RECKITT  
SUSTAINABILITY  
INSIGHTS

CONTENTS
Changing our approach to reporting
We believe that high standards of corporate governance, 
combined with a rigorous, open approach to reporting,  
are central to running our business with integrity, and to 
maintaining the trust of our stakeholders. 
Our new Reckitt Insights can be individually or collectively 
downloaded, offering detailed information tailored to each 
stakeholders’ needs. More information on this is found within 
the Sustainability governance, reporting and assurance  
insight sheet. This is part of Reckitt’s continuous improvement 
journey and we would welcome your feedback toward  
further improvements.
PG30
Sustainable product 
innovation 
PG75
Climate change
01	 Our sustainability ambitions
04 	Focusing on what matters
09 	Self-care
12 	 Sustainability governance, reporting and assurance
17 	 Ethical behaviour
20 	Product safety and quality
24 	Product stewardship – ingredients and transparency
30 	Sustainable product innovation
35 	Plastics and packaging
39 	Our people
45 	Inclusion
50 	Health, safety and wellbeing
55 	Partnering for social impact
60 	A responsible approach across our global value chain
63 	Human rights across our value chain
68 	Protecting ecosystems in our value chain
75 	Climate change
81 	 Water
87 	Reducing waste

01
Reckitt  Our sustainability ambitions – insight 2020
Do the
right thing.
Always.
Put consumers
and people ﬁrst
Build shared
success
Seek out new
opportunities
Strive for
excellence
OUR 
SUSTAINABILITY 
AMBITIONS 
Our fight
This time last year, we said we had a fight on our hands. A fight to make 
access to the highest quality hygiene, wellness and nourishment a right 
and not a privilege; a fight to make the daily necessities of information 
and products promoting good health and hygiene available to us all. That 
is why in 2020 we also launched our Fight for Access Fund, to ringfence 
an annual investment equivalent to 1% of adjusted operating profit to 
improve access to high-quality products, providing education and 
information, and driving availability. 
No year could have demonstrated this truth better than 2020, with  
the devastating effects COVID-19 has had on health and livelihoods  
all around the world. The pandemic naturally led to a huge increase  
in demand for our disinfectant brands like Dettol and Lysol, hygiene 
Our Compass
Rejuvenating growth, sustainably
Reckitt’s purpose is to protect, heal and nurture 
in the relentless pursuit of a cleaner and 
healthier world. It’s the basis of our business 
strategy, delivered through our three business 
units – while our sustainability agenda frames 
our ambition to make the greatest positive 
impact we can on society and the planet.
 
Our purpose
To protect, heal and nurture in the relentless pursuit  
of a cleaner, healthier world.
Our fight
Making access to the highest quality hygiene, wellness  
and nourishment a right, not a privilege.
protection being the first step in reducing transmission. Our immediate 
priority was to help people by keeping our operations running safely and 
making a huge amount of extra product available. And we played our 
part in getting the hygiene message out through one of the largest 
public health education campaigns in history. 
Dettol’s #HandWashChallenge, which encouraged people to wash their 
hands, started in India in April and by November 2020 had generated 
more than 125 billion views around the world. This was no traditional 
public health campaign. Using TikTok, it invited people to create their 
own dance moves around washing their hands, set to a bespoke 
soundtrack with a branded Dettol banner.
Societal impact through our purpose-led brands… 
This is a core example of Reckitt’s philosophy of empowering people to 
improve their own hygiene, wellbeing and nutrition. It’s why all our brands 
are increasingly following a purpose-led path, starting with innovation, 
which maximises the benefits to consumers while balancing the wider 
impacts we have on society. Many of our brands already champion an 
issue which is authentically and meaningfully connected with the 
product. For example, Vanish and its partnership with British Fashion 
Week, promotes cleaning and reusing clothes while Dettol and Harpic 
focus on water and sanitation for health and hygiene.
Our bold ambition by 2030 is to reach half the world with brands that 
help people live cleaner, healthier lives and enable a cleaner, healthier 
world. We also aim to engage two billion people each year to make a 
positive societal impact, through our partnerships, programmes and 
campaigns. Whether through our brands or our Fight for Access Fund,  
or our value chain, the impacts we create contribute towards delivering 
the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 
And our target by 2022 is for all of our global brands to deliver on their 
purpose and build connected causes, aligned with the SDGs, that we 
should fight for, and where we can have the most impact.
…and sustainability as a whole through our company 
Major megatrends are fuelling and strengthening our brands, and  
are reflected in our overall business strategy. Urbanisation and global 
warming mean denser populations living in warmer places needing more 
effective hygiene – and hygiene is the foundation of health. The growing 
pressures on public health systems are increasing demand for self-care 
through good health and hygiene. Growing populations need improved 
nutrition. And, with more people on the planet, sexual wellbeing is an 
ever-higher priority. Underpinning all our growth opportunities are 
developments in technology, which are transforming not just what 
people buy, but how they buy.

02
Reckitt  Our sustainability ambitions – insight 2020
Our sustainability ambitions continued

03
Reckitt  Our sustainability ambitions – insight 2020
Our sustainability ambitions continued
Joining forces to win bigger
Our agenda covers major societal challenges that we simply cannot solve 
alone – issues like climate change and the circular economy. For example, 
one of our circular economy goals is for 100% of packaging to be 
recyclable or reusable by 2025; but in the US, one of our largest markets, 
you cannot currently use recycled plastic in some products, such as infant 
formula packaging. In many countries the recycling infrastructure is weak, 
which makes it even harder to collect and then reprocess plastics to 
recycle them. At best, they’re recycled, but this is often a small 
proportion of the overall packaging. Packaging not recycled may be 
incinerated or landfilled; at worst it simply pollutes the environment. 
Solving issues like these means working in concert with multiple 
stakeholders such as our industry peers, retail customers, the waste 
management industry and governments. And this kind of change takes 
time – as does, for example, building our response to climate change in 
our manufacturing sites and suppliers, or regenerating key ecosystems 
such as the Great Plains in the US, where our programme with Air Wick 
will require working with farmers and local communities. 
Downstream (when our products reach customers and consumers), the 
largest impact comes from how people use and dispose of our brands. 
Product innovation that helps consumers in these areas is critical to our 
sustainable growth ambitions. Our brands can also build awareness so 
that these changes become new habits for consumers. This is where our 
programmes and campaigns can create more impact by reaching billions 
of people. 
We must also be alive to changing expectations. Lockdowns all over the 
world massively accelerated the trend towards shopping online this year. 
This shift towards e-commerce means more pressure on logistics and 
delivery services. Product weight affects both cost and carbon 
emissions. So we need to think about how we can reduce the weight of 
our products without losing any of their effectiveness. These trends are 
driving our sustainable innovation process and our aims to reduce our 
products’ carbon and water footprints, use more sustainable ingredients 
and packaging, and connect to consumers in different ways.
Our business strategy recognises these megatrends, and our business 
growth is anchored in responding to them. We don’t just manage risks, 
but create opportunities through these trends by delivering our purpose: 
the relentless pursuit of a cleaner, healthier world. Business is increasingly 
expected to contribute positive societal impact. This expectation has 
grown through the pandemic, but is also at the heart of the SDGs. It’s the 
contribution of business as a global corporate citizen. For Reckitt though, 
that contribution is not new. It’s embedded in our 200-year heritage. It’s 
the legacy of James Reckitt and the social impact he created when first 
setting up his business, for his teams and the local communities. 
This has led to our ambitions for 2030, delivering our purpose. By 
reaching half the world with brands that enable a cleaner, healthier 
world, we’re finding ways to win our fight. Our ambitions and activities to 
deliver them are framed by the three pillars of: 
•	
Our purpose-led brands, where we can reach two billion people 
with programmes, partnerships and campaigns, and with innovations 
that are even safer, more effective and more sustainable to enable a 
cleaner, healthier world
•	
A healthier planet, where combatting climate change while 
protecting and even regenerating ecosystems and biodiversity help 
enable a healthier planet and public health associated with it
•	
A fairer society, where as an employer and in our value chain we can 
enable a fairer, more diverse and inclusive society.
Some of our work will be an extension of what we’re already doing, and 
in other cases we’ll build new and stronger activity, and positions for the 
future. We’ll build these activities, developing our approach as we work 
with partners and communities around the world. For us, and indeed 
many people, solutions to global challenges are always being developed. 
It’s fair to say that nobody has all the answers yet. But we’re working hard 
to find ways forward which will make the greatest positive impact, while 
progressively avoiding any negative impacts. 
No company can be a leader in every aspect of sustainability. We need to 
be most ambitious where we can make the biggest difference by 
innovating and achieving at scale. For Reckitt, this is through our 
purpose-led brands; how we enable a healthier world through our 
products and value chain; and how we enable a fairer society as an 
employer and within our value chain.
Even so, we must deliver credibly against our ambitions for our entire 
sustainability agenda. Just because we emphasise certain key areas, it’s 
not acceptable to overlook others where we may have an impact.
An urgent – and inspiring – opportunity
We’re running out of time to meet the UN Sustainable Development 
Goals. The clock is ticking. We have to act quickly and it’s my belief that 
the companies that do so will be rewarded. While we’re making 
progress, there is still so much more for us to do. That’s why we’re 
investing more than £1 billion over the next ten years in our relentless 
pursuit of a cleaner, healthier world.
Miguel Veiga-Pestana
Head of Corporate Affairs & Chief Sustainability Officer
Listening to our stakeholders
Reporting effectively across our many sustainability issues and providing 
regular updates on our programmes and activities is always a work in 
progress. So we appreciate your feedback – what should we keep doing, 
and where can we do better?
Email us at sustainability@reckitt.com.
Or write to:
The Sustainability team
Reckitt Benckiser Group plc (Reckitt)
103–105 Bath Road
Slough
Berkshire
SL1 3UH
UK

04
Reckitt  Focusing on what matters – insight 2020
FOCUSING ON 
WHAT MATTERS
Working with clear priorities
Part of being a responsible global business is doing our best for our  
many stakeholders – from customers, consumers and communities,  
to investors, suppliers and employees across the world.
Our starting point is establishing a clear understanding of what matters 
most to both internal and external stakeholders. This guides our strategy, 
policies and communications and helps us manage our impact and 
relationships. It’s how we can ensure we make the greatest difference.
Refreshing our agenda to meet changing needs and expectations
While the fundamental issues remain the same as those set out in our 
2019 Materiality Assessment, the world has changed. We need to address 
both short-term challenges from the global pandemic and the shifting 
expectations of internal and external stakeholders. Therefore, issues such 
as diversity and inclusion, and employee health and wellbeing, have been 
increasingly important for our business this year.
This year, we consulted stakeholders as part of the development of our 
new Sustainability Strategy, alongside horizon scanning, benchmarking 
and peer group reviews. This process confirmed our key priorities,  
gave us fresh insights and helped us review and update our 
materiality agenda.
Understanding what matters
These fresh insights led to our June 2020 pledge to accelerate the 
delivery of the Paris Climate Change Agreement to keep global warming 
to below 1.5 degrees Celsius, along with the three key themes of our 
Sustainability Strategy:
•	
Purpose-led brands that enable more sustainable products. A spike  
in demand for our products during the pandemic slowed our progress 
to switch to more sustainable ingredients and also increased our use 
of plastic.
•	
A healthier planet, by combating climate change. We recognise  
the threats posed by climate change, not just to our business, but to 
ecosystems and societies around the world, from changing weather 
patterns exacerbating floods and droughts, to economic migration 
and threats. This also connects to our ambition to protect our 
eco-systems – we increasingly recognise that the health of our  
planet and our people are connected in our pursuit to contribute  
to a cleaner, healthier world.
•	
A fairer, more inclusive and diverse society, which we can enable  
as an employer and in our value chain. We focus on our employees, 
partners in our supply chain and our consumers. See our Human rights 
insight for more information.
Prioritising our most material issues guides our 
strategy, helps us manage risks and creates 
opportunities. It’s an essential starting point 
for putting sustainability at the heart of our 
business strategy, so we can make a real 
difference to the issues that matter most.

05
Reckitt  Focusing on what matters – insight 2020
Focusing on what matters continued
Six key priorities remain
Against the backdrop of COVID-19 and the three themes underlying  
our new Sustainability Strategy, the six priorities identified in our 2019 
materiality assessment remain important to us:
•	
Global health and development, and public health challenges
•	
Product quality and safety
•	
Packaging and waste
•	
Traceable, responsible ingredients and impacts on land and 
biodiversity
•	
Water consumption and quality
•	
Fair wages and working practices, and supply chain labour rights.
These support the needs of our stakeholders: our consumers and 
customers, our employees, investors and governments.
Global health and development, and public health challenges
In 2020, with the devastating effects of COVID-19 on health and 
livelihoods across the world, our fight to make access to the highest 
quality hygiene, wellness and nourishment a right and not a privilege  
took on a fresh urgency and significance.
The pandemic naturally led to a huge increase in demand for our 
disinfectant brands like Dettol and Lysol – protection being the first  
step in stopping transmission of the virus.
We mobilised £52.8 million from our Fight for Access Fund to address our 
collective fight against the spread of COVID-19. For example, in March 
2020, Dettol committed £6 million to frontline health workers in Wuhan, 
China, answering the urgent call for critical healthcare equipment. 
Working through our brands alongside national governments and national 
medical associations, we delivered educational public service campaigns 
on the importance of handwashing and sanitation in more than 12 
countries, including Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Nigeria and Vietnam.
Product quality and safety
This fundamental issue is central to the effectiveness, credibility and 
reputation of our brands. In May 2020, Dettol and Lysol were confirmed 
99.9% effective against the SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes COVID-19 
through peer review in the American Journal of Infection Control. 
Throughout 2020, these brands played a key role in protecting consumers 
from the virus, due to their antibacterial benefits.
Our goal is that there will be no compromise in efficacy between  
safer, alternative ingredients that are also sustainable. (See our Product 
stewardship insight for more on our activities in this area in 2020). 
And through our Safer Choice partnership we maintain transparency of 
information about the materials we use.
We’re incentivising our employees to prioritise product quality and safety. 
For example, 100% of high-risk products must have a Product Safety 
Evaluation Report (PSER). At Reckitt, every new product must have a 
Product Safety Evaluation before launch, a measure directly linked to the 
executive target. For more, see our Product safety and quality insight.
Packaging and waste
Consumers are continuing to increase their demands for packaging that 
uses less plastic and is recyclable. Consumers expect action and our 
employees also want us to lead in this area. While this is a long-term 
investment and commitment, we continue to work hard to make 
progress through innovative packaging, product design and partnerships.
For example, in 2020 we ran a pilot partnership with French start-up 
Yoyo. We gave 150 households in Lyon Vanish-branded, grocery-type 
recyclable bags to make it simpler to sort their plastic waste. And that 
meant our other project partner Veolia could recycle a sample total of 
600 kg of HDPE plastic into pellets, which our R&D Vanish team 
transformed into Vanish packaging. This successful result demonstrated 
that there are extra ways we can help increase recyclability.
However, COVID-19 also created short-term challenges for our 
sustainability agenda, as demand for our products surged. High demand 
for disinfectants outstripped the supply of PCR (recycled plastic) for 
bottles. This increased our footprint in this product area, as we used 
more packaging but couldn’t increase the percentage of recycled 
material as much as we wanted.
We’ve also introduced more recycled paper and cardboard with a lower 
environmental footprint. See our insights on Product stewardship, Plastic 
and packaging and Waste. 
Traceable, responsible ingredients and impacts on land and 
biodiversity
The transparency and traceability of our ingredients, along with the 
impact of sourcing on the environment, are hugely important as we look 
to make the world a cleaner, healthier place. We continue to analyse our 
entire supply chain. This is highly complex given that our suppliers range 
from, for example, a tiny rubber tree farm in Thailand producing what will 
eventually become latex in our Durex condoms, to a dairy farm in New 
Zealand that provides milk that goes into the powder we source from our 
direct suppliers. We use technology where we can, to help in our 
analysis. For example, in Indonesia, we’re using real-time satellite 
technology to identify forests at risk from deforestation for palm oil.
We are setting targets for reformulating our products with more 
sustainable ingredients. However, a surge of demand for Reckitt’s 
disinfectants to protect people from the spread of COVID-19 slowed our 
progress in switching to more sustainable ingredients. For more, see our 
Product stewardship, Human rights and Protecting ecosystems insights.
Water consumption and quality
We look at both the water we use while manufacturing our products and, 
more importantly, the water needed for people to use them. This is much 
harder to tackle because it requires consumers to change their 
behaviour. Nonetheless, we’re making good progress. Our Finish 
dishwasher detergent continues to make great strides in addressing 
water consumption by nudging people to waste less water. Its new 
brand purpose, ‘Ease the burden of dishwashing for you and the planet’, 
came to life in a global ad campaign, Poseideon. Initially launched in 
water-scarce regions like Australia and Turkey, the ad asks consumers to 
stop pre-rinsing dishes before loading their dishwasher. In Australia this 
approach helped save over 6.8 million litres of water. For more on our 
work in this area see our Water insight.
Water is particularly important to us in our manufacturing sites, where we 
use it both as an ingredient and in production processes and cleaning. 
Given the impact of climate change and the increasing water stress in

