Month: June 2024

Originally published on Essity.com

Commitment to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

As a leading global hygiene and health company, Essity plays an important role in contributing to the UN SDGs. We focus on goals 3, 5, 6, 12, 13 and 15, this is where we have our expertise and can contribute the most.

The UN SDGs provide the global community with a roadmap on how to combat challenges related to economic, social, and environmental sustainability. The goals reflect a growing awareness of the relationship between good hygiene and health, improving well-being and driving economic and environmental progress in the world. They also create a framework for accelerating action and partnership.

As a signatory of the UN Global Compact, we are working to address global challenges through cooperations and partnerships.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

3. Good health and well-being – Essity contributes to Goal 3 through our intensive work to promote better global hygiene and health standards. By providing access to our leading solutions, we are contributing to increased quality of life and well-being. We enable more people to live fuller lives every day by offering access to sustainable hygiene and health solutions and providing education.

5. Gender equality – Essity wants to drive progress on gender equality where we operate, both within the company and in society. By pursuing educational initiatives and collaborations to break the silence around issues related to hygiene and health, Essity contributes to greater gender equality. We are working towards breaking taboos around topics like menstruation and incontinence, enabling those affected, including women, girls, men, and care-giving relatives, to fully participate in society.

6. Clean water and sanitation – Essity works to achieve efficient water usage throughout the entire life cycle of our products and to improve treatment and the quality of the effluent water discharged from our facilities.

12. Responsible consumption and production – Essity, together with our customers, consumers, suppliers, and other business partners, works toward a sustainable and circular society. We ensure resource efficiency and sustainable design of our products and services in the entire life cycle. It is about ensuring social and environmental performance during use and after use for our customers and consumers.

13. Climate action – Essity addresses the challenges of climate change through investments in sustainable innovations, low carbon materials, fossil free energy and breakthrough technologies. We focus on carbon reduction throughout the life cycle, from responsible procurement, to resource efficient production and to sustainable solutions during and after use for our customers and consumers.

15. Life on Land – As a global purchaser of renewable fiber, we require our fresh fiber, recycled fiber and alternative fibers suppliers to comply with our Global Supplier Standards and policies. We responsibly use fiber and other materials from sustainable and renewable sources. Essity is committed to responsible forest management and to preserving the biodiversity of forests and other ecosystems.

Sustainability Priorities

Sustainability is integrated into Essity’s strategy and is a priority for long-term profitable growth. As a company, we are committed to improving the well-being of people and societies, while reducing our environmental impact.

In 2022, Essity further developed its sustainability framework. We identified key areas where we can improve the well-being of people, while at the same time reducing our environmental impact, respecting biodiversity, contributing to a circular society, and achieving net zero emissions by 2050.

“Collaboration will be key to achieving our sustainability targets”

Committing to targets is not a difficult thing, but to deliver on them is a challenge. I work as Business Strategy Director in Essity’s Group Function (Strategy and Business Development) and together with my strategy colleagues throughout the company, we formulate Essity’s long-term strategy, bring it to life and make sure that the company is on the right track to achieve the strategic targets.

One key pillar of the company’s strategic framework is sustainability – our commitment to net zero by 2050 and the ambition to bring sustainable solutions to our customers, consumers, and patients. The external demands on us are increasing every day in all areas of social and environmental sustainability, and we need to continuously assess consumer trends, emerging regulations, but also physical nature risks, to identify business opportunities or mitigate occurring risks. 

In 2022, we developed a sustainability framework that we call the “Essity sustainability playing field” summarizing what sustainability means in the Essity context and defining the areas where we as a company want to shape societies and drive the green transformation. The framework is important in enabling us to focus on the areas where we can have the biggest impact, to track progress and chart our path forward.

Sustainability is managed in a decentralized way at Essity – it is built into the organization everywhere. We have ambitious colleagues throughout the company who are passionate about sustainability and are working hard every day to drive Essity’s sustainability work. Our role as Group Strategy Function is to consolidate ongoing efforts, ensure alignment with the corporate sustainability priorities and, together with the expert colleagues, formulate our direction forward. Succeeding in sustainability and reaching our targets will be determined by collaboration.

