Household and Personal Care Products
Household and personal care products have significantly enhanced our well-being and living standards by promoting hygiene, convenience, and aesthetic appeal in our daily routines and environments. The sector generates approximately $700 billion in annual revenues, although this sometimes comes at the expense of nature. It is imperative for the household and personal care product sector to take action now to ensure it contributes to a nature-positive and net-zero future.
Many businesses in the sector have already made commitments on nature and climate. However, more needs to be done. The sector continues to contribute to drivers of nature loss, such as land conversion and deforestation from upstream production which uses plant-based feedstocks and raw materials. And the manufacturing and downstream use of products consume significant volumes of water, and may lead to pollution, specifically plastic pollution in land, water, and ocean.
The sector actions serve as a guide to transform business practices and value chains and ensure the household and personal care products sector plays its part in halting and reversing nature loss by 2030 - the mission at the heart of the Global Biodiversity Framework.
The overview and report were led by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with Oliver Wyman.
Scroll down to access additional resources, including the sector overview in Chinese and Spanish.
Impacts on nature
Household and personal care companies should direct their efforts towards addressing the most significant impacts on nature in their operations and value chains, namely:
Water use and other resources use
Land use change
Pollution
Greenhouse gas emissions
Dependencies on nature
The household and personal care sector is dependent on ecosystem services to function and grow. Companies rely heavily on:
Freshwater
Biomass provisioning