06
Reckitt  Focusing on what matters – insight 2020
1
2
3
4
5
Focusing on what matters continued
many countries, we have prioritised water efficiency programmes in  
all our sites. In water-stressed locations, where we have 20 sites at the 
moment, we are introducing water catchment area programmes as part 
of our ambition to be water-positive locally and contribute to water 
security for the future.
Fair wages and working practices, and supply chain labour rights
Treating everybody fairly, from employees and partners to suppliers, 
encouraging fair wages and safe working practices, is essential for 
developing a responsible and effective supply network. We assess our 
supply chains and work with our suppliers with these principles in mind. 
The human rights value chain assessment we carried out in 2020 with our 
partner, the Danish Institute for Human Rights, identified risks for rubber 
plantation workers and their communities. We’ve worked with rubber 
plantation companies to ensure that our policies on labour standards and 
human rights are met. Critically we have introduced our Fair Rubber 
commitment. This provides latex farmers in Thailand with a price 
premium that supports their livelihoods while also strengthening the 
supply of latex we depend upon and reinforcing sustainable farming 
principles. It also supports the communities living and working on rubber 
plantations. 
In the UK, Reckitt has been voluntarily paying the living wage for a 
number of years and last year we formally joined nearly 6,000 Living 
Wage employers who are recognised as paying a living wage to 
employees and contractors. This is our commitment to employees and 
staff; that they will receive a wage that exceeds not just the minimum 
wage but recognises the actual cost of living in the UK. We are 
evaluating similar approaches in other countries, considering costs of 
living locally and the prevailing employment and wage structure. We’ll 
use this to consider our approach to supporting sustainable livelihoods in 
our value chain, not just for our own teams but for contractors and more, 
like the latex farmers we work with in Thailand.
COVID-19 posed a set of unique challenges with different nations 
imposing their own laws and lockdowns. Our priority remains ensuring a 
safe working environment for all Reckitt employees regardless of where 
they work. To this end, we launched a comprehensive guide, ‘Navigating 
our New Normal’, for employees worldwide, which prioritised their 
wellbeing and safety.
The global pandemic has accelerated a change in Reckitt’s working 
culture, with more employees working from home and increased 
emphasis on supporting and recognising our manufacturing colleagues 
and keeping them safe.
For example, we launched the Sir James Reckitt Award from our CEO to 
celebrate Reckitt teams doing exceptional work in our fight to make 
access to the highest quality hygiene, wellness and nourishment a right 
and not a privilege. Our Shashi factory in Jingzou, China was the first to 
win an award. It celebrated how everyone there went beyond their duty 
to protect Chinese consumers by manufacturing our disinfectants in the 
face of enormous challenges.
For more, see Our People, Human rights, Protecting ecosystems and 
Health, safety and wellbeing insights.
How things have changed since 2019
Our next formal materiality assessment is planned for 2022, but we know 
it’s vital to keep up-to-date with societal changes and expectations.
Two areas that have become critical since our last assessment in 2019 are 
inclusion, and employee health and wellbeing. In 2020, the rise of 
movements including Black Lives Matter and greater awareness of 
people’s rights to their own gender and sexuality identity have shone a 
light on equality issues in our workplace. To this end we have:
•	
Developed new targets on gender representation in our management 
teams, aiming for gender balance in all levels of senior management 
by 2030.
•	
Our CEO hosted a series of ‘Stronger Together’ virtual town halls in 
2020, encouraging employees to talk openly about various areas of 
inclusion, including gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation. A number 
of Reckitt colleagues shared their own experiences of discrimination 
when identifying as an underrepresented person. Opening up these 
conversations to all employees was critical in raising awareness of our 
policies and embedding them within our working culture.
Our 2019 materiality assessment
The process of our last materiality assessment had four main steps:
Issues identification
Internal stakeholder views
External stakeholder views
Material issues analysis  
and validation
Material issues and  
strategic analysis/insight
The process

07
Reckitt  Focusing on what matters – insight 2020
Focusing on what matters continued
Working with our stakeholders
We value the opinions of all our stakeholders and continue to have 
regular and ongoing dialogue with many of them. This has continued 
throughout the global pandemic, albeit with fewer face-to-face 
conversations. Similarly, our duty as a healthcare company has seen  
more interactions with key stakeholders in government, national medical 
agencies and peer companies as we work together to respond to 
COVID-19. Through our Fight for Access Fund, we supported critical 
workers and disadvantaged communities to help them protect 
themselves from the virus. Our programmes involved partnerships with 
governments and the United Nations, providing an important element in 
their wider public health agenda during the pandemic. We also worked 
with peer companies to help them protect their consumers and their 
own teams. These included partnerships with Hilton, Avis-Hertz and, 
importantly, Transport for London, which helped people to continue  
to travel safely. 
How we listen to our stakeholders
•	
Consumers – through routine dialogue and when we’re gathering 
brand insights.
•	
Employees – through virtual town halls for all employees hosted by 
our CEO; employee surveys; engagement with our Board through 
dialogue forums; and with our CEO via our ‘Ask Laks’ forum on the 
intranet where anybody from Reckitt can pose questions to him, 
which he then answers on the site, or in an informal discussion video.
•	
Investors – through routine discussions and investor forums,  
often with a specific focus on sustainability. Our involvement with  
key external indices such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, 
FTSE4Good and CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project) on climate change, 
water and forestry demonstrates our work to the investment 
community.
•	
Customers – we routinely meet leaders and teams of our key 
customers to strengthen our partnerships. This helps us to be as 
effective and efficient as possible in bringing products to the 
consumers our customers serve, as well as accelerating both 
partners’ sustainability goals. We work with many of our customers 
through partnerships including the Ellen MacArthur Foundation on 
plastics, AIM-Progress on labour standards and human rights and  
the Consumer Goods Forum.  
Materiality matrix
Priorities to business
Key
Economic & governance
Human rights
Environmental
Social
Priorities to the stakeholder
 Energy use
 Climate adaptation
 Product quality & safety
 Packaging & waste
 Traceability & responsible supply + biodiversity & land use impacts
 Water consumption & quality
 Fair wages & working practices + supply chain labour rights
 Employee health & wellbeing
 Diversity & gender equality
 Innovating for social & environmental impact
 Global health & development + public health challenges
 Demographic change
 Business ethics & governance
 Tax & economic contribution
 Ethical marketing & sales practices
 Cyber security & privacy
 Talent attraction & employee development
Our 20 most salient issues
Our most material issues
Our assessment identified the 20 most important issues for our stakeholders  
and our business. From these, we consolidated some of a similar nature and 
impact, to leave 17 which we plotted on a matrix to determine their significance. 
This helps us to focus our sustainability approach, but we also consider other 
issues, particularly those we think will become more important.

08
Reckitt  Focusing on what matters – insight 2020
Focusing on what matters continued
In June 2020, we were one of the first companies to join our partner 
Amazon in signing up to the Climate Pledge, which they co-founded 
with Global Optimism. The pledge commits us to reach net zero 
carbon by 2040.
•	
Governments and policymakers – we routinely talk about regulations 
with government agencies and regulatory bodies across the world.
•	
Communities – through our work with the Earthworm Foundation, the 
Danish Institute for Human Rights and our Fair Rubber commitment, 
we are supporting the livelihoods of farmers, workers and their 
families, ensuring a sustainable latex sector for years to come.
•	
NGOs – through our brand partnerships with NGOs such as Water.org, 
as well as through the Earthworm Foundation in our work on 
deforestation. In 2020, we also started working with the not-for-profit 
organisation Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), and their 
sustainable development consultant Transitions, through the Action 
for Sustainable Derivatives (ASD) programme. Companies who sign 
up aim to make the supply chain more transparent by pooling data 
and experience, monitoring risks and scaling up commitment to No 
Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation principles (NDPE).
•	
Suppliers – we are in constant discussion with our supply network to 
ensure we work efficiently together. We also discuss longer-term 
plans with our key suppliers around the development of safe, resilient 
and sustainable supply networks, including for natural raw materials, 
ingredients and packaging. This ongoing dialogue helps us work with 
our suppliers as partners, understanding trends, issues and 
opportunities. We’ve continued our work with the Sustainable 
Agriculture Initiative’s Sustainable Dairy Partnership (SDP). It’s a group 
of suppliers and industry peers who work to make the dairy industry 
more sustainable through a consistent approach to the commercial 
relationship between dairy buyers and processors.
Listening to our stakeholders
Reporting effectively across our many sustainability issues and providing 
regular updates on our programmes and activities is always a work in 
progress. So we appreciate your feedback – what should we keep doing, 
and where can we do better?
Email us at sustainability@reckitt.com.
Or write to:
The Sustainability team
Reckitt Benckiser Group plc (Reckitt)
103–105 Bath Road
Slough
Berkshire
SL1 3UH 
UK

Reckitt  Self care – insight 2020
09
SELF-CARE 
The connection between self-care and 
wellbeing is at the heart of our purpose. 
Through our products and partnerships we can 
protect, heal and nurture for a cleaner and 
healthier world. 
Improving people’s wellbeing through self-care
As the concept of health evolves beyond the absence of illness into the 
desire to live fitter, healthier lives, our potential contribution to improving 
people’s wellbeing grows in importance. Protecting and enhancing 
health through self-care is a powerful thread that runs throughout our 
three business units – Health, Nutrition and Hygiene. 
For example, we can help consumers protect their households and wider 
community from viruses through our disinfectant products, Dettol and 
Lysol. We promote sexual wellbeing through Durex; and supplement 
childcare nutrition through Enfamil. Indeed, how we enable consumers  
to live healthier lives through self-care in all its different forms is 
fundamentally connected to our growth as a business as well  
as our contribution to society. 
Global megatrends
Developing global trends increase both the impacts to public health and 
the importance of self-care as a preventative measure. Urbanisation is 
leading to denser populations. When coupled with global warming there 
are greater risks to public health from the spread of illnesses, which is 
increasing the demand for good hygiene as the foundation for health. 
Simultaneously, an ageing population leads to demand for more nutrition 
solutions, with more personalised approaches enabled by data and 
technology. The pandemic has seen increased concerns over mental 
health and wellbeing. In a specific sector for Reckitt, sexual health faces 
challenges from rises in sexually transmitted disease amongst the 
growing numbers of the younger generation reaching adulthood. 
Collectively these trends create a need for greater preventative care and 
self-care while public health systems come under increasing pressure.
Working in partnership
Promoting the importance of self-care requires many different 
stakeholders to work together to make it a reality – from governments 
and healthcare professionals, to NGOs and the wide-ranging private 
healthcare sector. We work with policymakers and regulators to 
encourage change in the healthcare system to improve access to 
self-care products and information. With disinfection products a baseline 
defence in the fight against COVID-19, partnerships are vital for 
distribution to vulnerable communities.
Our global research and development group partners with suppliers, 
academia and research organisations to develop technologies to better 
enable self-care, prevent illness in a range of ways and to enhance 
nutrition and nourishment for better lives. For example, we’re working 
with a team of paediatric gastroenterologists and dieticians in India to 
assess children’s allergies to cow’s milk. This will establish the first ever 
Indian ‘milk ladder’ to help parents gradually reintroduce milk, step by 
step, to children with a dairy allergy. 
This year, we formed educational partnerships with The Royal Children’s 
Hospital, Melbourne and The Sick Kids Hospital, Toronto to develop 
courses for healthcare professionals. Similarly, we partnered with a 
number of healthcare organisations in China such as the China Children 
and Teenager’s Fund (CCTF) to support infant nutrition during COVID-19.

Reckitt  Self care – insight 2020
10
Self-care continued
Self-care in the time of COVID-19
COVID-19 brought into sharp focus our fight to make access to the 
highest quality hygiene, wellness and nourishment a right and not a 
privilege. We believe that information and products promoting good 
health and hygiene are daily necessities for us all. 
The conversation around self-care changed during the pandemic. People 
no longer regard self-care as a ‘nice to have’ but a fundamental pillar that 
can relieve the strain from overburdened healthcare systems like 
doctors’ surgeries. 
This year saw a huge leap in terms of people’s increased understanding 
of health issues, from knowing the difference between viruses and 
bacteria, to how illness and disease are spread, and how testing and 
treatment can work. Similarly, emergency measures to help fight the 
pandemic accelerated regulatory changes, in weeks rather than years, 
to create better access to hand sanitiser, medicines and other biocides 
like disinfectants. 
During lockdown, people were forced to take greater responsibility for 
their own health, such as treating minor ailments themselves at home 
and relying on pharmacies for advice and medication. This is a trend that 
will continue to grow, making our philosophy of empowering people to 
make the right choices to improve their own hygiene, wellbeing and 
nutrition, more important than ever. 
The pandemic has highlighted inequities that prevent some people, or 
even some countries, gaining access to much-needed basic, 
preventative or remedial health, hygiene and nutrition. While the world 
has accelerated solutions for the pandemic, we still need to reach more 
people with self-care and other solutions. Our Fight for Access Fund 
mobilised more than £52 million in 2020 to reach vulnerable communities 
in 66 countries, often those in the most need of assistance. We’re 
committed to maintaining that support by investing the equivalent of 1% 
of our annual operating profit each year. There are more details in our 
Partnering for social impact insight.
But to win our fight, we also want to reach and engage more people. Our 
ambition is to reach half the world with products that contribute to a 
cleaner, healthier world by 2030. This is both about reaching different 
consumers, and about innovating with our existing consumers to provide 
them all with access to the hygiene, wellness and nourishment to 
enhance their lives. In doing so, we want to engage two billion people 
with purpose-led partnerships, programmes and campaigns that 
promote awareness for that cleaner, healthier world, and measure the 
impact we create for them and society.
 
Investing in information
Our role as a healthcare provider is also to educate our consumers. If we 
want to empower them to become better at self-care, we must give 
them the right tools. Beyond our products, it means providing truthful, 
accurate information. This is something that’s increasingly important with 
the proliferation of fake news on social media and one of the reasons 
behind our launch of Covid-19facts.com (see below). 
We also have a responsibility to encourage important changes in 
behaviour, such as frequent handwashing to combat the spread of 
disease. Our handwashing campaign increased in global urgency in 2020 
with the spread of COVID-19 – and our TikTok Dettol #HandWashChallenge 
was watched over 125 billion times. Over the past six years, our health and 
hygiene behavioural change messaging has reached 1.41 billion individuals, 
already meeting our goal to inform one billion by 2025.
Similarly, our sexual education work in Thailand, encouraging people to 
use Durex condoms, saved the Thai government £12.5 million in avoided  
STI/STD wellbeing and healthcare costs, £95.8 million in avoided death 
from diseases like HIV, and £13.4 million from avoided unplanned 
pregnancies and abortions. 
When it comes to our global self-care initiatives, some of the 2020 
highlights include: 
•	
Covid-19facts.com – our public health campaign to provide accurate, 
credible information on COVID-19 was launched to counter the 
misinformation that gained traction on social media. The website 
reached 2.5 million users across 20+ countries and 38 million through 
social media. It also evaluated over 80 different claims. 
•	
Lysol HERE for Healthy Schools – in partnership with the National 
Educational Association, we expanded our Lysol disinfectant 
educational programme in the US to 58,000 schools. With a ‘Welcome 
Back Pack’ including interactive and downloadable lesson plans to 
help kids learn healthy habits, this programme aims to minimise the 
spread of germs in the classroom.
•	
Harpic Together Live – raising awareness of the importance of good 
sanitation, we’re producing a series of livestreamed events on 
YouTube in partnership with the global movement, #TogetherBand to 
achieve the UN’s Global Goals. The first event took place in December 
in Brazil featuring Seu Jorge, a Brazilian musician and Latin Grammy 
winner, and Brazilian footballer Willian da Borges.
•	
GRIP (global respiratory infection partnership) meeting in Mexico 
City – As a member of GRIP, we supported a global conference for 
healthcare professionals on the inappropriate use of antibiotics to 
treat upper respiratory infections. GRIP brings together healthcare 
professionals who advocate an evidence-based approach and 
intervention for antimicrobial stewardship, with good hygiene 
practices and infection prevention being one of the pillars of the 
global WHO strategy. A second event developed a roadmap for the 
pharmacy community to tackle antimicrobial resistance. 
•	
TikTok Dettol #HandWashChallenge – was viewed 125 billion times. 
The dance teaches people how to wash their hands correctly to help 
stop the spread of COVID-19. Following the TikTok dance’s runaway 
success in India, Dettol rolled out the campaign to Singapore,  
Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Thailand, 
Malaysia, Japan and Egypt.

