Kenvue, the buyer items firm behind manufacturers together with Tylenol, Neutrogena and Listerine, is coaching its 1,800-person analysis and growth workforce to incorporate environmental metrics of their innovation course of.
The transfer follows an inner trial of Kenvue’s patent-pending product evaluation software, the Sustainable Innovation Profiler. R&D groups, product formulators and packaging engineers can use the software to judge a product’s environmental and emissions footprints, inexperienced chemistry credentials and packaging make-up. The rollout will proceed amid a strategic assessment of the corporate, launched after the ouster of its CEO in mid-July.
The Sustainable Innovation Profiler was used to judge the affect of reformulations and packaging redesigns for 20 Kenvue product traces throughout 2024, together with OGX Argan Oil of Morocco shampoo and Nicorette lozenges. Whereas the person outcomes for these merchandise have been distinctive, the profiler documented carbon footprint reductions of not less than 16 p.c for each.
The analysis outcomes satisfied Kenvue to introduce the software into its product-design course of from the start, stated Jennifer Duran, world head of sustainability. “With the Sustainable Innovation Profiler, we’re actually modeling the sustainability impacts of the totally different growth designs that we’re making,” Duran stated.
Technique shift
The choice to embed sustainability metrics extra deeply into product growth dovetails with a restructuring that noticed Duran promoted to group head of sustainability in June after specializing in product resilience and sustainability. She experiences to Kenvue’s chief scientific officer, with dotted traces to the operations and company affairs groups.
The Sustainable Innovation Profiler helps Kenvue’s aim, adopted in Could 2024, to display screen 75 p.c of the corporate’s new product growth tasks for improved environmental efficiency by 2030. It may apply to something from an easy packaging overhaul to a whole product reformulation, Duran stated.
To date, 600 product designers and packaging engineers have accomplished on-line coaching to make use of the useful resource. Anybody can take the course, however for sure design roles and teams it’s obligatory. “These are the individuals making choices concerning the recipes of our merchandise,” Duran stated.
Overarching design ideas
The Sustainable Innovation Profiler builds on life-cycle evaluation approaches utilized by the European Fee’s Product Setting Footprint and the International Aquatic Ingredient Evaluation. It research 4 classes of environmental metrics:
- Environmental footprint, together with water, land and useful resource use; whether or not the product disrupts the vitamins in marine or contemporary water (which may trigger algae blooms); and ecotoxicity
- Carbon footprint, measured by greenhouse gasoline emissions
- Inexperienced chemistry, equivalent to using elements with improved biodegradability
- Packaging circularity that reduces virgin plastic use
Designers in contrast scores for every class in opposition to a baseline to determine areas of potential improved environmental efficiency. The software flags elements Kenvue has on its inner watch checklist, which incorporates details about restricted substances and supplies, and newer choices that aren’t broadly adopted. It additionally seems for “hotspots” associated to 40 chemical elements that carry the very best carbon emissions.
The Argan shampoo thought-about within the trial earned higher scores throughout all 4 classes of the profiler by changing the surfactant, decreasing using silicone and polymers and utilizing a bottle made out of recycled plastic.
The information used within the profiler comes from Kenvue’s personal product life-cycle assessments and present databases maintained by revered business associations. Over time, the corporate will add data contributed immediately by suppliers. Kenvue’s sustainability workforce is collaborating with the corporate’s new chief knowledge officer to develop processes for gathering this data in Kenvue’s broader enterprise data administration methods.
“The benefit of being a two-year-old firm on this fairly mature sustainability house is we will study from a number of the errors others have made,” Duran stated. (Kenvue, a former division of Johnson & Johnson, turned a publicly traded unbiased firm in 2023.) “If we begin ingesting major carbon knowledge, we have to have a spot to place it.”
The weighting for every class thought-about by the Sustainable Innovation Profiler stays the identical throughout totally different product traces. Kenvue intends to publish extra details about the methodology because it turns into extra broadly used throughout the corporate. It additionally plans to report progress in opposition to its sustainable product innovation aim in its subsequent sustainability report, to be revealed in 2026.
