2019 Sustainability Progress Highlights
We're making progress on our 2020 Sustainability Commitments. Here are highlights from 2019.
2020 Sustainability Commitments Progress
Highlights of the progress we made on our sustainability commitments this year are described below. Colgate was named to both the 2019 Dow Jones Sustainability World and North America Indices and for the first time ever was the Household Industry Sector Leader. Colgate was also recognized as a U.S. EPA ENERGY STAR 2020 Partner of the Year for the 10th year in a row. Read further to learn more about the progress we have made on Colgate’s Sustainability Strategy.
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People Helping Colgate People and Their Families Live Better
In 2019, Colgate launched our first global Health and Well-being Assessment campaign, reaching a total of 5,500 employees in 67 countries.
More than 18,000 Colgate People from 80 countries participated in our 2019 Global Healthy Activity Challenge. Employees tracked over 23 million minutes of healthy activity.
Colgate is working to support employees in their effort to be financially secure at every stage of their lives. Employees in more than 100 countries now have access to a financial wellness toolkit, available in seven languages.
Contributing to the Communities Where We Live and Work
Colgate Bright Smiles, Bright Futures® (BSBF) is our flagship oral health education program, reaching children in more than 80 countries. Since the program was established in 1991, we have reached over 1.2 billion children and their families with free dental screenings and oral health education.
Since 2002, Hill’s Food, Shelter & Love™ program has provided more than $295 million worth of Hill’s brand pet foods to over 1,000 animal shelters and helped more than 11 million pets find their forever homes.
Colgate committed its support to the World Health Organization (WHO) on its #SafeHands effort, mobilizing a number of its production facilities around the world to produce and donate 25 million soap bars to help stop the spread of the COVID-19 virus in the regions facing acute needs. Colgate also committed to provide $20 million in health and hygiene products to community-based organizations in the U.S. and abroad that have the infrastructure to distribute the donated product to those most in need in local communities. In addition, Colgate launched an employee matching gift campaign for all 34,000 Colgate employees around the world. Colgate will match $1 million in employee donations, which will go to nonprofit partners supporting those in need, such as WHO, Save the Children and CARE, among others.
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Performance Delighting Consumers and Sustaining Our World With Our Brands
Our product sustainability key performance indicators are focused on three areas: Packaging, Formula and Social Impact. Through cross-functional collaboration across the Colgate world, we continue to make progress and 99 percent of new products in 2019 have improved sustainability profiles.(1)
Colgate continues to be an active participant in SmartLabel, an initiative co-created by the Consumer Brands Association (formerly GMA), the Food Marketing Institute, manufacturers and retailers. This digital platform was developed to meet consumers’ desire to know what is in the products they purchase, utilize and consume. In 2019, we completed the addition of all categories in the U.S. to the SmartLabel program.
Approximately 45% of our packaging materials by weight globally now come from recycled sources and approximately 81% of our packaging is considered recyclable. Over 99.5% of our packaging by weight is free of PVC
We are committed to making recycling easier for Colgate’s consumers! In addition to design changes and increasing our on-pack labeling, we have launched a searchable database to help Colgate consumers find the best ways to recycle our packaging and products in the United States. We hope to expand this resource to other geographies in the future.
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Planet Making Every Drop of Water Count
In 2019, Colgate reduced water use per ton of production by nearly 50% versus 2002, avoiding enough water use to fill 274 billion glasses of water(2)(3)
Colgate hosted an event panel at the United Nations headquarters in NYC during 2019 Climate Week, to share insights from our ongoing Save Water campaign. Since its 2016 launch, our Save Water program has helped avoid using an estimated 99 billion gallons of water and an estimated 5.5 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions.
Colgate’s contributions to the Water For People’s Everyone Forever program helped the organization reach more than 460,000 people since 2013 with water, sanitation systems and/or health and hygiene education in Guatemala, Peru and India.
Reducing Our Impact on Climate and the Environment
Colgate continues to reduce its absolute greenhouse gas emissions. So far, we have reduced our absolute greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 32% compared to 2002.(2)
Working toward the Company’s goal of “Zero Waste,” Colgate has reduced the amount of waste per ton of production sent to landfills by nearly 66% since 2010.(2)
Colgate’s Burlington, New Jersey, flavors facility was the first site in the world to achieve LEED Zero certification by the U.S. Green Building Council for net zero carbon, energy, water and waste.
Colgate continues to make progress on its commitment to mobilize resources to achieve zero net deforestation by 2020 as stated in our policy on No Deforestation.
1 The performance results are based on representative products from the product portfolio evaluated against comparable Colgate products across three impact areas to characterize likely improvement in the sustainability profile, based on review of quantitative and qualitative data.
2Subject to final verification by a third-party auditor.
3Assuming an 8oz. glass of water.
Sustainability Report Archives
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2018
Colgate's Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability Report 2018
2017
Colgate's Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability Report 2017
