The Body Shop Celebrates Its 40th With a New Social Responsibility Plan
The Body Shop is celebrating its 40th anniversary with a renewed commitment to corporate social responsibility. “We have set ourselves a significant goal to be the world’s most ethical and truly sustainable global business,” said chairman and CEO Jeremy Schwartz in an official statement released Wednesday.
The focus fits with the brand’s do-good legacy: “Our ground-breaking campaigns were ahead of their time and changed laws on animal testing, domestic violence and human trafficking,” Schwartz said. “We were the first in beauty to use community trade and we still have the strongest program in the industry.”
Going forward, The Body Shop will pursue a plan it calls Enrich Not Exploit, a set of 14 targets it aims to achieve by 2020. The new campaign is split into three categories: Enrich Our People, Enrich Our Products and Enrich Our Planet.
Goals set under Enrich Our People include doubling its Community Trade program from 19 to 40 ingredients, and helping 40,000 economically vulnerable people access work.
Tasks for Enrich Our Products include ensuring that 100 percent of the brand’s natural ingredients are traceable and sustainably sourced, reducing its environmental footprint, and developing an innovation pipeline for cosmetic ingredients from biodiversity hotspots.
Under Enrich Our Planet, the brand will work toward powering its stores entirely with renewable or carbon balanced energy, ensuring that 70 percent of its product packaging is free of fossil fuels, and developing three new sustainable packaging innovations.
At the local level, all of The Body Shop Canada’s store teams will be partnering with Canadian charities and fundraising for its Bio-Bridges program, an initiative to protect and regenerate some 75 square kilometres of global habitat.
Founded in Brighton, England, by the late human rights activist Anita Roddick, The Body Shop is the largest retail brand within L’Oréal, with more than 3,000 stores in over 60 markets worldwide.