Reckitt  Self care – insight 2020
11
Self-care continued
Promoting employee wellbeing 
These initiatives also apply to our own teams. Supporting our people’s 
emotional wellbeing and mental health grew in importance during 
lockdown. Our company-wide wellbeing strategy is based around four 
categories: physical, emotional, financial and community. We partnered 
with two global wellbeing specialists to work alongside us to support 
and share wellbeing resources. These included global education 
initiatives, with external speakers providing tips on nutrition, exercise and 
sleep. Over 60 UK employees are now trained mental health first aiders; 
while, within lockdown, we moved many activities online, enabling yoga, 
meditation and fitness classes to continue where our teams were based. 
These wellbeing programmes will continue to develop in 2021 through 
our wellbeing hub and its associated resources and podcasts on mental 
health, which have already been downloaded more than 3,000 times. It 
also offers advice from headspace, the mindfulness app, and practical 
advice such as tips on coping with quarantine.
Our self-care policy
Reckitt has been working to highlight the importance of self-care for 
many years, calling on governments and healthcare providers to build 
self-care into national health policy. The self-care industry plays a 
fundamental role in maintaining a healthy population, while alleviating  
the burden of primary healthcare services like doctors’ surgeries and 
hospitals’ accident and emergency departments. 
We believe that encouraging responsible self-care during critical times, 
like the global pandemic, frees governments to focus their attention and 
resources on the vulnerable who need the most care. For this to happen, 
citizens must have regular access to self-care products such as 
non-prescription medicines through their local pharmacies, health stores 
and supermarkets. And they must also be able to understand and access 
truthful, accurate healthcare information to help them make the right 
choices. Some of the progress we’ve made to encourage change in  
the healthcare industry includes: 
•	
Partnering with industry stakeholders to bring down regulatory 
barriers to accessing critical self-care products such as hand 
sanitisers and OTC medicines. 
•	
Working with industry and governments to expand healthcare supply 
channels. We showcased the important role that e-pharmacies and 
other online channels could play in providing access to supplies as 
well as safeguarding public health during the pandemic. 
C AS E S T U DY
HEALTHILY – THE WORLD’S  
FIRST MEDICALLY APPROVED 
SELF-CARE APP
Reckitt’s 2020 investment in Your.MD, the medical tech start-up, 
is bringing digital self-care to the masses through our ‘Healthily’ 
app in the UK, India and the US. The app enables people to decide 
whether they need to see a doctor by using artificial intelligence 
to diagnose symptoms and make recommendations for medical 
issues that can be treated at home. It also gives free information 
on healthcare, including sleep and general wellbeing and a 
vetted directory of healthcare services and products. In 
September 2020, ‘Healthily’ launched its first co-branded app 
with Dettol in India. The app’s COVID-19 symptom mapper helps 
people compare their symptoms against a global tracker. With 
over four million visits to date, it’s collecting valuable data to help 
public health organisations such as Imperial College, London 
better understand the virus.
•	
Launching the Covid-19facts.com information website.
•	
With antimicrobial resistance regarded as one of the greatest public 
health threats by the WHO, our Strepsils brand tackled the misuse of 
antibiotics in treating sore throats. Working in partnership with the 
Reckitt-sponsored GRIP network, we carried out multiple campaigns 
and events alongside healthcare professionals, governments, 
academics and other key stakeholders to create policies that  
promote the responsible use of antibiotics. 
Listening to our stakeholders 
Reporting effectively across our many sustainability issues and providing 
regular updates on our programmes and activities is always a work in 
progress. So we appreciate your feedback – what should we keep doing, 
and where can we do better? 
 
Email us at sustainability@reckitt.com 
Or write to: 
The Sustainability team 
Reckitt Benckiser Group plc (Reckitt) 
103–105 Bath Road 
Slough
Berkshire
SL1 3UH
UK

12
Reckitt  Sustainability governance, reporting and assurance – insight 2020
Corporate Responsibility, Sustainability,  
Ethics and Compliance Committee (CRSECC)
Chris Sinclair
Chairman
Pam Kirby
Non-Executive 
Director
Nicandro Durante
Non-Executive 
Director
Mehmood Khan
Non-Executive 
Director
Laxman  
Narasihan
CEO
RSCC – Risk, 
Sustainability 
 and Compliance 
Committee
Nutrition CBU
Nutrition Risk & 
Compliance  
Review Meeting
IFCN Greater China
Health GBU
Health Risk & 
Compliance 
Review Meeting
Hygiene GBU
Hygiene Risk & 
Compliance  
Review Meeting
Greater China  
& eCommerce GBU
Risk & Compliance 
Review Reckitt 
Manon Board 
Meeting
Risk & Compliance 
Review 
eCommerce LT
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
SUSTAINABILITY 
GOVERNANCE, 
REPORTING AND 
ASSURANCE
Governance
Our Annual Report sets out our full Corporate Governance Report and 
statement, and you will also find information about our approach to 
governance on our website. Here we explain how sustainability is 
governed at Reckitt, and the principles that lie behind it.
At Board level
Our Board of Directors is responsible for the overall stewardship of the 
Company and delivery against strategy, through our executive leadership 
team. This includes setting our values and standards, and overseeing 
sustainability and corporate responsibility. They have regular discussions 
about the risks and opportunities for the Company and conduct a formal 
review at least once a year. Sustainability itself is considered one of the 
Company’s key risks, and its status in the risk register has evolved this year 
from ‘emerging’ to ‘actual’. This reflects the growing importance of 
sustainability and its central role in the Company’s growth strategy – as it 
becomes a more important opportunity, so too does it become a greater 
risk. For details of our issues and impacts in this area, see our Focusing on 
what matters most insight.
The Board delegates regular oversight of sustainability to a sub-committee, 
the Corporate Responsibility, Sustainability, Ethics and Compliance 
Committee (CRSECC). The Committee meets quarterly to review our 
progress against our sustainability strategy, and performance against our 
2020 targets. Meetings are attended by the CEO, who has accountability for 
sustainability performance at executive level. He is joined at the meetings 
by the Finance Director and other senior executives.
At managerial level
This year we changed the managerial approach to oversight of 
sustainability matters to reflect the new structure of our business as one 
single Group with three business units. We now have a single committee 
for the Group as a whole, the Risk, Sustainability and Compliance 
Committee (RSCC), chaired by our CEO. This is supported by business 
unit-level committees, which report up to the RSCC and thus to CRSECC. 
These committees all meet and report quarterly.
The RSCC is responsible for overseeing the implementation of 
compliance and ethics activities across the Company, in conjunction with 
functional department heads, while the business unit committees are 
responsible for implementation within their own business unit.
This structure of Group committees supported by business unit 
equivalents provides quarterly updates to the CRSECC and Board on 
sustainability issues and risks, including ongoing performance against 
targets to enable their ongoing oversight of activity (see CRSECC report 
in our Annual Report).
We believe that high standards of corporate 
governance, combined with a rigorous, open 
approach to reporting, are central to running 
our business with integrity and to maintaining 
the trust of our stakeholders.
Reckitt Sustainability Governance Model

13
Reckitt  Sustainability governance, reporting and assurance – insight 2020
Sustainability governance, reporting and assurance continued
Within the business, our Corporate Affairs & Sustainability function  
leads strategy development and compliance, while programmes are 
implemented by our Brands, Supply Chain, R&D, and Safety, Quality, 
Regulatory Compliance (SQRC) teams. SQRC is responsible for the health 
and safety of our people, and for product safety and quality, including 
regulatory compliance with product standards. All functions are 
represented at, and have oversight from, the Group Executive.
Reporting and assurance
Publicly reporting on sustainability is fundamentally important to our 
ability to deliver our strategy. After all, sustainability is at the heart of our 
purpose-led growth strategy and so reporting on it in this detailed way 
through our insight papers, as well as our Annual Report, simply reflects 
that truth.
We therefore welcome the increasing focus of investors on 
environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, and the regulators’ 
response to begin to emphasise through reporting requirements the 
relationship between ESG issues and financial performance. This is 
behind our move this year to join the informal working group to look at 
developing a Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD). 
This takes a similar approach to the Task Force on Climate-related 
Financial Disclosures (TCFD) which has been so successful in putting 
climate change on the financial agenda. We also began reporting this 
year against certain disclosures set out by the Sustainability Accounting 
Standards Board (SASB).
Overall, we support moves to create a consistent set of sustainability 
standards for reporting, as long as they still allow companies the 
freedom to report meaningfully on the issues, rather than forcing  
them down a counter-productive ‘tickbox’ disclosure route.
Independent assurance is a key part of our approach to reporting. 
External scrutiny helps us improve, while reassuring our readers that the 
data we publish is accurate. Again this year, we engaged ERM CVS to 
provide independent limited assurance over certain sustainability 
disclosures. Their independent assurance statement can be found later  
in this insight paper.
Reporting channels
More and more people use smartphones and tablets to find information 
on a company. They expect a company’s website to have up-to-date 
information as well as giving access to the core reporting content. This  
is essential as the source of truth, given the rigour with which it is 
produced and assured. To summarise, our reporting channels are:
•	
Annual Report: reports our performance against our strategy, and 
includes disclosures against our most material sustainability issues 
(published in April each year).
•	
Insights: contain more detailed information about our material issues, 
including our reporting against the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) 
and various other frameworks (published alongside the Annual 
Report).
•	
Sustainability section of our website: gives further details of our 
approach and performance, and publishes stories showing our 
strategy in action (updated throughout the year).
•	
Previous sustainability reports can be found at 
https://www.reckitt.com/sustainability/policies-and-reports/
Audiences
Many stakeholders – employees, customers, shareholders/investors, 
consumers of our products, and advocacy and campaigning 
organisations – have an interest in one or more aspects of our 
sustainability reporting. So our aim is to give all of these stakeholders 
what they’re looking for, while telling a true and consistent story  
about our work during the year.
Read more about our stakeholders and how we engage with them in our 
Focusing on what matters most insight.
Frameworks and standards
In the absence of a consistent set of sustainability standards for 
reporting, we look particularly at frameworks that support the growing 
interest of investors in sustainability reporting that will meet the needs of 
investors, key ratings agencies and indices such as MSCI, DJSI and 
Sustainalytics. These are:
•	
UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): the SDGs are a critical and 
growing factor for us and our stakeholders. Our purpose is to protect, 
heal and nurture in the relentless pursuit of a cleaner and healthier 
world and, in this context, we fully support delivery of all the SDGs by 
2030. We believe we can make the biggest impact on five of the 
goals: SDG 2 – zero hunger; SDG 3 – good health and wellbeing; SDG 
5 – gender equality; SDG 6 – clean water and sanitation; and SDG 13 
– climate action. These are closely connected to our brands and our 
social impact partnerships (see the Partnering for social impact insight). 
We also contribute to other relevant goals and refer to the SDGs 
throughout our sustainability reporting to highlight one of the key 
driving principles for our programmes.
•	
Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD): Our 
TCFD disclosure gives investors climate-related information and 
insights into how we are mitigating and adapting to climate-related 
risks. We have disclosed in line with the TCFD recommendations; 
more information on our disclosure can be found in the Climate 
change insight.
•	
GRI: we have prepared our 2020 sustainability reporting with 
reference to the GRI Standards: Core option, and have included a GRI 
Content Index to help those looking for specific indicators.
•	
Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB): for the first time, 
we are referencing certain disclosures from SASB’s Household and 
Personal Products Standard. Our SASB index can be found on the 
Reckitt sustainability web page. In future we aim to report against 
more of SASB’s metrics, to further enhance the relationship between 
ESG issues and business performance.
•	
AccountAbility: we also reference the criteria and principles of 
accountability set out in the AA1000 Assurance Standard (2008) and 
the AA1000 AccountAbility Principles Standard, produced by the 
consultancy AccountAbility.
Reporting profile, performance data and reporting criteria
Our data is reported for the year to 31 December 2020.
We use KPIs that best describe the performance and impact of our 
operations in line with our materiality assessment. In many cases, 
independent external guidance, such as the GRI standards or specific 
standards on environmental reporting, direct us towards which indicators 
to use. These enable comparison with other companies. We also look for 
KPIs that are most practical and add most value across our business and 
supply chain.
All our 2020 sustainability goals are based on a 2012 baseline year unless 
otherwise indicated.
Our new commitments and targets have baseline years identified. For 
example our climate change commitments are based on 2015 emissions, 
while others are 2020.
The principles and methodologies we have used in reporting our 
sustainability performance data for 2020, along with our statement of 
directors’ responsibilities in preparing the information, can be found in 
our Reporting Criteria and Basis of Preparation document.

14
Reckitt  Sustainability governance, reporting and assurance – insight 2020
Sustainability governance, reporting and assurance continued
Independent Assurance Statement to Reckitt Benckiser Group plc
Reckitt Benckiser Group plc (Reckitt) engaged ERM Certification and Verification Services (ERM CVS) to provide limited assurance in relation to specified information in Reckitt Sustainability Insights 2020 (the Reports) as set out 
below. 
Engagement summary
Scope of our assurance 
engagement
Whether the 2020 data and reported progress as listed below marked † in Reckitt’s ‘Sustainability Insights 2020’ for year 
ended 31 December 2020, are fairly presented, in all material respects, with the reporting criteria
Diversity and inclusion
•	
Women employed – Board (% at 31 December) 
•	
Women employed – senior management (% at 31 December) 
•	
Women employed – global employees (% at 31 December) 
Health, Safety and Wellbeing
•	
Continued reduction of Lost Work Day Accident Rate (LWDAR) 
•	
Lost Work Day Accident Rate (LWDAR) (per 100,000 hours) 
•	
Lost time Accidents (no.)
•	
Continued reduction of Total Recordable Frequency Rate (TRFR) 
•	
Total Recordable Frequency Rate (TRFR) (per 100,000 hours) 
•	
Recordable Accidents (no.)
•	
Employee fatalities (no.) 
•	
Contractor fatalities (no.) 
•	
Severe Accidents (no.) 
Sustainable Product Innovation
•	
1/3 of our Net Revenue to come from more sustainable products by 2020
•	
Total net revenue from more sustainable products (£ million)
Human Rights Across Our Value Chain
•	
Supplier audits completed (no.)
•	
Increase in audit pass rating from the first to most recent audit (%)
•	
Management-level employees completed human rights training (%)
Water
•	
1/3 reduction in water impact per dose
•	
Total Water Impact (million e-litres) 
•	
Total Water Impact (million e-litres per dose)
•	
35% reduction in water use in manufacturing by 2020
•	
Water Use (m3)
•	
Water use per unit of production (m3 per 1,000 CU) 
•	
Water Discharge (m3) 
•	
Water discharge per unit of production (m3 per 1,000 CU)

15
Reckitt  Sustainability governance, reporting and assurance – insight 2020
Sustainability governance, reporting and assurance continued
Scope of our assurance 
engagement (continued)
Climate change
•	
40% reduction in GHG from manufacturing by 2020 
•	
Scope 1 GHG emission (tonnes CO2e)
•	
Scope 2 GHG emissions (location-based) (tonnes CO2e) 
•	
Energy use (GJ) (manufacturing and warehouses only) 
•	
Energy use per unit of production (GJ per 1,000 CU) 
•	
Scope 2 GHG emissions (market-based) (tonnes CO2e) 
•	
GHG emissions per unit of production (tCO2e per 1,000 CU) 
•	
35% reduction in energy consumption by 2020
•	
Energy use (GJ) (manufacturing and warehouses only) 
•	
Energy use per unit of production (GJ per 1,000 CU) 
•	
100% renewable energy by 2030
•	
% renewable electricity 
•	
1/3 reduction in carbon footprint per dose by 2020 
•	
Total Carbon Footprint (million tonnes CO2e) with/without IFCN 
•	
Total Carbon Footprint (g dose) with/without IFCN 
Reducing waste
•	
Zero waste to landfill at all factories 
•	
% of sites Zero Waste to Landfill (% of manufacturing sites)
•	
30% reduction in waste 
•	
Waste (tonnes) (manufacturing and warehouses only)
•	
Waste per unit of production (tonnes per 1,000 CU) 
•	
Waste recycled/reused (% and tonnes)
•	
Hazardous Waste (tonnes) (manufacturing and warehouses only)
•	
Hazardous waste per unit of production (tonnes per 1,000 CU) 
Partnering for Social Impact
•	
Inform 1 billion people through health and hygiene educational programmes and behaviour change communications 
(millions cumulative)
•	
People informed through health and hygiene messaging and campaigns (millions)
We have also checked the sustainability information presented in Reckitt’s 2020 Annual Report to ensure consistency with 
the assured data.
Reporting criteria
Reckitt’s own internal reporting criteria and definitions.
Assurance standard
ERM CVS’ assurance methodology, based on the International Standard on Assurance Engagements ISAE 3000 (Revised).
Assurance level
Limited assurance.
Respective responsibilities
Reckitt is responsible for preparing the specified information and for its correct presentation in reporting to third parties, 
including disclosure of the reporting criteria and boundary. 
ERM CVS’s responsibility is to provide conclusions on the agreed scope based on the assurance activities performed and 
exercising our professional judgement.

