Sustainable Assessment of the Environmental Activities of Major Cosmetics and Personal Care Companies

The cosmetics and personal care industry has, by its nature, contributed to global environmental issues such as climate change, waste, water scarcity, habitat destruction, and water and air pollution. Therefore, it is more important than ever for the cosmetics and personal care companies to be responsible and proactive in addressing environmental issues. Meanwhile, the complexity of the cosmetics and personal care industry has never been greater. The roles of not only brand companies but also OEM/ODM and retail companies are becoming increasingly important, and the boundaries are also collapsing. Despite the urgency of environmental issues, there has been a lack of research on specific and practical environmental activities of cosmetics and personal care companies, and the environmental responsibilities of OEM/ODM companies and retailers have been overlooked. Therefore, the need for this study was recognized. The purpose of this study was to expand the scope of assessment to include not only cosmetics brand companies but also OEM/ODM companies and retailers in general to identify the actual and concrete environmental activities being carried out. Therefore, in this study, the keywords cosmetics, environmental, eco-friendly, and sustainable, which have recently become the topics of discussion, were empirically analyzed. This study selected and analyzed 18 out of 28 annual reports, nonfinancial statements, and sustainability reports of 16 cosmetics- and personal-care-related companies. In addition, 456 articles were found through PubMed, Google Scholar, Google, and Scopus, and the final 108 articles were referenced using the PRISMA flow chart. The novelty of this study is, first, in the fact that it identified the actual and specific strategies and practices of cosmetics and personal care companies with respect to environmental issues. Second, it established common standards for environmental issues and compared corporate environmental activities. Third, this study included OEM/ODM companies and retailers, whose influence has been increasing in recent years, to understand the status of eco-friendly activities across the industry. This study makes a practical contribution by encouraging environmental activities in the cosmetics industry through comparing and evaluating the specific and practical environmental activities of not only brand companies but also OEM/ODM companies and retailers and laying the foundation for the development of a framework for environmental assessment. In addition, this study recognizes the need to study the environmental activity behavior of the cosmetics industry as a whole and contributes to the study of cosmetics companies’ environmental activities by suggesting how to use companies’ nonfinancial performance reports as materials to assess their actual environmental activities.