MORE THAN JUST A BRAND:
OUR SUSTAINABILITY

"WE ARE COMMITTED TO RESPECTING THE ENVIRONMENT, SUPPORTING COMMUNITIES AND GUARANTEEING THE QUALITY AND SAFETY" – GROUPE LOCCITANE

Protecting the environment and promoting fairness have always been important values for L’OCCITANE. Ever since L’OCCITANE was created in 1976, it has been revealing and protecting the richness of the lands of Provence, Burkina Faso and other regions to which it has formed an attachment. It is committed to making the world we live in more beautiful, more humane, more responsible. It does this through its products, its stores and the experiences they create, as well as the skilled producers and employees who share its vision.


Read below to find out about our most recent activites...

Shelter UK Donations

Last Christmas, we partnered with charity Shelter UK, because we believe that everyone has a right to a home. Thanks to your purchase of the Best of L’OCCITANE gift set, we are donating £10,000 to Shelter UK. The funds will provide essential support for people who are homeless or at risk of losing their homes across regions.

Our Head of PR & Communications, Livvy and Brand & Retail Marketing Manager, Val also slept out with CEO Sleep Out UK to raise money and help fight the housing emergency to support those in need for Shelter UK, raising an additional £5,782.36. A huge thanks to everyone for their support!

Black Friday Donations

This year, in link with our Give B(l)ack Friday initiative, we ran a fundraiser for tree planting organisations. Over the weekend of Black Friday, £1 from each of our hand creams sold has been donated to PUR Projet in the UK.

Thanks to your purchases, we have raised £40,000 for PUR Projet! Thank you to everyone who purchased our hand creams over the Black Friday weekend and for raising funds for such an amazing cause.

 

World Sight Day Donation

Thanks to your purchases of our Caring for Sight collections, plus contributions from employee fundraisers and the L’OCCITANE Foundation, we are delighted to announce we have raised £15,000 in the UK for UNICEF. These funds will go towards fighting avoidable blindness in children and marginalised groups. Thank you to everyone who participated in raising funds for a great cause!

Christmas Flagship Eco-Window

This Christmas, our Regent Street Flagship store is delighted to transport you to our latest festive window creation, the L’OCCITANE Gift Factory. Throughout our immersive window display, we celebrate our commitments and little-known secrets: Harvesting, Crafting and Gifting.

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Beach Cleaning Results

Our beach clean tour is finished! Over the summer we brought our L’OCCITANE truck to Cardiff, Portsmouth, Liverpool and Edinburgh to clean beaches in the UK. Our first summer truck tour was a huge success as we managed to collect a total of 74.5kgs of waste from our beaches!

The plastic waste we have collected will be recycled into props for our stores and our carbon footprint from the store will be offset. Thank you to all of you who lent a helping hand to make our coastline cleaner and more beautiful! Here's to our Summer 2022 truck tour…

Green Day Donation

L'OCCITANE wants to thank you for your Green Day purchases in May. As a result of the sales, we have raised £10,000 for our UK Charity, Surfers Against Sewage which will go towards campaigns like their Million Mile Clean.
 

Women's Empowerment Donation

This spring, in honour of International Women’s Day, we ran a fundraiser for a women’s empowerment charity of your choice. Over February and March, £2/€2 per Hand Cream Trio sold is being donated to a charity recommended by you. We are thrilled to announce that we have raised £5,000 and €2,000 and the winners of the votes were @womens_aid in the UK and @womens.aid in Ireland.

 Covid-19 has shone a further light on the crisis of domestic violence in homes. These donations will go towards increasing support through Freephone Helpline, Live Chat Helpline, campaigning for change and vital training courses. Thank you to everyone who purchase the Hand Cream Trios and to everyone who voted for their favourite #empoweringwomen charity!

"We are so grateful for the amazing donation from L'Occitane and we are honoured to have been nominated by your wonderful customers to receive it. This donation will make a huge difference to our work supporting women and children experiencing abuse. Whether it's supporting our direct services like our Live Chat Helpline, our work campaigning for change, or our vital training courses, these funds will help us work towards a society where domestic abuse is no longer tolerated - thank you for being a part of the movement." Faye Connelly, Women's Aid Fundraising Manager.

EcoVadis Recognition for #NotJustSuppliers

L’OCCITANE is pleased to announce that it has been recognised by EcoVadis for its #NotJustSuppliers global sustainable procurement programme, as well as the outstanding programme leadership under the direction of Katia Michieletto, L’OCCITANE Head of Responsible Purchasing.