16
Reckitt  Sustainability governance, reporting and assurance – insight 2020
Sustainability governance, reporting and assurance continued
Our conclusions
Based on our activities, nothing has come to our attention to indicate that the 2020 data and reported progress, as listed in “Scope of our assurance engagement” above and marked † in Reckitt’s ‘Sustainability Insights 2020’ for 
year ended 31 December 2020, are not fairly presented, in all material respects, with the reporting criteria.
Our assurance activities
Our objective was to assess whether the reporting of the 2020 indicators and progress is in accordance with the principles of completeness, comparability (across the organisation) and accuracy (including calculations, use of 
appropriate conversion factors and consolidation).
We planned and performed our work to obtain all the information and explanations that we believe were necessary to provide a basis for our assurance conclusions. 
A multi-disciplinary team of sustainability and assurance specialists performed the following activities: 
•	
Web-based and telephone interviews with relevant staff at Reckitt’s corporate offices to understand and evaluate the data management systems and processes (including IT systems and internal review processes) used for 
collecting and reporting the selected data;
•	
A review of the internal reporting criteria, definitions and conversion factors used;
•	
Conducted virtual site visits with the following six operations: Bangpakong (Thailand), Derby (UK), Evansville (US), Mira (Italy), Nijmegen (Netherlands) and Zeeland (US) where we interviewed relevant staff, reviewed site data 
reporting methods, checked calculations and data to source and assessed local internal quality and assurance processes;
•	
An analytical review of the data from all sites and a check on the completeness and accuracy of the corporate data consolidation, including further testing of data to source; 
•	
A sample check of the input and output data of the carbon and water impact metrics;
•	
Further web-based and telephone year-end assurance activities at corporate level including the results of internal review procedures and the accuracy of the consolidation of the data for the selected indicators; 
•	
Checking the sustainability information presented in Reckitt’s 2020 Annual Report to ensure consistency with the assured data; and
•	
Reviewing the presentation of information in the Reports to ensure consistency with our findings.
The limitations of our engagement
The reliability of the assured data is subject to inherent uncertainties, given both the available methods for determining, calculating or estimating the underlying information and the dependence on partner organisations to 
provide performance information. It is important to understand our assurance conclusions in this context. We do not provide any assurance on future performance or the achievability of Reckitt’s goals and targets. Where 
performance is expressed as a percentage change from a baseline year prior to 2018, we have placed reliance on previously reported data.
Beth Wyke
Head of Corporate Assurance 31 March 2021
ERM Certification and Verification Services, London
www.ermcvs.com; email: post@ermcvs.com
ERM CVS is a member of the ERM Group. The work that ERM CVS conducts for clients is solely related to independent assurance activities and auditor training. Our processes are designed and implemented to ensure that the work we undertake with clients is free from bias and conflict 
of interest. ERM CVS employees that have undertaken this engagement have provided no consultancy related services to Reckitt Benckiser Group plc in any respect.

17
Reckitt  Ethical behaviour – insight 2020
Do the
right thing.
Always.
Put consumers
and people ﬁrst
Build shared
success
Seek out new
opportunities
Strive for
excellence
ETHICAL  
BEHAVIOUR
Our purpose is to protect, heal and nurture  
in the relentless pursuit of a cleaner, healthier 
world. And we do not take this lightly. As a 
FTSE 100 company, with significant business  
in high-risk countries and some products 
developed for young children, we know this 
requires the highest levels of ethical behaviour 
and responsibility.
Being responsible is core to our business, our success and the way we 
are viewed by consumers. But, like any business, we always strive to do 
better. We’re working hard to continuously strengthen our approach, 
improve our processes and tools, and support our people to do the right 
thing, especially when the choices are not obvious. This is the foundation 
of our Ethics and Compliance programme and our Code of Conduct.
Ethics and Compliance programme
Conducting our business according to the highest ethical standards, 
means respecting all the laws and regulations of each country where  
we operate. This includes, but is not limited to, data privacy, competition 
law, trade sanctions, anti-money laundering and anti-bribery regulations. 
We work hard to prevent unethical behaviour and will respond promptly 
and take corrective action in case of any violation of our policies or 
ethical standards.
Our Ethics and Compliance programme has eight pillars aligned to our 
principles and values. It aims to identify risks so they can be assessed 
and mitigated in good time. The programme develops effective lines of 
communication to foster a culture of integrity and transparency. It helps 
us implement policies, procedures and controls to monitor compliance 
with our guidelines, as well as local and international regulation.  
As part of the programme, we also deliver effective, innovative training 
and education.
Our Compass
Introduction
Our commitment to “Do the right thing. Always” lies at the centre of 
everything we do. This commitment, alongside our values, is set out in 
our Compass (see above). We aim to act responsibly and with integrity; 
put consumers and people first; seek out new opportunities; strive for 
excellence and build shared success.
Culture of Integrity
1.  Conducting periodic  
risk assessments
5.  Conducting effective  
training education
2.  Designating appropriate  
oversight and resources
6  Conducting internal  
monitoring and auditing
3.  Implementing written  
Policies and Procedures
7.  Responding promptly to detected 
problems and taking corrective action
4.  Developing effective  
lines of communication
8.  Enforcing standards through well 
publicised disciplinary guidelines
Company  
performance
Corporate  
Reputation
Financial  
Performance
Operational 
Excellence

18
Reckitt  Ethical behaviour – insight 2020
Ethical behaviour continued
Our business leaders are committed to creating a culture where people 
act responsibly and with integrity. This is a key element of Reckitt’s Ethics 
and Compliance programme. The business leaders within Reckitt are 
responsible for maintaining this programme and our standards. Our Ethics 
and Compliance team, led by the Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer 
(CECO), leads our activity and supports the business in achieving its 
objective. Working as one global team, they help all employees to play by 
the rules and meet Reckitt’s high ethical standards and expectations.
A new Code of Conduct
Our Ethics and Compliance programme is based on our Code of 
Conduct. In June 2020, we published a new Code of Conduct, which 
provides clear guidance on our rules and principles, and outlines what we 
expect from all employees and contractors.
The new Code is more user-friendly and makes it easier for our people to 
engage with the content. It was launched with an introductory video 
message from our CEO, Laxman Narasimhan, in 26 different languages.
The Code provides guidance on matters such as fair competition, trade 
sanctions, anti-bribery and corruption, caring for consumers, health and 
safety and Speak Up (our confidential channel for employees to raise 
concerns of unethical behaviour). The Code also contains guidance for 
managers when facing difficult decisions and how to handle concerns 
raised by their teams.
2020 highlights
Our work this year
Adapting to new ways of working through a global pandemic often 
meant using technology in place of our usual face-to-face sessions to 
complete compliance reviews, monitoring activities, compliance audits 
and training.
Risk assessment and monitoring
Regular risk assessments are a key element of Reckitt’s Ethics and 
Compliance programme, helping us to mitigate risk and inform Reckitt 
leaders of challenges they might be facing.
In 2020, we conducted compliance risk assessments in more than 33 
countries and across all our global business units to analyse our progress. 
Ernst & Young assessed our global programme and conducted an 
independent review of our compliance processes in China, Mexico and 
India. They recognised the areas where our Ethics and Compliance 
programme is more mature, and identified where we can strengthen  
and improve it.
Data protection
Following the completion of our GDPR project in early 2020, under the 
direction of Reckitt’s Global Data Privacy Officer, the Reckitt team 
developed a three-year Privacy Continuous Improvement Plan to further 
enhance the maturity of our privacy posture. During 2020, we completed 
the roll-out of privacy programmes in the US and Brazil to comply with 
the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA) and the Data Protection 
Legislation Law (DPLL). During 2020, Reckitt had no reportable incidents 
relating to customer privacy breaches (read our Privacy Policy for more 
information – www.reckitt.com/privacy-policy/).
Policies
We continue to update and create new policies when needed. Building 
on the launch of our Global Anti-Money Laundering and Sanctions policy, 
and policy to regulate our interactions with healthcare professionals in 
2019, this year we developed a new Corporate Security policy.
Our corporate responsibility framework comprises our Code of Conduct; 
policies on key topics; procedures we follow; and reporting tools. Our 
policies and reports cover our position on a comprehensive range of 
issues and are available on reckitt.com.
Infrastructure
We increased investment in our ethics and compliance infrastructure to 
improve our data analytics capabilities and boost transparency across 
the business. This included a new system to report Speak Up issues; a 
new register for gifts and entertainment, and reports of conflict of 
interest; and a new process to assess the fair market value of our 
interactions with healthcare professionals.
Working with third parties
Acting responsibly isn’t just about our employees upholding our high 
standards, but everyone in our global value chain – contractors, vendors 
and distributors. Our third-party Code of Conduct ensures Reckitt’s 
partners clearly understand our expectations and requirements when 
working with us. This is helping to strengthen our business relationships 
by building trust.
Our Anti-Bribery and Corruption Programme is continuously evolving. In 
2020, we partnered with Transparency International (the leading global 
anti-corruption and anti-bribery organisation) to benchmark our own 
programme against industry peers. The assessment’s findings were very 
favourable and scored our anti-corruption practices amongst the highest 
levels in our peer group with positive scores.
As part of our Anti-Bribery and Corruption Programme, we are 
implementing more mature controls to assess third parties. We are 
currently rolling out an enhanced due diligence process, which will allow 
us to tailor our due diligence assessments and management approach to 
each third party’s risk profile. This provides us with additional assurance 
around the third parties we work with.
Training
Every year, all employees and contractors must take our mandatory 
Compliance Passport training to better understand our Code of Conduct 
and important corporate policies. We redesigned this training in 2020, 
which is now composed of seven different modules:
•	
Code of Conduct
•	
Speak Up
•	
Product safety
•	
Data privacy
•	
Cyber security
•	
Anti-bribery and anti-corruption
•	
Competition law.
In 2019, 98% of our employees completed mandatory Compliance 
Training. In 2020 the training was divided into two phases and employees 
have until March 2021 to complete all modules.
Speak Up service
To uphold our high standards, we create a transparent and supportive 
environment where employees are encouraged to speak out when they 
see unethical behaviour or violations of our Code of Conduct. Speak Up, 
our confidential online and freephone service, is a trusted channel for 
employees to raise concerns. During 2020, a total number of 439 issues 
were reported via Speak Up. All these matters were reviewed and 
initiated 360 formal investigations, of which 101 were found to be 
substantiated. In 2020, 60 employees were disciplined for policy 
violations and a total of 37 employees were dismissed or voluntarily  
left the business following the conclusion of Speak Up investigations.

19
Reckitt  Ethical behaviour – insight 2020
Ethical behaviour continued
Despite all the challenges, we remain confident in our Ethics and 
Compliance programme. We will continue to strengthen the programme, 
supported by strong leadership and by continuous improvement of  
our data analytics capabilities to help us identify and address 
emerging issues.
Listening to our stakeholders
Reporting effectively across our many sustainability issues and giving 
regular updates on our programmes and activities is always a work in 
progress. So we appreciate your feedback. What should we keep doing? 
And where can we do better?
Email us at sustainability@reckitt.com.
Or write to:
The Sustainability team
Reckitt Benckiser Group plc (Reckitt)
103–105 Bath Road
Slough
Berkshire
SL1 3UH
UK
Ethical marketing
We can only build a responsible business if consumers trust our actions. 
We use our brands to communicate with our consumers and share  
brand benefits, as well as to demonstrate Reckitt’s values and purpose. 
We believe in representing the diversity of our consumers through  
our marketing, advertising and promotional activity and we avoid 
objectionable stereotypical portrayals. (See the Inclusion insight  
for more information.)
Beyond advertising, our ethical marketing principles also apply to our 
products. This means our products and ingredients must be beneficial  
to our consumers, with their safety and efficacy supported by adequate 
scientific evidence. Our products must also comply with legal 
regulations. In many cases, we go beyond legal requirements.  
We also expect our suppliers to subscribe to these high standards  
and to sustainable sourcing policies for all our products, ingredients 
and components.
Finally, we must safeguard our consumers and their families at home by 
reinforcing the safe use of our products. We do this by ensuring products 
that may be harmful to children are clearly labelled. We also use other 
measures such as safety caps.
We have four principles of ethical marketing:
1.	 Be truthful and clear in all communications
2.	 Be fair in our pricing
3.	 Ensure product transparency
4.	 Protect consumer data and privacy.
Looking forward to 2030 and beyond
We will continue our journey to protect, heal and nurture in the relentless 
pursuit of a cleaner, healthier world. And we recognise that social, 
economic and environmental challenges will likely tighten the regulatory 
environment for all businesses.
Respecting data privacy and competition laws, for example, will become 
even more important. Consumers will look for more ethical and inclusive 
companies, with strong and reliable principles and processes.
Reckitt will continue to expand its business in highly-regulated markets, 
requiring ongoing focus and attention to ensure we abide by all laws and 
regulations. Faster growth in developing countries also poses potentially 
higher risks, and we will remain focused on managing those issues.
45
India
62
Brazil
7
Russia
33
Mexico
83
United States 
of America
Speak Up reporting hotspots
41
China
36
UK

20
Reckitt  Product safety and quality – insight 2020
PRODUCT SAFETY 
AND QUALITY
We are serious about our role of guardian 
to our consumers and the environment. We 
want consumers to trust us to make the right 
decisions, and to do all we can to keep them 
safe. And we want them to be consistently 
delighted by the quality and effectiveness 
of our products. Over the past four years, 
we have been on a journey to transform our 
approach to product safety and quality to 
ensure our standards are consistently high.
Our product life cycle
Define Category & 
Portfolio Strategy
New Idea  
Generation
Innovation &  
Product Development
Source  
Suppliers
Design Product  
packaging
Finalise Product Strategy 
& Set Channel Strategy
Finalise Product Strategy 
& Set Channel Strategy
Manufacture  
Product
Supply  
Product
Sell  
Product
Review 
Performance
Maintain &  
Optimise Product
Define Comms and  
Activation Strategy & Assets
Product Life cycle
Fight
Superior 
Solution
Purpose
SDGs
Safety and quality across the product life cycle
Looking across the whole of a product’s life cycle means our approach 
must cover every aspect of a product’s life from design to disposal, and be 
both proactive and reactive around any risk that can emerge. We design 
with a holistic approach to protect our consumers and our planet, and then 
we closely monitor consumer feedback to immediately identify and 
address any potential risks – and to continuously improve our products  
and services.
We produce hundreds of products across multiple categories; each one 
brings a unique set of challenges and potential risks which we manage  
in order to ensure consumer safety and consistent product quality. We 
continuously re-evaluate risks, benefits, and the approach we take based 
on emerging research from our own R&D labs and external sources. We 
have robust policies and procedures that are applied in every market, in 
every factory and with every supplier, to maintain not just regulatory 
requirements but also the higher standards we set for ourselves.
Our approach is made up of 6 distinct stages:
1.	 Concept and product design – how we identify new product 
innovations and ways to better meet the needs of consumers
2.	 Marketing and communications – how we engage with customers 
and consumers to help their use of our products and gain their 
feedback about them
3.	 Manufacture and distribute – our production processes and how we 
get our brands into people’s homes
4.	 Consumer feedback and recall – listening to what consumers have to 
say and, if needed, getting products returned to us or our customers
5.	 Obsolescence and disposal – how we dispose of products that may 
no longer be at their optimum, either because of age of because 
we’ve developed a better alternative
6.	 Review and optimise – how we continuously consider product quality 
and safety, across each of the stages of a product’s life cycle and 
develop our approach to continuously improve standards

21
Reckitt  Product safety and quality – insight 2020
Product safety and quality continued
Our commitment to product safety and quality
We have two key policies: product safety, and our quality commitment. 
These are underpinned by a raft of supporting policies which identify 
more specific standards, for example for products, ingredients and ways 
of working. Together, they comprise our quality manual which covers the 
entire product life cycle. They are available on our digital quality 
management system which helps us to track our activity from training 
our people to monitoring product safety and quality through the supply 
chain, allowing us to be both agile and comprehensive in how we 
assess risk.
Our products go through rigorous safety and quality gateways 
throughout their design and in our manufacturing processes. This makes 
sure that they consistently meet our safety and quality standards. We 
also spend a lot of time crafting our information and labelling so that 
information is simple and accessible in every language and culture. 
We do our best to anticipate all the ways a consumer may use our 
products but sometimes they surprise us. This is something we are 
always aware of given the potential risks in misusing some products  
such as household bleach. One example is when a YouTuber created an 
instructional video on how to make slime for children using an Air Wick 
refill. Since the product was not designed for use directly on the skin, this 
presented significant health risks. We made every effort to remove all 
copies of the video, but social media is pervasive and unfortunately they 
continue to pop up. We continue to be vigilant and respond to this and 
any similar issues as they crop up.
Our 2020 performance
This year, the COVID-19 pandemic really put our four-year safety  
and quality journey to the test. Across the business, safety and  
quality functions had to oversee sudden and five-fold increases in 
manufacturing volume. We were able to maintain production at our sites 
with the support of our site-based teams who, recognising the impact 
that our brands had in protecting consumers, certainly went more than 
the extra mile. We worked with governments to maintain our production 
and to keep supply chains open. For example, the Chinese government 
helped us maintain Dettol production at our site near Wuhan, the 
epicentre of the pandemic, which was essential given the importance of 
sanitising agents in combatting the virus. We met demand in several 
ways, opening extra factory lines, repurposing others, and bringing on 
board a host of new suppliers. But to do this meant carrying out strict risk 
assessment processes, auditing and validation. These changes had to be 
made at speed and with no room for error, while working remotely for 
the most part. We’re pleased to say that our teams rose to the occasion, 
enabling us to bring on the extra capacity safely, and with no loss 
of quality.
Our safety scientists and physicians also played vital roles in responding 
to various medical challenges during the pandemic. An article in France 
raised concerns over the use of ibuprofen and its interaction with 
COVID-19. Given our close involvement with ibuprofen through our 
Nurofen brand and as the marketing authorisation holder, Reckitt teams 
carried out diligent research to provide quick and scientifically supported 
evidence of its safety. They also demonstrated ibuprofen’s usefulness in 
managing various COVID-19 symptoms.
•	
We have continued to build resilience and excellence, in product 
safety and quality, with a total investment of £95 million over the past 
four years. This will continue in 2021.
•	
We passed 100% of our external quality audits and recorded 100% 
implementation of our Culture of Quality action plans across our 
manufacturing sites. We celebrate these as tangible outcomes of our 
continuous improvement mindset and employee engagement 
programmes.
•	
We ran our first ‘Safe and sustainable products’ week to raise 
employee awareness throughout each part of our business.
•	
We began to incorporate big data and artificial intelligence into our 
processes by launching new digital technology in our two trial sites: 
Nottingham and Nijmegen.
•	
We launched an omnichannel platform to enhance the consumer 
experience and increase engagement, particularly through 
social media, making it easier for consumers to contact us and 
provide feedback.
•	
We grew the headcount of our Global Safety Assurance function by 
40%. Further investments are planned in 2021 and 2022 to broaden 
our capabilities as we look to develop new consumer innovations. We 
invested in a new platform that also helps us aggregate and analyse 
product safety data more rapidly, and with our nutrition business unit 
we have developed new safety standards to further protect against 
contaminants and bacteria. 
•	
Putting consumers first is fundamental to our business and we strive 
to do the right thing always.  Last year, with an abundance of caution 
we recalled a single batch of one of our local brands. There was low 
consumer and business impact as the issue only impacted one batch 
of one product in one market. Our concerns were addressed and we 
consider the matter fully resolved.

