The future at a glance
Our consumers rightly expect products to satisfy the criteria of quality, environmental compatibility, and social responsibility in equal measure. And this is also our aim. Our brands combine excellent performance with responsibility toward people and the environment. We view this combination as the central driver for innovations and the basis for our future competitiveness. The social challenges of the future require people everywhere to radically rethink the manner in which we produce and consume. For us, the main task in the coming years will be to decouple our products’ contributions to growth and quality of life from resource consumption and emissions. Our product developers already take this need to increase efficiency into account. Each new product must make a contribution in at least one of our focal areas. To make the advances we have achieved transparent and quantifiable, we have worked together with the Center for Sustainable Consumption and Production (CSCP) in Wuppertal to develop appropriate assessment models for our laundry and home care products. These models come together in the Henkel-Sustainability-Master. At the heart of the models is an evaluation of economic, ecological and social criteria throughout the value chain on the basis of life cycle analyses. The results show the reduction in the ecological footprint, together with the added value that a new product brings in terms of performance and service.

Fostering sustainable lifestyles
Our innovations are used daily in millions of households throughout the world. They have enormous potential for actively shaping tomorrow’s lifestyles. In combining quality and responsibility, our aim is to set a new market standard for innovative, sustainable consumption. We utilize our many years of experience to develop products that enable consumers to use energy and water efficiently in the home. Our laundry detergents Persil Actic Power and Purex Cold Water, for example, deliver their full cleaning power even at low wash temperatures. The active substances in our detergents also help to make it more difficult for dirt to resettle on fabrics. Our new liquid Somat Perfect Gel is particularly suitable for short dishwasher cycles. In comparison with standard programs, these use an average of 20 percent less energy. Another example of a future technology is the use of photocatalytic bleaching systems that can further bleach colored stains as they dry. While in the past these systems needed ultraviolet light to deliver their performance they now already respond to interior lighting. Through targeted communication, we aim to make consumers aware of these advantages of our products and encourage their efficient use.

Responsible use of raw and packaging materials
Henkel has been using ingredients based on renewable raw materials for decades. In 2010, about 30 percent of the washing active substances (surfactants) in our laundry detergents and household cleaners were derived from renewable raw materials. This is clearly above the average in the laundry and home care industry as a whole. We are aware of our responsibility regarding the purchase and use of these raw materials. Since many ingredients in our products are obtained from vegetable raw materials such as palm kernel oil, we have participated in the Round Table for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), for example, since 2003. In 2008, we became the first company worldwide to purchase certificates for sustainable palm kernel oil – for the products of our Terra brand. As a result, palm kernel oil from sustainably managed plantations was integrated into the supply chain for the production of surfactants for the first time. Our aim is that all of the palm oil and palm kernel oil supplied in the form of raw materials for our products should be covered throughout by RSPO certificates for sustainably cultivated palm oil by 2015.

Other aims include a reduction in the amount of packaging material used and an increase in the proportion of recycled packaging materials. In the current Laundry Sustainability Project Liquid (LSP-L) of the A.I.S.E., for example, we have committed to standardizing the pack sizes of our liquid laundry detergents by 2012. This is expected to save more than 2,000 metric tons of plastic each year on the Western European markets alone.