Greenhouse Gas Emissions

For many years, we have worked with life cycle assessments (LCAs) to reduce material use in products and to develop thinner products without affecting functionality or quality. We support sustainable consumption with products such as leakproof apparel, hybrid baby diapers and digital services such as TENA SmartCare. Through sustainable innovation and daily improvements, Essity has reduced the carbon footprint in the company’s different product offerings by up to 43% over a ten-year period in Europe. Essity’s Group target is that at least 50% of the company’s innovations are to yield social and/or environmental improvements. In 2022, the outcome was 68%.

Essity strives to use more materials with lower greenhouse gas emissions. The largest share of greenhouse gas emissions from purchased raw materials is from fresh fiber and fossil-based plastic used in our products and packaging. We collaborate with our suppliers to develop sustainable products with a focus on alternative, renewable and recycled materials, and encourage them to establish science-based targets and increase the use of renewable energy. 

In an industry that is traditionally energy intensive, one of our most important tasks to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 is to become free from fossil fuels. To achieve this, measures include the increased use of low-carbon hydrogen, biomass, biogas, geothermal steam, and electrification of our processes. Essity’s production facilities in Kostheim, Germany, and Lilla Edet, Sweden, exemplifies our efforts to replace fossil fuels with renewable sources.

We have extensive experience of working with resource efficiency, including in our M-Save and E-Save programs that focus on material and energy efficiency, respectively. The reduction in CO2 emissions per ton produced between 2005 and 2022 was 23%. During the 2022 energy crisis, we took additional measures such as investing in our capability to utilize a wider variety of fuels, enabling us to react quickly to peak market prices, and conducted global training courses on the most effective ways to reduce energy use.

In 2021, Essity began tissue manufacturing using pulp from wheat straw. Essity’s facility in Mannheim, Germany, is the world’s first facility in the tissue industry to use these agricultural by-products for large-scale production. We are also exploring future tissue technology to reduce resources used in our production.

Essity acts to make production waste a valuable resource and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions at the same time. The target for 2030 is that all production waste will be subject to material and energy recovery. In 2022, the total amount of production waste decreased, and 63% was recycled.

We continue to reduce emissions in our transportation network by maximizing the load-fill, optimizing routes, and gradually switching to lower emission fuels. We are integrating sustainability into Essity’s global transportation model by adding emission factors as a way toward optimizing our load planning.

To reduce waste from our products and packaging, Essity is developing innovative solutions to reduce consumption as well as new business models for recycling after use. To address recycling, we have improved the recyclability of our paper and plastic packaging. We offer compostable tissue products to reduce waste and the Tork PaperCircle recycling service has been expanded to ten markets.