22
Reckitt  Product safety and quality – insight 2020
Product safety and quality continued
Transforming Reckitt into a trusted, resilient, innovative organisation
These programmes mark our ongoing commitment to product safety 
and quality, building consistent delivery of high standards.
A higher profile, more senior team
We started by transforming our organisational structure, giving the 
Safety, Quality, Regulatory and Compliance function a more prominent 
and strategic position. The Safety and Regulatory functions are key 
members of our R&D leadership team. Our Quality function is a critical 
element in our Supply Chain leadership. This reflects the necessary 
functional delivery and capabilities within both the product innovation 
pipeline from R&D, and the delivery of consistent quality, end-to-end, 
throughout the full life cycle. In both cases there are Global Executive 
Committee and Board sub-committee reporting lines to ensure strong 
accountability, governance and oversight, supported by an independent 
internal audit programme.
We also expanded the global team with 1,000s of additional people, 
including two key senior leadership roles, Chief Safety Officer and Senior 
Vice President (SVP) Global Head of Quality. Each of our global business 
units (GBUs) now also has three officers on their leadership teams, one 
each for Safety, Quality, and Regulatory. Collectively, these further 
strengthen our capabilities in these key functions, and embed leadership 
of the functions within each business unit. 
Reviewing all our pre-2018 products
Also in 2016, we started a £12 million global investigation across all 
products first marketed before 2018. The Product Integrity Review (PIR) 
project, which is now coming to a close, assessed and audited 23,000 
stock-keeping units (SKUs) across 127 markets, split between the Health 
and Hygiene GBUs. First and foremost, this gave us the confidence that 
were keeping our consumers safe and that we were not at risk of any 
further safety breaches from products already in circulation. The other 
outcome was a deep understanding of our product portfolio and its 
particular quality and safety risks. This laid the foundation for developing 
a suite of robust policies and procedures, carefully tailored to 
our business.
Embedding a culture of safety and quality
Our next step was to run a campaign to embed a culture of safety and 
quality across Reckitt. This quality culture begins with our Compass 
which reinforces doing the right thing always. This has been at the 
heart of Reckitt’s new strategy to rejuvenate growth and is a constant 
driver of our product safety and quality programme. In 2018, we ran  
the ‘I am responsible’ quality campaign spearheaded by our CEO, 
Laxman Narasimhan, highlighting the impact that each person has on 
safety and quality. In 2019, we held our first World Quality Day, led by the 
executive team, signalling the importance of the ethos. Shortly 
afterwards, we relaunched our company purpose, which is centred on 
protecting, healing and nurturing. To achieve our purpose, our products 
must be both safe and of high quality. You can read more about our 
campaigns to develop our Reckitt Culture of Quality in the case study 
section at the end of the insight.
We’ve also put product safety front and centre in our business practices, 
by including a module in the mandatory training programmes for all our 
people. The training covers things like safety science and practices 
across the product life cycle; safety checks and product gateways;  
and the Product Safety Evaluation Report (PSER). The PSER is the most 
important safety document and must be in place before a product  
can be commercially launched. By understanding the importance of the 
PSER, each person in the company can become another gatekeeper for 
product safety. The training also reminds every employee to report any 
adverse experience that they learn about, whether through their own 
use or from others which that they come across in their communities. 
This helps us stay alert to potential quality issues and misuse of products 
so we can take appropriate action. 
Investing in new infrastructure and systems
The last part of our transformation journey is our investment in new 
infrastructure and systems. 
Laboratories are critical part of our supply chain and quality control. Three 
years ago we started a global Laboratory Excellence program to improve 
resilience, which focussed on developing faster and more reliable testing 
methods, and on building a digital roadmap for our laboratories. In 2020, 
we began using a digital Laboratory Scheduling tool called SmartQC. 
Through SmartQC, we were able to make a ‘digital twin’ of our labs and 
processes, populate it with our data and use the programme to find 
efficiencies. Over time, the software helps us to; use equipment better, 
to reduce the risk of off-spec outputs, to produce at a faster pace and 
to act quickly when problems occur. It’s a great example of how we 
can use big data and artificial intelligence to drive compliance, efficiency 
and resilience.
Until this year, consumer relations were managed across several 
interfaces, leaving them fragmented and siloed. While effective 
individually, we wanted to be able to interrogate the data more widely, 
considering different channels such as digital more consistently, so that 
we were better able to identify trends and act on them. By using 
technology – our new, omni-channel platform – to produce a single, 
combined data source, and by adding more social media capabilities, our 
consumers will have easier and wider access to us using the channel they 
want. This helps us improve our service and better understand the needs 
BUILDING A CULTURE  
OF QUALITY IN RECKITT
Our Culture of Quality is an important part of the 
global company ethos. Bringing it to life is important 
throughout the company, globally and locally. We find 
ways of doing this that work for each site, from 
offices and labs to factories and distribution 
warehouses. Our sites are also spread across all 
regions, with a remarkable mix of cultures. While 
there is a global framework, to embed our quality 
culture we have to respond locally. Each site puts 
together its own employee engagement activities to 
suit the context. This year we had to be even more 
creative in putting together activities that would 
generate a feeling of community between our 
people, many of whom were joining online and had 
spent much of the year in lockdown.

23
Reckitt  Product safety and quality – insight 2020
Product safety and quality continued
of our consumers.This helps us to develop existing products and create 
new ones that will meet consumers’ changing needs. The US and Canada 
were the first markets to launch the new platform at the beginning of 
2020, with India in April 2021, while Latin America and other regions will 
follow later in the year. 
Looking ahead – 2021 and beyond
Looking ahead we continue to strengthen our product safety and quality 
activities, and ensure Reckitt is a trusted, resilient and innovative 
organisation. We will be focusing on three key areas:
•	
Continuing to reinforce capabilities & Culture of Quality. Our  
quality function acts as a coach, inspires, and trains the rest of the 
organisation to ensure compliance and that consumer needs are 
always met.
•	
Leveraging technology and data to make our processes stronger and 
more efficient. This will help us become predictive, anticipating issues 
and reacting quickly to trends.
•	
Building on our consumer advocacy capabilities. Our consumer 
relations tools and organisation connects with consumers all over  
the world, supporting their needs, responding to concerns and 
addressing their queries. This brings the voice of the consumer  
firmly into our quality function, providing insights that we act on and 
develop our brands from. In doing so, the consumer relations team is 
a powerful advocate for consumers.
Listening to our stakeholders 
Reporting effectively across our many sustainability issues and providing 
regular updates on our programmes and activities is always a work in 
progress. So we appreciate your feedback – what should we keep doing, 
and where can we do better? 
 
Email us at sustainability@reckitt.com. 
 
Or write to: 
The Sustainability team 
Reckitt Benckiser Group plc (Reckitt) 
103–105 Bath Road 
Slough 
Berkshire
SL1 3UH
UK 
C AS E S T U DY
A FILMMAKER  
FOR A DAY
Like all sites, our Salt Lake City team had to come up 
with something creative for World Quality Day to 
bring together teams on site and those working 
from home. So the R&D, Ops, Quality, and Technical 
teams got together to make short film about our 
product life cycle and how quality is built into design 
and manufacture, right through to consumer use.
To make it real for people, they chose a product 
which we’d reformulated to combat supply-chain 
issues caused by COVID-19. Airborne Effervescent is 
a vitamin supplement for strengthening immune 
systems, so we were very pleased not only to be 
able to continue our production, but we also 
managed to increase our output. The film was used 
as the basis for the day’s engagement activities with 
socially distanced challenges onsite and interactive 
quizzes online.

24
Reckitt  Product stewardship – ingredients and transparency – insight 2020
PRODUCT 
STEWARDSHIP – 
INGREDIENTS AND 
TRANSPARENCY
We must document and demonstrate that ingredients are safe for 
people and the environment. That applies from the moment we source, 
transport and use the ingredients in production, to when consumers use 
and dispose of the products. And we must give clear and honest 
information to let consumers make informed choices.
Consumers are increasingly attentive when it comes to product 
ingredients. They’re more concerned about health and the environment 
than ever. There’s also increasing focus on our supply chains and the 
origins of the materials. Transparency is vital to produce the information 
that consumers depend on and that keeps us in step with regulations. 
We maintain it through information on our packs and online.
Our policies on ingredients are global, and they go beyond what the law 
demands. In 2020, overseeing how we follow them across the product 
lifecycle was down to our Safety, Quality and Regulatory Compliance 
(SQRC) function. 
A hallmark of our evolving approach to ingredients is to anticipate 
regulatory and scientific developments so that we can adapt well ahead 
of time. As well as protecting our reputation, this is better business 
practice than working in a reactive way or waiting until late in the 
legislative cycle to make necessary changes to products. The more 
forward-looking we are, the more likely we are to take change in our 
stride and take a lead position in our industry on transparency. 
Overlapping with this is our investment in scientific R&D, which we’ll 
apply across our categories in the coming years to speed up innovation.
2020 highlights
For all our brands, we want to give information covering every stage of 
products’ lifecycle, covering ingredients and the supply chain. It appears 
on product packs and online. Examples of this include ingredient panels 
on Finish, Vanish and Air Wick products in the US, Europe and other 
markets. These show what ingredients we use and why. Our Health 
brands, like Durex with its Naked Truth labelling, take a similar approach.
We also continue to improve our ingredient transparency websites,  
which cover products we sell in the US and Canada (www.rbnainfo.com) 
and share information in a way that’s easy to understand. We’re looking 
to build equivalents for other markets.
A centrepiece of our product stewardship work is reporting how we 
handle ingredients of concern. We also support the use of safer and 
more sustainable chemicals. We have adopted a science-based 
approach to innovation across Reckitt. Our research and development 
effort is built on eight global science platforms. These trigger insights 
and pool expertise to generate more sustainable, even safer and more 
effective new product innovations. 
Our success depends on producing quality 
products that people want to use. But they 
must also be products that people trust 
because they’re intrinsically safe. Earning that 
trust is about being transparent about what 
goes into our products. Increasingly, it’s also 
about products that are more sustainable.

25
Reckitt  Product stewardship – ingredients and transparency – insight 2020
Product stewardship – ingredients and transparency continued
Other highlights of 2020
Launching products with smaller chemical footprints The Veet Minima 
Silky Fresh range includes fragrance and dye-free wax strips and hot 
sugar waxes, as well as hair removal creams with no urea. We also 
continued our programme to remove the fragrance ingredient lilial from 
our portfolio. (For more information on the ingredients we’ve removed 
from our portfolio, refer to the table on page 3). Lilial-free versions were 
due to start replacing current products in early 2021, with no negative 
impact on fragrance. 
commitments on sugar for our infant and child nutrition portfolio,  
to be implemented by March 2024. We look forward to the future and 
extending our strong foundation of trust from decades of leadership  
in nutrition science. 
Antimicrobial stewardship We’re members of the Global Respiratory 
Infection Partnership (GRIP). This initiative brings together healthcare 
professionals who advocate an evidence-based approach and 
intervention for antimicrobial stewardship, with good hygiene practices 
and infection prevention being one of the pillars of the global WHO 
strategy. This year, we supported a GRIP global conference for healthcare 
professionals on the importance of not using antibiotics inappropriately to 
treat upper respiratory infections. A second event developed a roadmap 
for pharmacy to tackle antimicrobial resistance. This recognised the role of 
both effective relief of symptoms and good hygiene practices.
Looking to 2021 and beyond
We are committed to transparency and want to give our consumers all 
the information they need to make informed decisions about the 
products they’re bringing into their homes, which means giving 
information that goes above and beyond legislative requirements. We 
understand that consumers want to know more about the products they 
buy. To support this growing expectation, we are committed to being 
clear, honest and transparent and partnering with our suppliers.
RECORDING OUR  
CHEMICAL FOOTPRINT
For the third year, in 2020 we took part in the Chemical Footprint 
Project (CFP). Through this, we track our progress on managing 
chemicals, choosing safer alternatives and using and reducing 
ingredients of concern. Our score was 81%, compared to 73.5% in 
2019, and this was the second year we’ve quantified our footprint. 
The improvement was down to being more transparent about  
our footprint, which we’ve achieved by working with partners  
on safe and effective alternative ingredients, and with suppliers. 
We’re also continuing to invest in tools to make the measurement 
more accurate.
Other launches included: 
•	
Durex Natural lubricants in the US, free from parabens and glycerine
•	
Durex Pro-pH balancing range, which is paraben-free, includes 
natural-origin materials and has biodegradable wipes 
•	
Air Wick Botanica with renewable and natural fragrances
•	
Dettol alcohol-free hand sanitiser (a Reckitt first) in China, with 
bio-renewable actives (lactic acid and citric acid, sourced from cane 
sugar and corn, respectively) to boost effectiveness. It will roll out to 
other countries in 2021. It’s been proven to kill 99.9% of bacteria and 
viruses and kills COVID-19.
Improved nutrition Reckitt’s dedication to improving our nutrition 
products is key to our pursuit of a healthier world. Guided by the  
latest evidence-based medical research, nutrition science and expert 
recommendations, our team will use the six components to good 
nutrition – proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, minerals and water 
– as guiding pillars in this pursuit to support the nutritional needs of our 
consumers through every stage in life and across all geographies. 
 