Sabine Glösmann 
Business Strategy Director, Essity

The name Essity stems from the words “essentials” and “necessities”. Hygiene and health are the essence of well-being. As a global, leading hygiene and health company, we offer products and services that are essential to people’s everyday lives. That is why we are called Essity.

Read more about Essity’s strategic priorities, earnings and leading sustainability work in the Annual and Sustainability Report 2023, which can be downloaded at www.essity.com.

Eastman

Pevas Bailey began his career in the textiles industry when he was 10 years old in Statesville, North Carolina. That’s where his uncle was a mechanic at a local mill.

“When most kids were playing with toys, I was putting together knitting machines with him in our basement,” Bailey said.

After more than four decades in the industry, he’s now using his experience and knowledge to help customers produce more sustainable textiles with Eastman Naia™ cellulosic fiber.  The fibers are developed to be more eco-friendly by minimizing waste, conserving natural resources and lowering environmental impact.

His work takes him around the globe, a long way from his beginnings in North Carolina.

A family path

After being known as one of the top textile mechanics in the industry, Bailey’s uncle eventually started his own company. Bailey began working there in high school. By the time he entered the Wilson School of Textiles at North Carolina State University, he knew almost everything about manufacturing.

“I got my degree in textile management because my uncle wanted me to have the business side of the education,” he said. “The technical side I had.”

Each weekend he’d return home from college to work for his uncle. One Thursday, a professor explained that it was only possible to knit fabrics one way. Bailey spent the weekend with his uncle modifying a machine to create a new way of knitting, which he showed his professor the following Monday. Bailey and his uncle were going to commercialize it, but emerging computerized technology outpaced their mechanical process.

With graduation nearing, Bailey wasn’t applying to many jobs. He wanted to earn his degree and work for his uncle to thank him for getting him started.

When Bailey’s professors and assistant dean learned he skipped a recruitment session with the Sara Lee Corporation, which owned the Hanes clothing brand, they asked the company to interview him. He was offered a job and went on to work at multiple Sara Lee locations across North Carolina, Virginia and Georgia in the first four years after college.

In 1998, he and his wife moved back to Statesville to help his uncle expand his business and to raise their two children. Seven years later, his uncle was diagnosed with cancer and died shortly after. Bailey inherited the business and ran it for several years.

His uncle inspired Bailey to always put quality first through his commitment to work and to people. And that legacy lives on.

“I closed the business in 2010, and I still have some of his former employees calling me to this day just to say nothing but ‘I was thinking about your uncle and missed him,’” he said. “That’s how beloved he was.”

The future of textiles

Bailey had never heard about sustainability within textiles, but his daughter encouraged him to learn more about the topic around the time he interviewed at Eastman before joining the company in 2019.

Today, as an application development and technical service representative, he’s passionate about helping customers. He helps them learn how sustainable fibers and manufacturing practices can make a positive environmental impact. His deep industry knowledge and manufacturing experience allow him to help customers implement Naia™ into their machines and designs.

Bailey is hopeful about what sustainable fibers promise for mitigating climate change and preventing pollution because he wants a bright future for his grandchildren.

“We’ve got to start fixing this now or our kids don’t stand a chance,” he said. “We have to start thinking of how we can change this world. I’m glad Eastman’s taking the stance to make that change, and I’m glad to be a part of moving in that direction.”

Weaving diversity into the workplace

When Pevas Bailey moved to Kingsport, Tennessee, and began working at Eastman, he wanted to find community for his family. He joined Connect, an Eastman Resource Group (ERG) that promotes the inclusion, development and advancement of African American and Black team members throughout the company. ERGs help underrepresented employees grow professionally, network with colleagues and maximize their business contributions.

“The Connect group is one of the reasons why my family’s happy here,” Bailey said. “Having this community helped us transition to this region. I think Connect is a good vehicle to show our value and encourage more acceptance because of some of the activities that we get involved in.”

Bailey is a mentor with IGNITE, a program started by Connect and Eastman Public Affairs to help middle and high school students plan for their future and career. He’s also participated in events like the annual Martin Luther King Jr. parade in Kingsport.