Natura & Co highlights key sustainability wins amid renewed call for action on biodiversity

The Body Shop and Avon owner Natura & Co has renewed its call for business leaders to join it in stepping up their commitments to fighting nature emergencies and embracing inclusion.

The call, made in the Certified B Corp company’s first annual progress report following the launch of its 10-year Commitment to Life plan in June 2020, also included a number of key highlights achieved in the past year.

The company, which also owns global beauty brands Aesop and Natura, helped to preserve 2 million hectares of Amazon rainforest in the past year and invested more than $94m in good causes; including donations towards fighting Covid-19 and supporting breast cancer awareness initiatives and victims of domestic violence.

It is also set to launch a new monitoring tool to collect data about the health of the Amazon.

Created in partnership with MapBiomas and InfoAmazônia, the new PlenaMata tool will serve as a centralised database to inform initiatives for the conservation and regeneration of the Amazon biome.

Renewing Natura & Co’s call for more private sector companies to invest in science-based targets for biodiversity, Group Chief Executive Officer Roberto Marques said: "We are sharing our progress – and our challenges - in the spirit of transparency, and in the spirit of collaboration.

“Our business model holds ourselves accountable to balance profit and purpose, which is why we will always report our social and environmental performance with the same transparency as we do our financial performance.

“With 75% of Fortune 500 companies not having carbon neutral commitments by 2030 in place, it's clear that the world has a long way to go.

“The climate crisis is the defining challenge of our time, and it will be incumbent upon the private sector to step up and push for change in order for the goals of the Paris Agreement to become a reality.

“Equally, social justice will continue to be an aspiration unless businesses step up to ensure diversity and inclusion through every aspect of their structure and its entire network in which they participate.

Our Commitment to Life vision is ambitious, but with collaboration, creativity and care, we will achieve it."

Natura &Co’s update also included the news that the gender balance of its management team had now reached 49% and that it was on track to close an “unexplained” 0.9% pay equity gap by year end 2021.

The company also set out a new plan to ensure that its international workforce better reflected the demographic makeup of the societies in which it operates - a first for a listed multi-national business with a network in more than 100 countries.