Our first nutrition commitment focused on sugar, which is a carbohydrate 
essential to providing energy to the body. While there are many types of 
sugar, lactose is our preferred carbohydrate source as it naturally occurs 
in human breast milk. In September 2020, we outlined our specific

26
Reckitt  Product stewardship – ingredients and transparency – insight 2020
Product stewardship – ingredients and transparency continued
C AS E S T U DY
The information we provide helps our consumers understand the 
benefits of our products, together with the ingredients we use, why  
we use them – and where they come from, in the case of natural raw 
materials. One way we do this is through the ingredient panels on pack 
for specific brands, described on page 1. As part of our journey to full 
disclosure, they clearly communicate what ingredients we use and why 
we use them. We also have web-based information that expands on  
the information given on labels. 
We’re also strengthening our approach to ingredients to make sure we 
use those most resilient ones for the long term. This means finding purer, 
simpler ingredients wherever we can, while maintaining product efficacy 
so consumers can rely on them. To do this, we’re updating our tools to 
help teams choose safe and effective alternative (SEA) substances. This 
involves evaluating the materials we use and working with stakeholders 
like the Green Chemistry & Commerce Council (GC3), who help us put 
emerging principles on sustainable chemistry into action.
Managing ingredients of concern and safe alternatives
We maintain a consistent global approach to minimising and eliminating 
substances of concern. We do this through our Restricted Substances 
List (RSL). As we add ingredients to the RSL, we start rework 
programmes to remove them from the portfolio. It means we’ve steadily 
reduced substances of concern since 2012, as the RSL has become a key 
part of product development. 
Ingredient to remove
Completion date
Comments
Lilial
2023 
Removal in progress, 
ahead of regulation
Triclocarban (TCC)
2019
Removal from bar soaps
Fluorosurfactants
2018
Removal
Polyethylene (PE) and 
Polyurethane (PU) 
microbeads
2018
Removal
Parabens (butyl, propyl, 
isoparabens)
2015 (rest of the 
world); 2013 (EU)
Reduction programme 
(excluding medically 
licensed products)
VEET MINIMA: FUTURE-
PROOFING CHEMICAL CONTENT
Our team wanted to cut down the number of chemicals in Veet 
Minima hair removal products, and address odours which some 
consumers found off-putting. They embarked on the biggest 
reformulation of the range for 30 years, while also strengthening 
the purity of the ingredients used across the brand.
The team also took the chance to remove or replace other 
ingredients that could become an issue in the future with 
regulators or consumers. Veet creams now have 35% fewer 
chemicals and ingredients, and have lost their ammonia smell, 
which came from urea used as an ingredient.
We also developed new parts of the Veet range to boost  
its low-chemical credentials. These included hypoallergenic, 
fragrance and dye-free cold wax strips with 50% fewer chemicals 
and ingredients, and hot sugar waxes, also without dyes and 
fragrances, and with 100% natural ingredients.
Our Ingredient Steering Group provides governance of our ingredient 
policies. We also keep a watch list of ingredients with emerging 
concerns or evolving standards. Our RSL policy defines our commitment 
and approach, which often means we set global limits or bans on some 
ingredients beyond what regulations demand. It also includes guidance 
for formulators on how to choose better alternatives, for example, for 
colourants and polymers.
Alongside the RSL, the Ingredient Steering Group oversees how we 
adopt safe and effective alternatives in new or reformulated products. 
To help us develop safe products with the lowest possible environmental 
impact, we use the key concepts of green chemistry in product 
development:
•	
Designing safer products
•	
Preventing waste
•	
Designing for energy efficiency
•	
Designing for degradation, reuse or recyclability
•	
Designing for bio-based or renewable raw materials.
Our Ingredient Steering Group is a global, cross-functional task force to 
screen new and safer alternatives to use across our portfolio. We also 
screen and test new ingredients to make sure they’re effective and safe. 
In doing so, we will collaborate with industry groups and suppliers to 
make safe and effective alternatives more available.
Preservatives are one issue we’re working to resolve. We want our 
products to reach our consumers in the best possible condition and 
that’s why we use preservatives to prevent any microbial growth or other 
unwanted changes. The lack of a wide array of safe preservatives is one 
of the industry’s current challenges, and at the same time, preservatives 
are under more scrutiny from consumers and regulators. This makes 
them a priority for developing safe and effective alternatives.

27
Reckitt  Product stewardship – ingredients and transparency – insight 2020
Product stewardship – ingredients and transparency continued
Looking beyond the RSL
The Restricted Substances List (RSL) is an effective mechanism 
for us to keep up transparency about ingredients. But we want 
to go further. We’ll do this by going beyond responding to 
concerns from our industry, regulators and consumers. As much 
as possible, we want to set the agenda on ingredients ourselves. 
This means taking the initiative to understand what future 
priorities will be, rather than only responding to new regulation as 
it emerges. Using insights from work like our participation in the 
Chemical Footprint Project helps us embed this approach.
There are wider benefits. The stronger and clearer our position, the 
easier we make it for our partners and suppliers to support it. This 
approach is at the heart of our drive to look forward as much as possible 
to pre-empt concern and manage our response efficiently.
Coping with the COVID-19 challenge
In 2020, we’ve worked through the challenges posed by the pandemic by 
focusing first on the substances that most concern scientists, regulators, 
the industry at large or consumers. We’ve also prioritised disinfection 
products like Lysol and Dettol, or OTC pain relief products like Nurofen, as 
demand for them has been much higher in 2020. In some cases, we had 
to delay phasing out some ingredients, like the fragrance component lilial, 
so that we could keep producing much-needed antibacterial products to 
combat COVID-19. We still plan to replace these ingredients within our 
planned timescales and regulatory controls. Despite the shifting priorities 
in 2020, we still exceed legal timelines.
How we stay transparent
We have global standards for product quality and safety. They keep our 
products consistent and reliable, and in many cases they go well beyond 
local regulations. In 2020, it was our Safety Quality and Regulatory 
Compliance (SQRC) function’s job to oversee how we follow these 
standards. For more information, refer to the Product quality and safety 
insight.
Our quality assurance functions keep a close eye on the quality of 
processes and products from the overall global level, to regions and 
individual sites. They also regularly audit key suppliers. This gives us 
continuous improvement in our raw materials, ingredients and 
components that’s ultimately reflected in our finished products.
C AS E S T U DY
AIR WICK BOTANICA –  
USING NATURE’S BOUNTY
The Air Wick Botanica range responds to consumers’ 
concerns about the make-up of products and their 
environmental impact, by using responsibly sourced, 
natural ingredients.
The scented oils, room sprays and candles use 
ingredients like a naturally derived solvent and a 
natural wax. They also use new sustainable 
packaging. The room spray bottle is 99% post-
consumer resin (PCR), and the reeds pack is 
plastic-free, while their design includes PCR glass.

28
Reckitt  Product stewardship – ingredients and transparency – insight 2020
Product stewardship – ingredients and transparency continued
The Global Safety Assurance team evaluates the safety of new products 
and changes to existing ones based not just on how we design them to 
be used, but also how they could be forseeably misused. The team 
monitors product safety in the market, passing on insights to product 
development teams. Our consumer safety policy has guidelines, 
standards and procedures for the whole product life cycle.
The Ingredient Steering Group oversees our whole approach. It includes 
leaders from across the R&D, SQRC and Sustainability teams. They 
pinpoint new issues, formulate our response, and coordinate any action 
we take, like changes to products. The group assesses priority 
ingredients against regulations, also bearing in mind consumer and 
environmental safety, sustainability and public perception, and exploring 
whether we can replace them with safe and effective alternatives.
Partnerships with our suppliers, customers, associations (such as GC3), 
academia and civil society support our approach. We participate in the 
Chemical Footprint Project, for instance, which Walmart, one of our key 
customers, also backs. We also currently work with the University of York 
in the UK, funding research on how materials degrade in the environment 
when they’re disposed of.
Our approach to ingredients
We want the safest and purest ingredients for our products, and we 
want to use only the ingredients we need, and nothing more. We’ve 
supported reductions in hazardous chemicals and committed to them  
in our sustainability reporting. We committed to voluntarily banning PVC 
packaging of household products by 2009, formaldehyde in 2006 and 
polyethylene (PE) beads by 2018. We also backed the California 
Ingredient Disclosure Bill in 2017 by disclosing product ingredients  
we use in North America, and we continue to support the agenda  
behind the legislation.
We’re in tune with our industry’s awareness of chemicals of concern,  
and that of our consumers, NGOs and regulators. Our customers 
increasingly have their own RSLs that suppliers like us must follow.  
It’s important to engage closely with all these stakeholders to keep 
standards high and fix the right priorities as we move forward  
together. Participation in the Chemical Footprint Project  
(https://www.chemicalfootprint.org/) is part of this effort. It 
helps us benchmark our approach to chemicals management, 
inventory, measurement, public disclosure and verification.
Partnerships and collaborations
Green Chemistry Commerce Council (GC3)
We’re part of the GC3’s Sustainable Chemistry Alliance group, which 
promotes policies to accelerate development of sustainable chemistry 
processes and products. Public policy can trigger innovation that leads to 
safe and effective alternative ingredients. The GC3 Sustainable 
Chemistry Alliance has backed the Sustainable Chemistry Research & 
Development Act, which would give national support for 
commercialisation, training and education on chemistry research. The Bill 
has been recently passed and we’re working with the GC3 Sustainable 
Chemistry Alliance to support its implementation.  
https://greenchemistryandcommerce.org/
European Chemical Industry Council – CEFIC
Our experts represent Reckitt on CEFIC’s Long-range Research Initiative 
projects. These help to steer wider industry research efforts towards a 
better understanding of the potential impacts of chemicals on human 
health and the environment. http://cefic-lri.org/
Academic partnerships
We continue to support the Ecorisk2050 EU project to better understand 
the future environmental risks of chemicals. https://ecorisk2050.eu/
We’re sponsoring the Natural Environment Research Council’s new 
Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT), specialising in managing chemical 
risks in the environment. From 2021–22, the centre will support three 
intakes of 13 students. 
We also co-sponsor research at the University of York in the UK on the 
environmental risks associated with polymers.
WHAT IS GREEN CHEMISTRY?
Green chemistry, or sustainable chemistry, is about developing  
and using chemicals and materials that:
•	
Are less toxic to health and the environment
•	
Have lower energy consumption and related emissions
•	
Have less impact on natural resources 
•	
Are designed to lead to less waste and more reuse or recycling  
of chemicals and materials across a product’s life cycle.
Products using green chemistry show improvements in at least one of 
these areas, without performance suffering significantly in the others. 
This could be in how they’re produced, used or disposed of, compared 
to products that use chemicals and materials in similar ways.

29
Reckitt  Product stewardship – ingredients and transparency – insight 2020
Product stewardship – ingredients and transparency continued
Explaining the safety of our ingredients
We want to be 100% transparent about our ingredients, through clear 
labelling on our products and online information. In 2020, 75% of our net 
revenue came from products where we disclose ingredient information 
on the pack or online. The other 25% are mainly hygiene products we sell 
outside Europe and the US, where regulatory requirements are often still 
evolving and we’re working to shift labelling policy so we can give 
consumers more information.
We also include information about how to recycle or dispose of products, 
like asking consumers not to dispose of wipes by flushing. Differences in 
recycling infrastructure across the world make this a challenge, and we’re 
looking at ways to help develop them. 
Improving online information for consumers
Websites help us get detailed information to consumers efficiently. 
We’ve improved our US ingredients website by adding more technical 
details, including fragrance information, and by making it easier for 
consumers to search for information about popular brands. Our European 
website already has similar information, and we’re planning to extend this 
approach to other markets and to our brand websites.
To keep customer satisfaction high, our Consumer Relations teams 
around the world respond when consumers get in touch, making sure we 
capture details of their experience in our Global Consumer Relations 
database. We track consumer satisfaction through brand perception 
analysis and by tracking complaints and enquiries to our consumer 
helpline. Currently, we get 27.71 complaints for every million units we sell.
Promoting the benefits of our products to consumers
Our products have health, hygiene and nutritional benefits, whether it’s 
Dettol and Lysol protecting against germs, Nurofen offering pain relief 
or Durex protecting against sexually transmitted diseases. In line with 
our purpose – to protect, heal and nurture in the relentless pursuit of 
a cleaner and healthier world – we help consumers understand these 
benefits. We do this through clear and accessible information about how 
to use our products, what the ingredients are and where they come from.
We continue to raise awareness among consumers and healthcare 
professionals about the need to protect against the microbes that 
produce respiratory illnesses. This expertise meant we were ready to 
respond when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. An example of our efforts 
here is our continued support of the Global Respiratory Partnership 
(GRIP). GRIP is committed to antibiotic stewardship and conservancy by 
changing current healthcare professional and patient behaviour in the 
treatment of upper respiratory tract infections to avoid building 
antimicrobial resistance.
We also design our products to have other benefits – so that they 
produce less waste, or need less energy or water to use, for instance. 
Some examples are Calgon, which makes washing machines more 
energy efficient by cutting limescale build-up; while Vanish makes 
clothes last longer by removing stains. Finish dishwasher tablets are the 
most effective on the market for the ‘eco’ cycle setting, and dishwashers 
use less carbon and water than doing the washing-up by hand. For more 
about how we’re developing more sustainable products, see our 
Sustainable product innovation insight.
Our animal testing policy
We want to avoid unnecessary animal testing. We won’t conduct or 
commission animal tests on ingredients or finished products, or request 
our suppliers to, unless required by law, or there’s no other way to resolve 
a specific safety concern. For more details, see our Animal Testing policy. 
Listening to our stakeholders
Reporting effectively across our many sustainability issues and giving 
regular updates on our programmes and activities is always a work in 
progress. So we appreciate your feedback. What should we keep doing, 
and where can we do better?
Email us at sustainability@reckitt.com.
Or write to:
The Sustainability team 
Reckitt Benckiser Group plc (Reckitt)  
103–105 Bath Road
Slough
Berkshire  
SL1 3UH 
UK
C AS E S T U DY
LOOKING AHEAD
We look for continuous improvement when it comes to the 
ingredients we use in our products. That means we never stop 
learning, says Heather Barker, Global Head of Regulatory Hygiene. 
“Science isn’t static. We’re continually learning about ingredients 
and how to make better choices by offering people products 
that will delight them.
“We want to bring meaningful consumer education and 
transparency to what is in our products and why,” says Heather. 
“People are looking for more natural ingredients in their products, 
and we’re working hard to make sure we add them in the right 
way. An ingredient from a natural source could end up having 
more impurities than the same substance synthesised in a 
laboratory.”
She adds: “Consumers also expect a product to be efficacious 
– to do what it claims. We aim to distil complexity so people can 
make informed choices for them and their family.”
New 2020 product launches with naturally-derived ingredients 
include Botanical Origin laundry products and the Botanica range 
from Air Wick. We’ve also got third-party certifications by meeting 
criteria on ingredients used, and by using EU Flower, Nordic swan 
and USDA Biopreferred logos on specific product labels.

30
Reckitt  Sustainable product innovation – insight 2020
Our product designers think about 
sustainability right at the start of the 
innovation process. We encourage an 
innovation culture where sustainability is 
always considered, and improvements, both 
big and small, are made at every opportunity. 
Creating more sustainable products
Our ambition is that every innovation we make is more sustainable  
than its predecessor. And everything counts – from major new product 
launches, to a small incremental change to an established brand. 
Whether we’re improving an existing product range by reducing  
plastic packaging. Switching to a more sustainable ingredient. Exploring 
solutions through business acquisitions. Or if we’re inventing a 
completely new product with a lower environmental footprint.  
Each of these is a step in the right direction.
And sometimes the core DNA of our products means they exist to 
produce less waste, or ensure less energy or water is used. For example, 
Vanish makes clothes last longer by removing stains and reviving clothes, 
while Calgon makes washing machines more energy efficient and longer 
lasting by reducing limescale build-up. 
It isn’t enough for us to simply ask our scientists to incorporate 
sustainability into the innovation process. We need to measure the 
impact of each change. For example, for us to report a product as ‘more 
sustainable’, it must make a 10% improvement on carbon, water or 
packaging versus the benchmark (see scoring table of page 4). There are 
always benefits and drawbacks to innovations and we weigh the impact 
of our decisions carefully. For example, a natural ingredient may score 
highly on one aspect of sustainability, but have a higher water impact 
than a synthetic ingredient; or plastic packaging may actually have a 
lower carbon footprint than a composite equivalent.
The key tool for our work in this area is our Sustainable Innovation 
Calculator (SIC). It scores our product innovations using quantitative 
metrics to establish whether an innovation, however big or small, makes 
a product ‘more sustainable’. This means we’re able to assess every 
change to ensure it’s helping Reckitt’s brand portfolio as a whole 
become more sustainable. The calculator considers metrics including 
water, carbon, plastics, packaging and ingredients. The ingredients 
analysis is based on green chemistry principles and includes preferred 
sustainability credentials such as certified origins for natural raw 
materials. This year, while teams were still using the SIC, we worked 
behind the scenes on a revision to our ingredients metric. From January 
2021, product developers now have more tools to help us continuously 
improve. The SIC encourages moving beyond simply avoiding ingredients 
on our Restricted Substances List and, instead, using ingredients that are 
perhaps from recycled feedstocks, have better biodegradability and a 
lower hazardous chemical footprint. This helps to future-proof our 
products and meet growing consumer expectations. We will see more 
coming through in next year’s reporting as the SIC gains further 
momentum. The update incorporated green chemistry, sometimes 
known as sustainable chemistry, along with additional measures to  
help Reckitt work towards the circular economy. (For more on green 
chemistry see our Product Stewardship insight.) 
We want to ensure that all Reckitt employees keep sustainable 
innovation front of mind. We revised our Operating Models and 
integrated sustainability across the board. We’ve also refreshed and 
broadened our training to ensure more of our teams are aware of the 
Sustainable Innovation Calculator’s vital role. We made this accessible to 
all employees at Reckitt, even if they are not directly involved in product 
development. It is also part of much wider communication of our 
sustainability ambitions. Internal communication on World Environment 
Day, for example, encouraged all employees to consider the importance 
of protecting the biodiversity of our planet. We’re finding that our 
community is becoming more engaged with sustainability and keen to 
improve the environmental footprint of our products. This change is 
visible across the organisation, from the eRB business who look to 
improve sustainability through investments, to our country 
representatives working directly with customers and retail partners. 
As well as focusing on our operational footprint, we have also reinforced 
our development activity to scrutinise and improve product footprints in 
more detail. This included further expanding the use and development of 
the SIC. 
Our performance in 2020
Target
One third of our net revenue coming from more sustainable products as 
measured by our Sustainable Innovation Calculator.
1	 Excluding our Infant Formula and Child Nutrition business.
† 	Assured by ERM CVS as part of their limited assurance scope; for details, see our 
Sustainability governance, reporting and assurance insight. 
2020
30.4%
†
Aim
1/3 
1
net revenue from more  
sustainable products by 2020
SUSTAINABLE 
PRODUCT 
INNOVATION

