Estée Lauder Companies Inc.

Estée Lauder Companies Inc. is a beauty and personal care company based in New York City. Its brands include Estée Lauder, Clinique, La Mer, MAC, Jo Malone London, Aveda, Bobbi Brown, and The Ordinary. The company manages product development, manufacturing, marketing, retail, and ingredient sourcing. Stéphane de La Faverie is the President and CEO. Because water is used in many products and processes, careful water management is a key part of the company's ESG efforts.

In fiscal 2025, Estée Lauder Companies has implemented several initiatives to understand and improve its impact on water through close tracking and assessment of consumption, using water-risk data at a local level, and considering water- and biodiversity-sensitive sites. As a result, the company's Melville, New York location ended a two-year project to dismantle the groundwater-cooled HVAC system, thus saving approximately 180,000 cubic meters of water. Additionally, the company has reduced water consumption by 34% compared to fiscal 2024. The Melville facility also saw a 14% drop in the amount of water used for irrigation due to the smart irrigation controllers' installation.

The Shimotsuma, Japan facility reduced the consumption of purified water for cleaning kettles by 30% throughout fiscal 2025 by continuing to apply standard cleaning and sanitation procedures. Furthermore, cleaning and sanitation cycle time, hot domestic water consumption, hot purified water consumption, and cleaning chemicals usage in specific production processes were decreased by 63%, 76%, 50%, and 94%, respectively. Finally, the facility treated and re-used over 90,000 cubic meters of water for the needs of the local facility, landscaping, and its bathrooms.

The Oevel, Belgium facility saw an increase in the amount of water treated and re-used for the needs of the local facility, landscaping, and bathrooms by approximately 41% in fiscal 2025. Moreover, the company began using treated process water for cleaning purposes and implemented a pilot program that will assess new water treatment and recycling technologies, including rainwater harvesting, as part of a capital project.

Finally, Estée Lauder Companies enhanced its water footprint with the participation of more than 600 employees and promoted ELC Water Stewardship, engaging around 300 staff members, and educated them on ESG. In fiscal 2025, the company developed a three-year collaborative initiative to engage critical third-party manufacturers and promote water reduction practices at a local level. The initiative aimed to increase suppliers' ESG performance and inspire them to set more ambitious targets. EcoVadis and CDP Supply Chain assessments helped the company evaluate the water performance of 108 suppliers, and 103 of them provided the necessary information to complete the CDP Supply Chain water module.