Committed to a more sustainable and inclusive world

Healthy Lives: Improving people’s health and well-being

As a purpose-led company, supporting people’s well-being is core to our purpose. It starts with our own teammates. In fiscal year 2023, we continued to advance a culture of safety, achieving a recordable incident rate of 0.55, which was significantly lower than our goal of less than 1.0 and the 3.3 industry average. And we continue to invest in our people, helping them thrive through benefits and resources that support their physical, mental and financial well-being as well as their professional growth.   

With our products in nine of 10 U.S. homes, one of the most significant ways we can impact the well-being of our consumers and communities is through our global portfolio – whether it’s disinfectants; vitamins, minerals and supplements; water filtration; natural personal care; or other essential household products. In addition, we’ve made sustainability a strategic part of our brand purpose and are embedding accountability for achieving our IGNITE ESG goals into our business units.  

Because people care about the safety and efficacy of our products, including the ingredients we use, product stewardship is essential to our ways of working. Core to that approach is maintaining strong safety guidelines and practices for product development as well as transparency. We led the way on voluntary ingredient disclosure, in 2009 becoming the first major consumer packaged goods company to share that information in our U.S. and Canadian cleaning and disinfecting products. And in our fiscal year 2023, we were the first company to add user-friendly ingredient definitions to SmartLabel for cleaning and disinfecting products to help consumers better understand the function of our ingredients.  

We’re also proud that our Clorox brand was recognized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency with two Safer Choice Partner of the Year awards in 2022. These awards recognize our significant achievements in support of the Safer Choice program and signal our efforts to meet rising consumer interest in wellness by delivering products with ingredients that are safer for communities and the environment. 

In the spirit of continuous improvement, we’re making ongoing progress against other goals within our IGNITE strategy, including advancing alternative approaches to animal testing and reducing the chemical footprint of our domestic cleaning portfolio. 

Clean World: Taking climate action and reducing plastic & other waste

People can only thrive if the planet is healthy, which is why we’re taking decisive climate action and addressing plastic and other waste. As we work toward accelerating growth, we have strong aspirations for decarbonizing our business and designing out waste for the well-being of the planet and future generations.  

In September 2021, we announced our commitment to addressing climate change by achieving net-zero emissions across scopes 1, 2 and 3 by 2050. Our planned path to that vision includes achieving our 2030 science-based targets to reduce carbon emissions across our operations (scopes 1 and 2) by 50% and reduce value-chain emissions (scope 3) from purchased goods and services and use of sold products by 25%, all on an absolute basis against a 2020 baseline.   

One of the ways we continue to meet our scope 1 and 2 commitments is by maintaining our use of 100% renewable electricity for our U.S. and Canada operations. We first achieved this milestone in January 2021 four years ahead of our original plan, and our latest virtual power purchase agreement signed in 2022 began in 2023. Our renewable electricity goal builds upon our past progress exceeding previous GHG emissions reduction targets. We’re proud that we cumulatively reduced our emissions by 52% per case of product sold and 40% on an absolute basis between 2008 and 2018, and we’re motivated to do more. We published a  climate action plan that outlines our approach to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, which includes collaborating with others and leveraging new technologies and innovations as they become available to deliver on our goals. 

It also has become increasingly clear that society’s reliance on plastic and other waste is challenging the health of our planet and threatening our natural resources. That’s why one of our signature IGNITE ESG goals is targeting plastic and other waste through material reduction in virgin packaging. As we reduce our packaging, we strive to ensure it is also recyclable, reusable or compostable. Today we’ve achieved 88% of this goal to have 100% recyclable, reusable or compostable packaging by 2025. 

Collaboration with the full value chain — suppliers, customers, consumers, governments and municipalities — is key to driving meaningful progress. As a signatory to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy Global Commitment and a founding member of the U.S. Plastics Pact, we are participating in collective, multi-stakeholder approaches that aim to solve systemic challenges.   

Thriving Communities: Investing in our people and communities to contribute to a more equitable world 

We’re committed to building thriving communities — within our walls and beyond. To enable people to thrive at Clorox, we work to create an inclusive culture where every teammate is respected, valued and seen. We want people to bring their best selves to work so that we can unlock more innovation, better meet consumer needs and ultimately contribute to a better society. That’s why inclusion, diversity, equity and allyship, or IDEA, is reflected in our values and embedded in our people processes, including our hiring, development and retention efforts. It’s also embedded in how we reward our people, because we value the work our teammates do to amplify our efforts, ultimately contributing to our progress.   

I’m proud our board is more diverse than the Fortune 500 average and that women make up half of our executive team. While we’re making progress, we aspire to achieve even stronger diversity at Clorox overall.

Beyond Clorox, it’s imperative that our surrounding communities are also healthy and thriving. The Clorox Company Foundation is focusedon supporting health security, based on the belief that health and wellness is a basic human right. We will continue our legacy of supporting those in need by promoting community wellness, disease prevention and disaster relief and preparedness.   

Similarly, we continue to drive environmental and social responsibility in our supply chain. Through multistakeholder engagement, we engaged high impact and strategic suppliers through coalitions like the Supplier Leadership on Climate Transitions collaborative to understand where we can align on climate action to realize our ambitious scope 3 science-based targets. Other efforts included advancing human rights in palm supply chains, combating deforestation by increasing the percentage of recycled or responsibly sourced certified virgin fiber used in purchased packaging and supporting women’s economic empowerment and gender equality in communities that supply key ingredients for our Burt’s Bees products. 

Governance: An unwavering commitment to transparency and stakeholder engagement

Sharing our progress and engaging our stakeholders are two approaches fundamental to our ESG commitment. Since 2015, we’ve worked with various third parties to assess our ESG priorities and most material topics to help inform our strategy and reporting.  

In 2023 we created a new ESG executive management structure and hired our first vice president and head of sustainability fully dedicated to lead ESG work. Our sustainability efforts and strategies are managed by cross-functional subject matter experts overseen by a standing team of executive leaders who regularly report our progress and discuss risks and opportunities with our board of directors. We report our progress in our integrated annual report, leveraging ESG reporting frameworks. As a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact, we continue to reaffirm our commitment to its Ten Principles. The Clorox team, including members of our board, regularly engages with our shareholders and other key stakeholders regarding our ESG efforts and progress.  

Continuing our ESG journey

As we work toward achieving our IGNITE goals, our progress provides a strong foundation for the road ahead. Looking to 2030 and beyond, ESG will be a part of how we do business and key to delivering purpose-driven growth.