Estée Lauder hopes to combat deforestation in Indonesia

Beauty group Estée Lauder is supporting sustainability in production, with a partnership to promote palm oil and palm derivatives.

Working with long-term ingredient suppliers BASF, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and the civil society organization Solidaridad, Estée Lauder is helping to prevent deforestation and increase social and economic benefits for farmers in Indonesia. The project in Lampung, Indonesia aims to encompass 1,000 independent smallholder farmers.

Sustainable practices
The team effort hopes to improve the livelihood of farmers in this area and offers education and technical support for sustainable palm oil practices.

Estée Lauder hopes to have a third of smallholder farmers become certified according to the Smallholder Standard of RSPO within the next three years.

The Indonesian government is also working on the initiative to help establish a long-term sustainable practice in farming palm oil and palm kernel oil.

Estée Lauder looks to promote sustainability in Indonesia. Image credit: Estée Lauder

“We aim to develop long-lasting, trusting and mutually beneficial relationships with suppliers who share our strong values and demonstrate the same commitment to operating responsibly and ethically across all facets of business," said Roberto Magana, senior vice president and chief procurement officer at Estée Lauder, in a statement.

Sustainability is not just the right thing to do for brands, but it also helps brings them closer to consumers.

Consumers’ shared desire to incorporate healthfulness and eco-friendliness into their lives is evidenced in the topics they talk about on social media, with subjects such as clean beauty and freeganism rising in popularity this past year.

According to data from the 2019 Topics & Trends Report from Facebook, conversations surrounding sustainable fashion have grown more than three times over in 2018, while detoxification as a term has risen 7.6 times. As marketers prepare to launch campaigns in 2019, Facebook sees these trends as indicators of what will soon reach popularity (see story).