Clarins, L’Oreal & Others Launch Initiative to Improve Beauty Supply Chain

Clarins, Coty, L’Oreal and Groupe Rocher have joined with EcoVadis to launch the Responsible Beauty Initiative (RBI), a group that the companies say will accelerate social and environmental performance and progress throughout the beauty supply chain. EcoVadis, a provider of supplier sustainability ratings for supply chains, is working with the companies to ensure their suppliers have sound environmental business practices in place.

The announcement comes at a time when few companies (just 15%) say they have total visibility into the environmental actions of their tier one and tier two suppliers (per an EcoVadis report published earlier this year).

Boosting the Beauty Supply Chain

RBI is meant to help companies to boost environmental responsibility in their supply chains by:

• driving a common understanding of sustainability performance across the industry

• sharing best practices and processes

• leveraging common tools to create efficiencies and benefits for suppliers

The RBI is built on a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) rating platform, operated by EcoVadis, as a common foundation for supplier assessment and interaction. It will address the unique opportunities and challenges of the beauty industry global supply chains and will aim to drive the continuous improvement of sustainability practices, the companies say. The founding members will sign the charter to officially launch RBI and invite other companies and suppliers in the industry to join.

Top Challenge for Sustainable Procurement Teams: Visibility

Nearly half (45%) of organizations say their sustainable procurement program covers most (75% or more) of their spend volume today, a significant jump from the 27% that reported the same in 2013, according to EcoVadis. Yet while supplier coverage has increased, depth of supply chain CSR visibility remains elusive: just 15% of organizations said they have complete supply chain visibility into the CSR and sustainability performance of both tier one and two suppliers, and only six% reported full visibility into tier three suppliers and beyond. This is the number one challenge today for sustainable procurement teams. “It is often further down in supply chains where the most significant risks lie, and the need to scale up programs to increase the depth of program visibility to the ‘long tail’ of global supply chains has never been more urgent,” the report stated.

But companies looking for sustainable sourcing nirvana are making progress: The EcoVadis/HEC study also found that organizations collecting sustainability data are actively using the intelligence to guide sourcing decisions. By making CSR data a key factor in the sourcing process, organizations are incentivizing suppliers to be more sustainable and act more responsibly across the board.

The report found that 97% of organizations place a high level of importance on sustainable procurement, continuing an upward trend seen in the last decade.