EcoVadis provides the world’s most trusted business sustainability ratings. The Sustainable Procurement Leadership Awards celebrate excellence and recognise the outstanding performance of companies in their relationship with trading partners around the globe. Nominees were evaluated on strategy and approach, procurement integration, scale and coverage, and Programme results across three main categories: Best Value Chain Engagement, Outstanding Programme Leadership and Best Portfolio Performance Improvement.

Pierre-François Thaler, Co-CEO, EcoVadis said:
‘Our 2021 winners have gone big on their commitments to see actionable business value from sustainability by working to spark real change where it matters most - across the supply chain.’

NHS/HSE Donation

We stand with the NHS and HSE. With the current situation being even more challenging than in April last year, we are all so grateful for everything they do. We are hoping to bring a smile to their faces and show our continued support by donating a further 21,000 hand creams (15,000 in UK and 6,000 in Ireland) to NHS/HSE staff. This is in addition to the 15,000 hand creams donated last year across the UK and Ireland.
 
We're all in this together!

Black Friday Donations

In 2020, we ran a fundraiser for tree planting organisations. Over the weekend of Black Friday, £1 from each of our hand creams sold has been donated to PUR Projet in the UK.

We are thrilled to announce that, thanks to your purchases, as well as contributions from our employee fundraisers and the L’Occitane Foundation, we have raised £45,000 for PUR Projet, which will be used for planting 4,500 trees in the UK, delivered by the Woodland Trust. Thank you to everyone who purchased our hand creams over the Black Friday weekend and for raising funds for such an amazing cause!

Christmas Flagship Eco-Friendly Window

The UK & Ireland Flagship team are delighted to transport you to Provence with their latest window display. We worked with eco-friendly supplier Ecobooth to create this magical Christmas Provencal landscape. This display celebrates our ongoing commitment to respecting biodiversity. The display was created using FSC Woodland trust approved wood, non-toxic glue and paints, organic sustainable sourced dried ingredients and reusable LED lights. Our signature hot air balloons float in the sky carrying presents, bringing to life the theme of this year’s Christmas “Gift the Magic of Provence, from our fields to your home”.

World Sight Day

Thanks to your purchases of our Caring for Sight collections and contributions from employee fundraisers and the L’Occitane foundation, we are delighted to announce we have raised £25,945 in the UK for UNICEF, and in Ireland €20,000 for Sightsavers. These funds will go towards fighting avoidable blindness in children. Thank you to everyone who participated in raising funds for an amazing cause!

DISCOVER OUR COMMITMENT

#CleanUpTheWorld Results

Over the month of August, we asked you to carry out your own #cleanuptheworld litter picking initiative, counting the number of pieces of rubbish you picked up along the way.

The results are now in... Thanks to our communal efforts, we picked up over 4,000 pieces of rubbish off our beaches, waterways and parks! On behalf of our planet, thank you!

Green Day - Surfers Agaisnt Sewage

We recently hosted Green Day, a 3-day event donating £5 from every Eco-Refill purchased to our chosen charity Surfers Against Sewage who help to keep our waterways and beaches clean. We are thrilled to announce that, with your Eco-Refill purchases, we have raised £4,565 which will go to Surfers Against Sewage project “Big SAS Beach Clean: Summit to Sea!”. From mountain tops to beach fronts and busy streets to flowing rivers, in excess of 600 cleans will take place across the UK mobilising over 35,000 volunteers and removing over 40,000kg of plastic pollution.
In addition, each year we run a number of employee fundraising events from bake sales to staff sales. This year we gave the vote to our employees for where they would like the funds to be donated to, and they have spoken! An additional £12,175 will be donated to Surfers Against Sewage bringing the total to £16,740. Thank you everyone who participated in this year’s Green Day and for raising money for such a good cause.

Black Lives Matter Movement

L’OCCITANE believes in equality for all — regardless of race, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion and age. Our core values represent our commitment to creating positive change in our communities, which starts with respecting all human beings.
 
Our dedication to creating a more equitable workplace is unwavering as we work to improve our inclusion practices to ensure that our teams around the world are diverse and engaged. The company corporate policy states the non-discrimination principle for our employees.
 
We are proud of the diverse and vibrant culture that embodies the spirit of L’OCCITANE around the world. However, we acknowledge that there is much work to be done.
We recently joined the LEAD Network (Leading Executive Advancing Diversity) to help us to address gender equality in our business. It is a first step towards a more diverse future for our brand. To address racial diversity and injustice, we are committed to listening to our community, and to learning how to do better on our marketing platforms and in our teams.
 
