Avon - The Company for Women - Corporate Responsibility

Our Approach

While we face the challenges that are typical of any global organization that strives to reduce environmental impacts, we remain determined to address them, and we are more committed then ever to meeting our environmental goals and our stakeholders' expectations.

Our commitment to the environment has been deeply rooted in Avon’s principles for more than a century. At our locations worldwide, we remain committed to reducing our global environmental footprint, including the issue of climate change, by reducing waste, recycling, conserving energy and water and monitoring and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We are dedicated to ensuring compliance with environmental regulations around the world, and we strive to continuously improve our environmental performance.

In 2004, we established environmental goals and targets for 2008 and have made progress in pursuit of these goals. We encourage you to read about our progress in the following pages, and we hope you will return to this site for updates as we work to meet our commitment to the environment.

Avon has reduced thousands of pounds of pollution and saved millions of dollars through its energy- and waste-mitigation strategies. As demonstrated in the chart above, we have made significant progress since 2002. We have reduced our overall energy consumption per unit produced by 30 percent, water consumption per unit by 24 percent and greenhouse gas emissions per unit by 31 percent.

See also: Environmental Initiatives Deliver Substantial Savings at Our Springdale, Ohio, Facility

In addition, we work diligently to ensure that we meet, if not exceed, the environmental requirements of the countries in which we operate, and we continue to incorporate internationally approved standards for environmental management into our systems. Our objective is for all Avon facilities to demonstrate steady progress in future reporting periods.

Avon’s manufacturing facility in Morton Grove, Illinois, has implemented numerous process improvements and infrastructural changes that are helping Avon to operate more efficiently. Over the past three years, water consumption decreased by 11.9 percent, or 5.8 million gallons; over four years, Morton Grove’s water consumption decreased by 27 percent, or 16 million gallons. In turn, Morton Grove’s energy consumption decreased by 12.6 percent, or 19 billion BTUs, over three years; energy consumption decreased by 11 percent, or nearly 17 billion BTUs, over four years.