Our Sustainability Promise
For those of us who work in the Johnson & Johnson Family of Consumer Companies, sustainability means caring for the people we serve and the world we live in. Through our caring, we believe we can create a healthy future for people, the planet and our business.
Our brands and products are an extension of our company and as such embody our commitment to sustainability. We’ve been setting ambitious environmental goals for decades, and in 2011 we announced our most comprehensive set of sustainability goals so far, called our Healthy Future 2015 goals. These goals advance sustainability along each stage of a product’s life cycle.
At the beginning of the life cycle, we work closely with our suppliers to promote ethical business conduct, fair working conditions and environmental stewardship in our supply chain. We're very clear with them about our expectations, and provide a comprehensive set of Standards for Responsible Suppliers to everyone who works with us. One of our Healthy Future goals is to engage more of our suppliers in sustainability, and for our strategic suppliers to set their own sustainability goals.
We also work with our suppliers to source our naturally-derived ingredients with consideration for the environment and for local communities that grow and harvest them. For example, to address concerns about palm oil sourcing, we have a specific sustainable palm oil program – including participating in the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil,* purchasing Greenpalm certificates, and working with Non-Governmental Organizations to improve the practices of small palm oil farmers. We have a Healthy Future goal to source 100 percent of our palm oil and ingredients derived from palm oil from certified sustainable sources by the end of 2015.
Keeping an eye on the environment can sometimes yield breakthroughs from unexpected places. For example, we pioneered a unique cleansing technology based on materials found naturally in potatoes. This technology, called NATRASURF™, is not only better for the environment but also produces a milder cleanser for our customers.
Besides the sustainability of our ingredients, we are also working on the sustainability of our packaging. We realize that packaging serves a critical purpose, but we also realize there may be opportunities to do the same job with less material or with better materials. To those ends, our packaging team has developed an innovative new methodology called Positive Potential™ that allows us to measure the net impact of our packaging and helps us to make more sustainable choices for our packaging materials.
Another Healthy Future goal is to continue to reduce the environmental impact of our products. After many of our products are used, they are washed off the body and enter a water environment. To better understand and manage the potential impacts of our formulated products in these environments, we developed a tool we call GAIA – Global Aquatic Ingredient Assessment protocol. This tool evaluates the impact of ingredients on water environments based on their potential for toxicity, persistence, and bioaccumulation.
We bring together all of our efforts to improve the sustainability of our products in our EARTHWARDS™ program, which is our design for environment process. Earthwards is a step-by-step process to evaluate product environmental performance in the following areas: Materials, Packaging, Energy, Water, Waste, Innovation, and Social Responsibility. Products in our portfolio that make the most significant improvements in at least three areas are recognized as EARTHWARDS™ products. We have a Healthy Future goal to have 60 Earthwards products in the Johnson & Johnson Family of Consumer Companies portfolio by the end of 2015.
We reach millions of people who use our products every day. That’s millions of opportunities to engage with you and to work together to make a difference. All of us are committed to continually improving our sustainability performance and sharing our progress with you. We’d also like to hear from you about how we can do better, and from time to time we’ll share our ideas about how you can get involved in sustainability as well. We look forward to hearing from you.
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* No endorsement, approval, association, or sponsorship of Our Safety & Care Commitment by the organizations listed is stated or implied.