In solidarity with Black communities around the world, L’OCCITANE UK have donated £10,000 to Black Lives Matter UK to help fight for freedom, liberation and justice for the Black community. The L’OCCITANE Group has also pledged to donate $10,000 to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), whose mission is to secure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights in order to eliminate race-based discrimination and ensure the health and well-being of all persons.
 
We will continue to engage in the movement and find ways to support the crucial work of dismantling inequality, injustice, and the systemic oppression of BIPOC.

A million care products delivered by the L’OCCITANE

L’OCCITANE has delivered a million care products in support of healthcare workers. This milestone is emblematic of the many initiatives that the Group’s brands and subsidiaries have undertaken around the world to support healthcare workers, along with partners and local communities, through the coronavirus epidemic. 

L’OCCITANE launches new parental leave policy

L’OCCITANE has announced the launch of a global parental leave policy to support families of all shapes and sizes. The new policy gives primary caregivers a minimum of 20 weeks’ fully paid leave and secondary caregivers a minimum of 12 weeks’ fully paid leave to bond with their new child. It will apply to L’OCCITANE employees worldwide – across its offices, factories and owned retail stores – whether the child is welcomed by birth or through adoption or surrogacy. 

The new parental leave policy seeks to empower all employees and their families. It directly promotes health and well-being through equal opportunities in the workplace and fairer gender relations within the family.

L'OCCITANE supports the NHS

As a pioneer in beauty and well-being products using natural ingredients, L’OCCITANE has decided to reassign some of its facilities to manufacture 70,000 litres of hand sanitiser. 20,000 of which have been distributed in hospitals across the UK. 12,000 hand creams have also been given to NHS/HSE staff across UK and IE.

We are all in this together :)

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Sensible sustainable thinking is at the heart of L’OCCITANE. Inspired by the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment’s targets and principle of mutual transparency, L’OCCITANE is one step closer to meeting its vision of achieving a circular economy for plastic. L’OCCITANE has pledged that, by 2025, 100% of its bottles will be made out of 100% recycled plastic, and 100% of its owned stores will offer a recycling service.

In order to achieve this goal, it has set out a number of specific actions in three areas:
Recycle – working towards a circular economy
Reduce – reducing waste and improving product lifespans
React – supporting initiatives that encourage responsible and sustainable use of plastic
PUR Projet & Woodland Trust

L'OCCITANE x PUR Projet & Woodland Trust

With Biodiversity at the core of L'OCCITANE's commitments, we partnered with PUR Projet. As 70% of the land in the UK being used for farming purposes our local partner is the Woodland Trust; their aim is to preserve soil, water resources and improve animal welfare.
 
In order to help both of these partners, and to reach the Woodlands Trust goal of planting 64 million trees. We have planted many oak trees, contributing to our global goal of 31,000, in the beautiful woodland in Tring, Hertfordshire. This action gives back for generations; cleaning our air, purifying our water, providing shelter and shade for our wildlife.
Kik-Plastic

L'OCCITANE supports Kik-Plastic

Here at L’OCCITANE, we are on a mission to reduce plastic pollution. In 2019, we teamed up with British adventurer, Kiko Matthews, who is taking plastic pollution into her own hands. Kiko is no stranger to the danger of waste destroying our oceans. In 2018, she set herself the challenge to row solo across the Atlantic (and became the female record holder in the process!). Distraught by the amount of plastic waste she saw as she travelled across the sea, she was determined to make a change. When back on UK soil, she was ready to face her new challenge: Kik-Plastic.

Kiko cycled an incredible 7,200KM journey around the UK coastline to raise awareness of plastic pollution, stopping off at local beaches on route to pick up plastic with local volunteers. L’OCCITANE sponsored four of Kiko’s beach cleans in Brighton, Bournemouth, Cardiff and Edinburgh.

The Statistics: Brighton Beach - 24kg collected | Bournemouth Beach - 29kg collected | Cardiff - 10kg collected | Edinburgh - 170kg collected
TOTAL: 233KG OF WASTE COLLECTED!

L'OCCITANE Recycling Programme

Recycling Programme

REFILL, RECYCLE, RETHINK

Respect for the environment is at the heart of L’OCCITANE, that’s why we’ve partnered with TerraCycle® to provide a collection and recycling programme for our customers to be able to simply recycle their empties at any of the L’OCCITANE boutiques.

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