Kao, leading Japanese consumer goods manufacturer and one of the world's largest suppliers of professional salon products, owning iconic brands such as Goldwell, John Frieda and Molton Brown, is declaring it will make its production and administrative facilities in the UK and Germany climate neutral by 2022.

By teaming up with us at ClimatePartner on this project, Kao is building on its longstanding sustainability commitment, including the reduction of its environmental footprint. Over the past years, Kao has implemented a wide range of measures to reduce the carbon footprint of its European operations. By using renewable energy in the UK and German facilities, Kao is already able to completely avoid indirect emissions from purchased electricity. To achieve its goal of climate neutrality in the UK and Germany, Kao is offsetting its unavoidable emissions by collaborating with us. Progress has been swift: the UK facilities have already achieved climate neutrality in 2021, and the German operations will follow on January 1^st, 2022.

We are happy to support Kao in this process. It began with calculating the organisation’s carbon footprint, allowing Kao to identify the biggest emission sources, set up a strategy for additional future reduction countermeasures and offset those emissions that cannot be reduced as of now.

At ClimatePartner, we work only with certified carbon offset projects, adhering to strict international standards. One of Kao´s key offsetting activities is the support of a wind farm project in South Africa, whose details can be transparently looked up with Kao’s tracking ID. The project helps to reduce the country’s dependency on fossil fuels and is aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, as is the sustainability strategy of Kao.

“Becoming climate neutral in two key markets of the EMEA region is a big milestone for us on our way to zero CO₂ emissions,” says Guido Kirchhoff, Vice President Supply Chain at Kao EMEA. “However, we do not stop here. Reducing our carbon footprint continues to be one of our key priorities at Kao and we are already planning the next steps to further minimize our emissions along the entire supply chain. The collaboration with ClimatePartner is a great support and will help us on our path to full climate neutrality for all EMEA branches of Kao.”

Tristan A. Foerster, CEO and co-founder of ClimatePartner explains: “While working with Kao we have seen how committed the company is to achieve more sustainability for everyone around the globe. We, therefore, are very happy to be able to continue to accompany Kao on its journey to become climate neutral and to support the company offset its currently unavoidable carbon emissions with certified carbon offset projects.”

The reduction of its carbon footprint is a key element of Kao’s global ESG strategy and continues to be a top priority at the heart of its sustainability efforts in the EMEA region.

More information about Kao’s sustainability and climate action measures can be found here.