Business Ethics and Human Rights

As a global company, Essity impacts millions of people’s lives every day, from employees and consumers to suppliers and the communities where we operate. Caring for people’s well-being and conducting our business in a responsible way is a fundamental part of our identity and contributes to the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3 for Good health and well-being, SDG 5 Gender Equality, and SDG 12 Responsible Consumption and production.

To retain the trust of our stakeholders we must uphold these values wherever in the world we operate. We invest significant resources into understanding what our human rights risks are and what they will be in the future. We are firmly committed to our zero-tolerance approach to unethical business behavior and violations of human rights in the value chains where we exercise control.

The responsibility to implement our human rights commitments follows our line management structure, with the support of functions such as Human resources, Legal Affairs, Communications and Global Brand, Innovation and Sustainability.

To safeguard compliance and efforts, Essity’s human rights commitments are overseen and followed up by Essity’s Compliance department. Findings are reported to Essity’s Compliance Council, which includes members of the Executive Management Team.