Natura: The capital that really matters
Natura recognizes the urgent need to reduce ecosystem impacts and has started to account for natural capital throughout our business value chains.
In 2014, we undertook our first natural capital assessment to calculate the monetary value of our impacts and their societal consequences.
This included GHG emissions and air pollution, water pollution and use, waste and land use, and resulted in an Environmental Profit and Loss account (EP&L).
Valuing our externalities enables us to innovate our business performance analysis. Quantifying our impacts helps to reduce our negative effects while levering positive ones, for example, by innovating in material use and the production processes.
We also appreciate that undertaking a natural capital assessment and disclosing information externally provides a degree of transparency which is important to our stakeholders. By contributing to the global agenda of non-financial measurement and valuation, we also support global sustainability goals and the transition to a low-carbon economy.
- Yes
- Climate & Air Emissions
- Waste Management
- Water
- Corporate
- Product
- Monetary
- Value to society
- GLOBAL
- Direct operations
- Downstream
- Upstream
- Consumer Goods
Key findings
The assessment found that GHG emissions represent one of the greatest impacts along the value chain.
As such, we have implemented measures to achieve a 33% percent reduction along the value chain by 2020 relative to 2012. The avoided GHG impact was calculated around R$101MM for measures taken between 2006 and 2013.
We also found that water consumption has a significant societal impact, particularly in the use stage, due to a major part of our portfolio comprising hygiene and bathing products. Communication and education are central to encourage end-users to use our products more efficiently.
While this assessment increased the complexity of data collection and methodology adjustments, we have compiled a set of information and data that is useful to inform our business decision-making. We believe that this experience will drive learning and enable us to reexamine our innovation, distribution and production processes. This will inform our strategic decision making and help deliver our 2050 sustainability vision.
More information
http://naturalcapitalcoalition.org/natural-capital-protocol-case-study-for-natura/
http://naturalcapitalcoalition.org/the-capital-that-really-matters/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bZzCGCtbfI
http://naturalcapitalcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Naturas-EPL_NCP-2016-rev-061.pdf
Andreza Boccardo Souza (andrezasouza@natura.net) Coordenadora de Sustentabilidade / Sustainability