Procter & Gamble’s long-term chief sustainability officer, Virginie Helias, began her profession as a marketer and model supervisor, however she doesn’t suppose shopper merchandise ought to be priced greater simply because they’ve a decrease environmental affect which will have price extra to attain.
“We don’t worth for sustainability, we worth for efficiency,” Helias stated in our interview on the Nest Local weather Campus, one in every of 1,000 occasions scheduled throughout Local weather Week NYC. “I’m making an attempt to hit the magical trifecta of superior efficiency, sustainability and worth creation.”
One instance is a brand new version of P&G’s NyQuil and DayQuil over-the-counter medicine for chilly and flu signs. The brand new liquid capsules are 25 p.c smaller, which makes them simpler to swallow and concentrates the elements. They’re bought in a recyclable bottle, as an alternative of single-use blister packs.
One other innovation, Head & Shoulders Naked, appeals to shoppers looking for shampoos freed from sulfates, dyes or silicone. It incorporates simply 9 elements and is available in a light-weight bottle that may be rolled up because the product is used. That cuts out 45 p.c of the plastic used for comparable bottles and permits shoppers to make use of extra of the product.
Throughout an period when the common tenure for chief sustainability officers is roughly 4 years, Helias has preceded over three distinct phases of P&G’s journey: the event of core sustainability metrics, the combination of this technique into the corporate’s core companies and a brand new shift that views environmental enhancements as a supply of worth creation.
“I feel my largest asset after I began 15 years in the past on this position is that I didn’t know something about sustainability,” she advised me. “The one factor I knew is that it could possibly be a driver for model constructing and innovation.”
Enterprise integration required
The primary part of P&G’s sustainability plan — from 2011 to 2017 — was about creating basis metrics, together with those highlighted in the corporate’s 2030 local weather targets, in accordance with Helias.
The corporate reported combined progress in direction of its greenhouse gasoline discount commitments in August. Whereas P&G shrank emissions from its personal operations and vitality use (Scope 1 and a pair of) by 60 p.c since 2010, it’s not on tempo to chop emissions from suppliers (Scope 3) by 40 p.c per unit of manufacturing primarily based on a 2020 baseline. Thus far, it has lowered them by 9 p.c.
Improvements associated to water are additionally central to P&G’s sustainability, which is sensible contemplating that the division promoting merchandise together with the Tide and Cascade detergents contributes greater than one-third of the corporate’s revenue.
The corporate set a objective to enhance the effectivity of its manufacturing water use by 35 p.c in opposition to a 2010 baseline. It has made a 26 p.c enhance, and recycled 3.49 billion liters of water from its services throughout the fiscal 12 months ended June 30, 2024.
To handle these commitments, Helias recruited a “coalition of the prepared” — different enterprise leaders inside and outdoors the corporate who accelerated the combination of P&G’s environmental priorities into product growth roadmaps and partnership initiatives. The work of integrating environmental metrics with different key efficiency indicators has accelerated since 2021.
“We all know that sustainability as a separate path is a dead-end path,” she stated.
P&G now challenges suppliers to consider low-carbon applied sciences as a solution to supply superior efficiency for a product.
“One of many methods we do that’s by forming long-term partnerships for offtakes,” Helias stated. “So, we assist our suppliers derisk their investments.”
One instance is P&G’s relationship with PureCycle Applied sciences, which is commercializing a plastics recycling know-how invented by P&G scientists to take away colours and different contaminants that make it robust to make use of recycled plastics.
P&G determined to license its mental property to PureCycle to scale availability throughout the trade, together with to its rivals. The manufacturing output of PureCycle’s first plan is bought out for the following 20 years.
What’s wanted now: ‘an abundance of concepts’
Helias acknowledged that company sustainability practitioners face vital geopolitical and financial headwinds as 2025 winds to a detailed. She likened this second for the motion to hitting the 20-mile mark of a marathon, when profitable runners should summon new vitality to succeed in the end line.
Transferring ahead requires radical creativity and “an abundance of concepts” that explicitly hyperlink environmental enhancements to new worth creation, Helias stated. That’s her precedence for 2026, when Helias could have a brand new boss, incoming president and CEO Shailesh Jejurikar. She now experiences to Jon Moeller, who’s shifting into the Govt Chairman of the Board position efficient Dec. 31.
“What we have to do is to create our personal tailwinds,” Helias stated, “and people need to be round innovation that delivers superior worth and efficiency, with sustainability as an amplifier of superiority.”