31
Reckitt  Sustainable product innovation – insight 2020
Sustainable product innovation continued
MORE ABOUT SUSTAINABLE 
PRODUCT INNOVATION
We want consumers to trust our brands; to feel confident that our 
products are safe and cause no harm to the ecosystems or the 
people that they touch during their life cycle. The overall 
topic is covered by several insights to make the subjects more 
accessible.
They are: 
•	
Product stewardship – the processes we follow to use safe, 
environmentally-friendly ingredients in our products as well as the 
transparency and labelling to empower our consumers to make 
informed decisions when buying our brands. 
•	
Plastics and packaging – our journey to use less packaging, use 
more recycled material and encourage consumers to recycle our 
own products.
•	
Our value chain – the steps we take to ensure that we, our 
suppliers and our suppliers’ suppliers are living up to our values 
and standards – whether that’s on human rights or safeguarding 
ecosystems and the planet for future generations. 
Our performance in 2020
Target
One third of our net revenue 
coming from more sustainable 
products as measured by our 
Sustainable Innovation Calculator.
Although we did not quite reach our target of one third of net revenue 
from more sustainable products by 2020, we made significant headway 
in an extraordinary year, achieving 30.4%. In these times, when we’ve 
seen unprecedented demand for many of our products, we have not only 
managed to keep our labs and factories operating safely despite the 
pandemic, but still managed to implement the many changes to our 
products that add up to delivering an increase in the share of sustainable 
net revenue. 
2020 also saw a significant increase in product volumes in certain 
product sectors where water is used, like antibacterials. This is 
understandable in the battle to combat COVID-19. It meant that some 
improvements in footprint per dose were overshadowed by the 
increased production volumes in those sectors, and adversely affected 
the water per dose. The small improvements in product carbon and 
water footprints were not what we wanted to achieve, and we will 
refocus on this as we pursue the science-based targets we have set 
ourselves for 2030. This includes a 50% reduction in product carbon 
footprint. Overall, however, we’re pleased with the increased 
sustainability through innovation that we’ve encouraged over the last 
three years, which gives us strong foundations for future progress. 
Net revenue from more sustainable products1 
More sustainable
net revenue (m)
% More sustainable
net revenue
2013
£230
3.0
2014
£350
5.0
2015
£558
5.0
2016
£1,193
13.2
2017
£1,716
18.2
2018
£1,868
18.5
2019 
£2,397
24.6†
2020 
£3,376 
30.4†
1	 Excluding our Infant Formula and Child Nutrition business.
†	 Assured by ERM CVS as part of their limited assurance scope; for details, see our 
Sustainability governance, reporting and assurance insight.
Looking ahead – our performance in 2021 and beyond
We’ve updated our target to 50% of our net revenue to come from more
Sustainable Products by 2030. We aim to achieve our new ambition in 
two ways. First, by adding more details to the Sustainable Innovation 
Calculator (see page 1) so we can consider the sustainability of our 
products in greater depth. And we will continue to evolve this vital tool 
to make our sustainable product innovation process as comprehensive 
and robust as possible. 
Secondly, we’re applying the calculator’s measurement to all three 
Reckitt business units – Health, Hygiene and Nutrition. From 2021, the 
products from our 2017 Mead Johnson acquisition will be embedded in 
our sustainable innovation process. We’ll now be more consistent in our 
approach to sustainable product development across our whole brand 
portfolio from Enfamil, the infant milk formula in Nutrition, to our hygiene 
brands, like Finish and our health brands, like Durex. 
And as more people buy our products online, Reckitt continues to 
support this shift through innovation. We continue to develop more 
sustainable packaging options for this channel. Similarly, our eRB business 
unit invests in businesses with a focus on purpose and sustainability. 
Reckitt’s 2020 acquisition of UpSpring included a portfolio of  
natural-ingredient products to help parents find innovative solutions to 
everyday health and wellness challenges.
Collectively, these measures help steer our course towards our goals of 
reducing product carbon footprints and supporting our ambition for 
carbon neutrality by 2040.

32
Reckitt  Sustainable product innovation – insight 2020
Sustainable product innovation continued
2020 product highlights
This year, despite the restrictions and challenges of COVID-19, our  
new product development pipeline remained strong, with some great 
innovations from some of our most popular brands. Our sustainable 
innovations tend to improve on one or more of three aspects, which all 
help to reduce the environmental impact of our products. First, better 
ingredients; second, better packaging; and third, more effective dosing.
Our work in green chemistry, reformulating existing products with new 
sustainable ingredients, grows in importance: 
•	
Lysol Disinfecting Spray in the US replaced the main formula 
ingredient – petroleum-derived ethanol – with bio-based ethanol 
across the whole product range. 
•	
Dettol’s alcohol-free hand sanitiser in China uses bio-renewable 
actives (lactic acid and citric acid, sourced from cane sugar and corn, 
respectively) and is proven to kill 99.9% of bacteria and viruses 
including COVID-19. It will roll out to other countries in 2021. 
•	
Harpic Essential toilet cleaners and toilet blocks, incorporating the use 
of biodegradable active ingredients and no harsh chemicals, were 
launched across the EU. The bottles have perforated sleeves that can 
be easily removed for better recyclability and the toilet blocks’ blister 
packs are made from 80% recycled plastic.
Another key way to lower our products’ environmental impact is to 
reduce their packaging. This decreases the volume of raw materials per 
product and their water and carbon impact:
•	
Air Wick Freshmatic device reduced its plastic content by 18%. This 
new version is also more energy efficient, requiring just one battery, 
rather than two.
•	
Scholl’s Expert Support Insoles range replaced the plastic in the 
insoles with lighter PU foam and also removed PET film (plastic film) 
from the packaging. These incremental changes created 18% lighter 
packaging with a lower carbon footprint and a lower water impact 
Concentrated versions of our products also reduce packaging materials 
and we use and transport less water everywhere. This approach 
significantly cuts the weight of the products, reducing carbon emissions 
generated in distribution:
•	
Lysol Smart, launched in the US in January 2020, is a refillable 
multipurpose cleaner in a trigger spray format with a reusable bottle 
that can be used up to 25 times, resulting in a 75% plastic saving. 
(See case study on next page.)
•	
Dettol launched its 250ml Liquid Handwash in India, Bangladesh and 
Sri Lanka, increasing the volume of formula from 200ml while using 
the same product pack-size. This saw a reduction in carbon emissions 
and a 20% reduction in plastic per dose.  
Although the pandemic saw us prioritise much-needed anti-bacterial 
and home cleaning products such as Lysol and Dettol, we were still able 
to make some progress in switching to more sustainable ingredients:
•	
Aerogard Home pesticides’ range was launched as a trigger spray 
format rather than a standard aerosol, in both Australia and Brazil. The 
formula contains natural active ingredients and recyclable packaging.
•	
Cillit Bang ‘Naturally Powerful’ kitchen and bathroom surface cleaners 
were launched in Germany in May 2020. Formulas contain naturally-
derived ingredients, while the packaging contains 75% recycled-
content material. The sleeve has been perforated for easy recycling, 
with on-pack removal instructions.
INVESTING IN MORE 
SUSTAINABLE INNOVATION
eRB, our dedicated digital business organisation, invests in start-up 
founders who support Reckitt’s fight for access to quality health, 
hygiene and nutrition. We seek out businesses who are driving real 
social impact through new sustainable innovation, product design 
or awareness. Founders get access to Reckitt’s experts, capability 
and scale to help them grow fast and build shared success with 
Reckitt brands.
They are: 
•	
Oxwash, who is re-engineering laundry from the ground up 
through recycling water, capturing plastic microfibres and using 
ozone technology to wash at low temperatures. They’ve 
partnered with cross-functional leaders at Vanish to collaborate 
on new innovative formulas, their purpose and sustainability 
strategy, and entering the fashion and B2B rental markets. 
•	
Bower Collective is a plastic-free refill subscription service for 
home and personal care products. In return for business insights 
to support their growth strategy, Reckitt gains learnings on a new 
refill subscription model, plastic-free product development and 
community development.
•	
With the support of Reckitt’s Sustainability team, Grain has been 
developing their sustainable business model, growth strategy and 
design principles. Their expertise in household furniture design 
and sustainable materials gives Reckitt unique insights into the 
changing behaviours of our consumers in the home.

33
Reckitt  Sustainable product innovation – insight 2020
Sustainable product innovation continued
How we manage sustainable product innovation
Our finance and sustainability teams work hand-in-hand to track our net 
revenue from more sustainable products. This financial evidence helps to 
create a strong business case for sustainability. Similarly, a network of 
sustainability champions in our R&D teams around the world work in each 
of our product categories to ensure sustainability is a priority when 
designing and developing products. Moreover, an increased awareness 
of environmental issues, thanks to sharing sustainability initiatives on our 
intranet, is uniting the global Reckitt community to think ‘sustainability 
first’.
Sustainable Innovation Calculator – how we measure progress
Our calculator enables us to determine the impact of a product versus 
existing benchmarks, so we can decide whether it can be considered 
more sustainable and therefore count its revenues towards our net 
revenue targets. 
The calculator is a streamlined life cycle assessment (LCA) tool that 
examines the water and carbon impact of products, their ingredients, 
raw materials and packaging, and also, crucially, the impacts of how they 
are used by consumers. To be considered more sustainable, a sustainable 
product innovation must score better in at least one of the categories 
without scoring worse in any others (see table below).
We continually update, improve and evolve this vital sustainability tool to 
empower our innovation teams with more data and insight. Starting in 
2021, the calculator’s new green chemistry metric allows us to factor in 
regenerative aspects of our ingredients such as the citric acid, sourced 
from corn, in Dettol’s new alcohol-free hand sanitiser. 
How the scoring works
To be considered sustainable, our product innovations must score as follows in each of the following categories: 
Packaging
Sustainable 
Innovation 
Calculator
Carbon
g CO2 / dose 
Water
Effective water l / dose
Plastics
Reduction / % PCR  
/ recyclability
Weight
Effective packaging 
weight / dose
Ingredients
Self declaration
Better
> 10% savings
> 10% savings
Plastic score 
combinations*:
•	Green, green, green
•	Amber, green, green
•	Green, amber, amber
> 10% savings
Complies with 
Restricted 
Substances List (RSL) 
and has a preferred 
sustainability 
credential
Same
1.5 – 10% savings
1.5 – 10% savings
Plastic score 
combinations*:
•	Amber, amber, amber
•	Green, green, red
•	Green, amber, red
•	Amber, amber, red
•	Green, red, red
1.5 – 10% savings
Complies with RSL
Worse
> 1.5% increase
> 1.5% increase
Plastic score 
combinations*:
•	Amber, red, red
•	Red, red, red
> 1.5% increase
Does not comply  
with RSL (or variance)
C AS E S T U DY
LYSOL SMART  
– A NEW FORMAT  
REDUCES OUR IMPACT
With COVID-19 increasing demand for our anti-bacterial 
products, Lysol Smart enabled us to help US consumers clean 
and disinfect their homes, while lowering their impact on 
the planet. Lysol Smart’s new refillable trigger spray bottle 
can be reused and refilled up to 25 times. To use it, you simply 
fill the bottle to the water-fill line, insert the refill cartridge, 
attach the spray gun to the neck of the bottle and shake gently. 
This new format results in a 75% plastic saving.

34
Reckitt  Sustainable product innovation – insight 2020
Sustainable product innovation continued
Listening to our stakeholders 
Reporting effectively across our many sustainability issues and providing 
regular updates on our programmes and activities is always a work in 
progress. So we appreciate your feedback – what should we keep doing, 
and where can we do better? 
 
Email us at sustainability@reckitt.com. 
 
Or write to: 
The Sustainability team 
Reckitt Benckiser Group plc (Reckitt) 
103–105 Bath Road 
Slough
Berkshire 
SL1 3UH 
UK
C AS E S T U DY
UPSPRING  
– INSPIRING 
SUSTAINABLE 
INNOVATION
Making the shift to more sustainable 
products means looking outside for 
companies to help accelerate our progress. 
UpSpring was a purpose-led acquisition, 
with the expertise and a naturals-led 
product portfolio to inspire our existing 
brands. One example of their approach is 
the UpSpring Milkflow 100% compostable 
coffee pod, developed to reduce the 
number of single-use coffee pods sent to 
landfill every year. The Milkflow pods are BPI 
certified 100% compostable, with a 
plant-based packaging made from corn 
starch and sugars. They contain zero plastic 
and zero BPAs (an industrial chemical used 
to make certain plastics and resins).

35
Reckitt  Plastics and packaging – insight 2020
PLASTICS 
AND PACKAGING
Our customers, governments and businesses 
all put plastics and packaging waste towards 
the top of the list of urgent environmental 
issues facing the planet. We’ve set ourselves 
clear targets to tackle them. Now we’re 
looking to scale up the first results.
The past three years have seen a huge public focus on plastics and 
packaging. They’re centre-stage for our customers, whether it’s Amazon 
with their ‘compact by design’ standard, or Walmart with their target to 
make all packaging recyclable by 2025. People who buy Reckitt products, 
too, are demanding less packaging and more responsible materials. And 
regulation calls on companies like us to pay for the plastic packaging we 
put on the market through packaging taxes.
Of course, the challenge is one we accept readily – in fact we see it 
as an opportunity to improve our environmental footprint and meet a 
growing consumer expectation. Every manufacturer in the world has 
a responsibility to curb their use of materials, and plastics in particular. 
We’ve been working to tackle these issues for several years, and our 
efforts are paying off. Now the priority is to move from driving 
innovations towards large-scale impact.
We must use fewer materials in our packaging. Alongside this, we want 
the materials we do use to be recyclable, promoting a circular economy 
that cuts waste. We also want to use better materials, like post-
consumer resins (PCR), bio-based plastics – or replace plastics with 
paper. In some cases, we’re removing packaging altogether.
Our pledges demonstrate our commitment and frame our action. Our 
headline targets are to:
•	
Use 50% less virgin plastic in our packaging by 2030
•	
Make 100% of our plastic packaging recyclable and reusable by 2025
•	
Use 25% post-consumer recycled content (PCR) resin in our plastic 
packaging by 2025.
To achieve these targets, we can’t work in isolation. We’re strengthening 
our global, cross-sector commitments by joining the Consumer Goods 
Forum and their Plastic Waste Coalition, and working as part of the Ellen 
MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy. We also have country-
level platforms such as the UK and US Plastics Pacts. And we work 
closely with our suppliers on innovative solutions – companies like Veolia, 
Dow, Mondi and many more.
Success is also about sustainability becoming central to how we operate. 
Our brands review how to reduce their packaging footprint. We’ve made 
our Sustainable Innovation Calculator, which measures the sustainability 
of plastic and packaging inputs for every new innovation, fundamental 
to each stage of product development. We also train our pack designers 
in sustainability. This is how we make sustainable packaging part of 
innovation and decision-making from the start, not something that’s 
retrofitted later. It also underlines how, for us, sustainability and business 
benefits converge. A pack made with less materials speeds us towards 
our pledge targets by cutting our environmental impact and, often, the 
cost.
We track the impact of these changes on our packaging and 
processes by reporting them through the New Plastics Economy 
Global Commitments. We give full disclosure in our external reporting, 
making them part of our own governance processes.
Progressing on our pledges
We’ve moved forward on our plastics pledge targets in 2020. We’ve 
created more recyclable packaging, including more recycled plastics, 
and, perhaps most importantly, are progressively using fewer materials 
overall. This is in line with our new target to reduce the amount of virgin 
plastic we use by 50%. As well as looking at opportunities to reduce 
our existing packaging, we are also innovating new ways to drastically 
reduce our footprint. A good example is the new Lysol SMART refill 
solution launched in the US, which reduces the amount of plastic 
used by 75%.
Our performance in 2020
Aim
25%
post-consumer 
recycled 
content (PCR) 
resin in our 
plastic 
packaging 
by 2025
* based on the Ellen MacArthur Foundation methodology and technical recyclability.
Reckitt’s Total Plastic Footprint
Total weight (tonnes) of all plastic packaging*
225,310 Metric Tonnes
(195,000 MT in 2019)
*	 Total plastic packaging weight excludes devices/ gadgets/ aerosol valves/ adhesives/ fill
formula (like wipe substrate), aligned with Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF) definition.
Aim
100%
of plastic 
packaging 
reusable or 
recyclable 
by 2025
Aim
50%
use 50% less 
virgin plastic in 
our packaging 
by 2030
Progress
3.5%
3% in 2019
Progress
61.8%
*
54% in 2019

