associates) Sleeve Label Award in the category “Environmental Contribution” for the sustainable design of its Vernel fabric softener bottle. Its adhesives technologies business unit also developed an internal assessment methodology for evaluating the sustainability performance of its product portfolio.