Responsible Marketing

• In everything we do, brand building, innovation, communication, interactions with our consumers and customers, we commit to behaving in a responsible way, being authentic and transparent, improving Well-Being for the People and caring for our Planet.​

• We are proud members of the WFA Planet Pledge, where we formally signed a commitment to drive the and accelerate the Race to Zero by reducing marketing carbon footprint, developing more sustainable products, and educate a large audience to a more sustainable behavior and product usage. 

“At Essity we are strongly committed to creating a more sustainable and circular society in hygiene and health. Our commitment is reflected in our motto “Breaking barriers to well-being”, which we passionately implement in brand building with taboo-breaking brands initiatives. In marketing, our teams put courage, one of our company´s beliefs & behaviors, in daily practice to contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, accelerate the Race to Zero with innovative products, and breaking gender, age, body and racial taboos, together with our consumers, customers and providers. We are proud to be part of the Plan!” said Gael de Talhouet, Vice President Brand Building, Essity.

Stronger Together:

Essity partners with Leading Marketing Suppliers who also commit: Publicis commitment, AMV BBDO Code of Conduct, Modern Slavery Act, Gender Pay Gap. 

We work hand in hand with our Partners to promote and develop ethical, responsible, inclusive and sustainable behavior: AMV BBDO and Essity have signed the Free the Bid Pledge and Who's In | Free The Bid

Ethical marketing and advertising:

• Our product and advertising claims are cleared through our internal innovation, sustainability, legal and regulatory processes. We do not claim any benefit that cannot be substantiated by facts. We take responsibility to not induce consumers, customers, users in believing benefits that are not genuine. We are guided by ISO 14021 for our sustainability claims.

• Policy Development: we support the ambitions by e.g. the EU Commission to Empower Consumers and making it clearer, more harmonized and easier to make purchase decisions based on transparent and harmonized communication and claims. We follow and contribute to the policy developments in this area to secure progress and improvements. 

• In researching benefits and claims in humans, we take the ethical perspective very seriously. All studies, internally or externally, are reviewed by Ethical Review Boards. We have established our internal Human Subject Research Advisory Board to ensure the right setup for exploring health / medical benefits and specifically safeguard sensitive audiences (babies, young children, patients). Human Subject Research Advisory Board is a board enabling Essity to continuously be compliant in Human Subject Research. The board consists of designated senior multidisciplinary team members providing guidance, statements and consultancy to ensure ethical and regulatory compliance in Human Subject Research. 

• Product Safety: We are convinced that product safety needs to be on the highest level everywhere in the world – no concession. We have summarized our principles in our Product Safety Position and explained in more detail for our consumers in our “Product Safety – It´s Personal” communication: Product Safety - For Us, it's Personal!; TENA Product Safety; and further brand websites).

• We assess our materials and products towards the highest standards throughout their life cycle. With extremely rare exceptions (where legally without alternative), we do this without any animal testing.

Legal and Compliance:

• Innovation, product life cycle management and the communication hereto are systematically validated by legal, compliance, regulatory and IP teams, as part of our existing quality management processes.

• We enforce GDPR and take special responsibility with data. 

• We are committed to the Medtech Europe Code of Ethical Business Practice

Walking the Talk:

On top of our internal Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, we actively use our Marketing Responsibility to promote sustainable behaviors, diversity, equity and inclusion with our voluntary focus on brands communication and activation.

We walk the extra mile, bringing to live our company purpose “Breaking Barriers To Well-Being” by actively creating dialogues around taboo subjects, normalizing exposure of period blood, talking about incontinence, assuming menopause, giving representation to LGBTQ+ and disabled people. We are a tram of passionate marketing who live and breather progressive advertising, we have the courage to break barriers, making the world a better place for everyone, and make hygiene and health accessible to more. 

Read more on our other Sustainability Actions What we do.

Essity collaborates with key stakeholders in their respective fields to drive the sustainability agenda forward. To measure progress and drive transparency, we have also signed major commitments to make our sustainable commitments part of a bigger cause :

• Essity is supporting the UN Sustainability Development Goals generally and 6 of them more specifically though our business and operations. Please read more about Essity's approach to the UN SDGs. Naturally, our Responsible Marketing commitment puts even more focus on Good Health and Well-being (Goal 3), Gender Equality (Goal 5), Responsible Consumption and Production (Goal 12), and Climate Action (Goal 13).

• Essity is a member of The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, launched in 2010 to accelerate the transition to a circular economy. Our membership in Ellen MacArthur Foundation provides a space to share, learn and put circularity initiatives and design in practice. We also take part in the global commitment New Plastic Economy to reduce plastic pollution (EMF Global Plastic commitment)

• Science based Targets Initiative SBTi: Our targets to reduce carbon emissions have been approved by the Science Based Targets initiative and are in line with the ambition in the Paris agreement to reduce global warming. This is a climate initiative driven by CDP, WRI, WWF and UN Global Compact. This is the first step towards Net zero by 2050 and our Business Ambition for 1.5°c.

• Essity is part of the Consumer Goods Forum (CGF): Driving positive change through actions partnerships in the Consumer Industry and participating in the Coalition of actions on Plastic Waste, Forest Positive and Human Rights

• Essity is a member of the Digital Watermarks Initiative HolyGrail 2.0, to improve sorting and increase the recycling rates for plastic packaging in the EU.