36
Reckitt  Plastics and packaging – insight 2020
Plastics and packaging continued
In addition to plastic (see page 1), we measure the footprint of our other 
major packaging materials.	
Total Weight 
(metric tonnes)
Recycled and/or 
Certified Material 
(% of total 
weight)
Paper and board
227,567
98%
Metal (tinplate & aluminium)
78,842
32%
Glass
28,771
23%
We’ve strengthened our review of paper and board origins, so that we’re 
even more rigorous about traceability to either certified or recycled 
origins for paper pulp. This has affected the data we get from suppliers. 
Our percentage of paper (pulp) from certified or recycled sources is 
higher than in 2019. But we narrowly missed our goal of 100% of paper 
and board to be from certified or recycled sources. We aim to reach  
this as soon as possible, and before 2025. 
In some of our sectors product turnover can be slow, especially in Health, 
with its regulatory requirements. The cycle from idea to product launch 
can easily take as long as two years, requiring us to demonstrate the 
stability of products over time. And of course we must also ensure that 
our products are not just attractive and sustainable, but also safe. Even 
so, work we’ve done since 2018 to develop our plastics pledges, and to 
research, test and trial our concepts has produced tangible results in 
2020, including:
Reducing plastic and packaging
•	
We removed plastic clamshells from Mucinex in the US.
•	
We replaced the plastic laminate on Veet hair removal cream bottles 
with a paper skillet.
•	
An optimised plastic tub was introduced for Vanish in Mexico, which 
reduced the amount of material required. We’ve also started to 
transition from bottles to flexible pouches here.
•	
In our vitamin, mineral and supplements category, we launched 
Blackwell in the US, with a formula-fill weight of almost half its 
predecessor product but double the amount of product. Taking an 
‘ecommerce first’ approach in development also meant we could 
remove the cardboard box used to protect bottles sold in brick-and-
mortar stores.
Making products more recyclable
•	
Our fully recyclable stand-up pouches for Finish All in 1 achieved 
technical validation through our partnership with global packaging 
company, Mondi. Full roll-out in 2021 will cover European production of 
the Finish Quantum range.
•	
We replaced the non-recyclable pump from the Durex 100ml Lube 
bottle with a cap, making the bottle fully recyclable.
C AS E S T U DY
DETTOL HANDWASH GOES 
100% PCR
In October 2020 we launched our first 100% PCR bottle for  
Dettol liquid handwash in India. The 200ml black bottle helped 
raise public consciousness about plastic recycling while also 
addressing hygiene concerns around the COVID-19 pandemic.
Proceeds from sales of the handwash will go to the ASSOCHAM 
foundation for plastic waste recycling, among other 
environmental causes.
Progress against aim
Aim
100%
paper and board from certified or 
recycled sources, excluding 
third-party manufacturing sites
Progress
98%
97% in 2019

37
Reckitt  Plastics and packaging – insight 2020
Plastics and packaging continued
For the next generation of products, we’re investigating other ideas like:
•	
Even more effective refill solutions, reducing and in some cases, 
eliminating the need for packaging
•	
Using more safe-to-use concentrates to cut down on packaging 
materials
•	
Replacing a bottle of liquid product with a compressed solid 
alternative.
The overall result will mean we use less plastic, as well as reducing the 
amount of water and air we transport around the world.
Using alternative materials is another key element of our approach, 
whether it’s plastic substitutes, recycled plastic or paper, or novel 
materials like bio-based plastics. Our Air Wick Botanica room spray 
bottle, for instance, has 99% recycled content, and we plan to extend this 
initiative across other brands as we move towards our global 25% 
recycled content target for the whole company.
We are also finding ways to address our consumption of other materials, 
like metal and glass. We’re working alongside our suppliers to track our 
progress here.
Facing recycling challenges
Looking beyond our own processes, we’re influencing consumer 
behaviour to boost recycling rates globally. In the UK, for instance, only 
around 25% of household plastic goes to recycling. In the US, it’s only 
around 9%. So we’re helping to improve or create recycling systems  
in areas where infrastructure is lacking. The more good-quality plastic 
that goes into recycling, and the better the systems for processing it,  
the better the supply of materials like PCR, and the more viable the cost 
(see Yoyo case study, left).
Increasing recycled content
•	
We launched a 50% PCR Finish Rinse Aid bottle in Germany in early 
2020, with other markets due to follow in early 2021. Finish detergent 
gels contain 35% PCR packs that will roll out in 2021, starting in Italy.
•	
India introduced PCR for the first time on Harpic products, as part of 
our collaboration with Banyan Nation, a local company helping global 
brands use more recycled instead of virgin plastic (see case study, 
right).
•	
Our Air Wick PET blisters have been through a second phase of PCR 
addition, which has gradually increased the amount of PCR to over 
85%.
•	
Launching a 75% PCR recycled high-density polyethylene (HDPE) 
bottles for a Cillit Bang eco-product in Germany, alongside perforated 
sleeves for the trigger spray to increase recyclability rates.
•	
Calgon Ecological+ with 75% PCR bottles was launched in Italy and 
will roll out on EU shelves throughout the first half of 2021.
Projects like these are a foretaste of how we want to move forward in 
the years to 2025 and beyond. Our technical progress is encouraging, 
given the challenges involved in replacing some plastics such as using 
and obtaining some substitutes. But our priority now is to increase the 
scale and impact of these programmes, across regions, over the next 
two to three years.
Overall, we’ve added 1,700 metric tonnes of PCR to our processes.  
We may only be at 3.5% of our PCR target currently, but we forecast this 
will rise to 10% in 2021–22.
Looking for transformational impact
We’ve long sought to minimise our use of materials by making bottles, 
packs and lids smaller and taking the unnecessary air out of packaging. 
We’re now looking for new ways of getting our products to consumers 
that are more transformational – but still work well for people, as well as 
shrinking our environmental footprint.
These include refilling and re-use. A bottle refilled with fresh product is a 
bottle kept out of the waste cycle, and a bottle we don’t have to use 
material or expend resources to replace. In the US, Lysol SMART saved 
75% plastic compared to the traditional format of buying new bottles 
again and again. We’re working with the recycling company Terracycle 
on more refill ideas. Terracycle recycling programmes are set up for 
flexible packaging for some of our brands in the UK, including Finish, 
Dettol, Air Wick and Vanish. These products are not able to be collected 
through kerbside recycling, but can be delivered to drop-off locations or 
collected at home, before being sent to Terracycle for recycling.
YOYO – COLLECTING MORE 
PLASTIC FROM CONSUMERS
Even in countries with good recycling infrastructure, the supply of 
good-quality recycled plastic is under pressure because 
households don’t recycle enough plastic.
In France, households use an average of 7kg of HDPE plastic a 
year. But only 30% of that is recycled. We teamed up with French 
start-up Yoyo for a pilot project to see if we could change 
consumers’ behaviour and collect more HDPE plastic bottles.
We gave 150 households in Lyon Vanish-branded grocery-type 
recyclable bags to make it simpler to sort their plastic waste. 
Despite COVID-19, we managed to collect all the households’ 
HDPE for five months. We are now working with our packaging 
supplier, Veolia, to see if we can add the plastic we collected 
back into our packaging for re-use.
C AS E S T U DY

38
Reckitt  Plastics and packaging – insight 2020
Plastics and packaging continued
Other highlights from our partnerships in 2020 include:
Stimulating the market for recycling with global waste management 
services provider Veolia. Our partnership to develop PCR by turning an 
affordable material into a clear, clean and odourless feedstock has 
continued in 2020, following our 2019 work pioneering rigid Finish 
containers for use with detergents. We’ve now launched our first Vanish 
packaging containing 35% PCR. The big technical challenge was to make 
sure the iconic pink colour wasn’t visibly different from virgin plastic 
packaging.
Defining our approach to using bioplastics in a responsible way, working 
with the European Bioplastics organisation and University of Amsterdam. 
We’ve focused on responsible sourcing, and how to confirm through life 
cycle analysis that impacts are better than virgin stock, and that 
bioplastics are compatible with local recycling infrastructure.
Looking to the future
Our targets take us to 2025 and 2030, but our thinking goes further.  
Our long-term emphasis is on delivering our products in new ways that 
minimise or eliminate packaging, and still work well for consumers.  
Our work on refilling and re-use is an example. By 2025, all our plastic 
packaging will be recyclable and our use of better materials like PCR  
will be rising. Our new Polymer Science function in the global packaging 
team is responsible for the next generation of plastics; and finding new 
ways of recycling, including dissolution and chemical recycling. Right 
now, we’re enhancing mechanical PCR as a first priority.
Listening to our stakeholders
Reporting effectively across our many sustainability issues and giving 
regular updates on our programmes and activities is always a work in 
progress. So we appreciate your feedback. What should we keep doing, 
and where can we do better?
Email us at sustainability@reckitt.com.
Or write to:
The Sustainability team
Reckitt Benckiser Group plc (Reckitt)
103–105 Bath Road
Slough
Berkshire
SL1 3UH
UK
In 2020, we joined the Holy Grail project, which is developing an 
industry-wide watermark and tracing system to improve sorting in the 
recycling infrastructure. In 2021, we’ll choose products to submit for 
watermarking and labelling trials.
COVID-19 has created some new recycling challenges for us. High 
demand for disinfectants has outstripped the supply of PCR for bottles. 
This could increase our footprint in this product area, as we used more 
packaging but couldn’t increase the percentage of recycled material as 
much as we wanted. Recyclers collected less plastic, restricting the 
supply of waste feedstock for PCR. Also, crude oil prices fell, increasing 
the cost gap between virgin and recycled plastics. And extra urgency to 
produce hygiene products left us with longer lead times on packaging 
trials, particularly with our teams being unable to use labs during 
lockdowns.
Despite these short-term setbacks, we expect to push ahead strongly in 
2021 with efforts to back recycling infrastructure through partnerships, 
and to boost our own innovation pipeline. Teams are already moving 
forward on this agenda, with ideas like using vacuum techniques to make 
Finish boxes and recyclable pouches more compact, and cutting 
packaging weight. Across Reckitt products we’ll also be increasing the 
use of recycled board, and removing metallised material from cartons so 
they can be recycled.
Joining forces for more impact
Whether it’s researching new materials formulations, sharing ideas, or 
helping to improve recycling systems in parts of the world where they’re 
less developed – to succeed we must work alongside others, so that 
new ideas achieve more, faster.
In 2020, Reckitt joined the Consumer Goods Forum to work with many 
retailers and manufacturers on sustainability issues. In 2020 the Forum 
introduced guidelines for making plastic packaging easier to recycle.
Alongside our participation in the UK Plastics Pact, we also joined the US 
Plastics Pact, a collaborative initiative to move towards a circular economy 
for plastics in the US by 2025. As a founding Activator, we’ll work with 
others on defining a list of problematic or unnecessary packaging by 2021 
and eliminating it by 2025. Also, by 2025 the USPP aims to:
•	
Make all plastic packaging 100% reusable, recyclable or compostable
•	
Recycle or compost 50% of plastic packaging
•	
Make sure plastic packs contain an average of 30% recycled or 
responsibly sourced bio-based content.

39
Reckitt  Our people – insight 2020
OUR  
PEOPLE
Empowering our colleagues to make a difference
Reckitt became a key strategic player in the global fight to stop the 
spread of COVID-19. This would never have been possible without the 
heroic efforts of our more than 43,000 diverse and talented individuals 
across the world. It was truly inspiring to see how our culture came to the 
fore this year, driving our people to do their best in very challenging 
circumstances.
 
We have all had to learn a lot, and fast! We managed an organisational 
and cultural change alongside dealing with issues from the pandemic, at 
home and at work. It has been a year when our global organisation had 
to unlearn many set ways of working and living and form new habits. But 
we stepped up to the challenge. 
We offered a range of support for employees affected by the pandemic, 
conscious that their wellbeing is paramount. This included local 
assistance programmes, global webinars and learning resources, and 
podcasts with senior leaders sharing their top tips. Additionally in 2020, 
we paused our global operations twice so that our people could rest and 
recover in a stressful year.
Our priority was to keep our frontline people safe so they could continue 
to meet the needs of our consumers and safely produce essential 
supplies to fight the spread of COVID-19, such as our disinfectants, Dettol 
and Lysol. 
But we didn’t lose sight of the longer-term themes that are so important 
to our people. We believe a good business is one that reflects not simply 
the world we live in, but the best version of the world we live in, in all its 
diversity. This year, we laid the foundations of placing inclusion at the 
heart of our culture. We established a new global Inclusion Board chaired 
by our Chief Executive, undertook a diagnostic of current practices, and 
gathered feedback from our people through global listening groups.  
(See our Inclusion insight for more details.) 
Our culture starts with our people. We’re all 
united in our purpose to protect, heal and 
nurture in the relentless pursuit of a cleaner, 
healthier world. We aim to create the space 
and the opportunities to help our people make 
a difference, and do the right thing, always.
	 Own
•	
Live our purpose, fight  
and compass
•	
Know our business cold
•	
Make decisions
	 Create
•	
Spot opportunities
•	
Innovate, iterate and scale
•	
Relentlessly build better
	 Care
•	
Actively listen, learn  
and include
•	
Speak direct with respect
•	
Act to unleash potential
	 Deliver
•	
Focus on what matters
•	
Move boldly and at pace
•	
Join forces to win bigger
Our leadership behaviours
Our purpose, fight and compass guide us
Do the
right thing.
Always.
Put consumers
and people ﬁrst
Build shared
success
Seek out new
opportunities
Strive for
excellence

40
Reckitt  Our people – insight 2020
Our people continued
2020 highlights
2020 was an extraordinary year for everybody. Aside from keeping our 
frontline operations running, our office-based staff had to switch almost 
overnight to working from home. In doing so we all formed new ways of 
working, learning to do all the things we’d usually do in person, online 
– onboarding new starters and leadership training, for example. Some of 
our highlights include:
•	
Inclusion – alongside a global listening exercise and diagnostic 
completed by our external partner, EY, we established a new Inclusion 
Board and launched a new inclusion strategy with six workstreams. 
We’ve also updated our gender balance target, aiming for an equal 
split of men and women across our business at all management levels 
by 2030. (See more in our Inclusion insight.)
•	
Stronger Together – we launched our new global conversation 
series, a five-year commitment to discussing the inclusion issues that 
matter most to our people, hosted by our CEO, Laxman Narasimhan. 
(See more in case study below and our Inclusion insight.)
•	
Glint employee surveys – we replaced our biennial employee survey 
Culture Pulse with more frequent Glint employee surveys. In 2020 we 
ran five surveys in total – two general ones for all employees and 
three specific, COVID-related responses. In June 2020, 82% of 
employees agreed they would ‘recommend Reckitt as a great place 
to work.’ (See more on the results below.)
•	
Leadership behaviours – we developed our new leadership 
behaviours with the Global Executive Committee, clearly setting out 
our expectations of leaders at Reckitt and reinforcing the culture 
shifts we are making. 
•	
Workforce Disclosure Initiative – we were placed in the top quartile 
of 140+ Workforce Disclosure Initiative companies for transparency on 
sharing information on pay, contract types, diversity and supply chains 
with a score of 82%, compared with the 66% industry average.
•	
Gender pay gap reporting – we extended our statutory gender pay 
gap reporting, to include five key markets in 2020. We have since 
extended this to ten markets and will report on these in 2021.
2020 countries
2021 additional countries
UK
Poland
US
Thailand
India
Brazil
China
Russia
Mexico
Indonesia
Working through COVID
Our people step up and offer support in times of crisis. We saw this time 
and again during the COVID-19 pandemic, as our people responded to 
the global emergency in our relentless pursuit of a cleaner, healthier 
world. We ensured that our frontline colleagues in Reckitt manufacturing 
sites could safely continue to make essential products and meet the 
needs of our consumers – particularly for our disinfectants Dettol and 
Lysol, to fight the spread of COVID-19. (See case study, below.) 
We also swiftly set up remote working for our people who were able to 
work from home. We shared advice including how to take care of your 
mental health, as well as ensuring the correct desk set-up to avoid 
injuries and take care of your physical health. We’ve since shared our 
Return to Work policies as opensource documents externally, so other 
organisations can benefit from our thinking and planning.
We put a number of tools in place to help our people navigate the 
changing workplace in COVID-19. Some of these tools were new, and 
some, like our Employee Assistance Programme, already existed, but 
were expanded and became more important during the pandemic. 
They included:
•	
Frontline recognition and support, including monetary bonuses, gift 
vouchers, free meals, care packages and additional days of annual 
leave.
•	
Our ‘Navigating our New Normal’ book shared guidelines to  
keep all our employees safe at work, whether on the frontline in our 
manufacturing sites or adjusting to the realities of home working. We 
followed five guiding principles – putting our people first; locally-led 
decisions to reopen; a phased and gradual return to the workplace; 
mutual accountability through involving our employees in the decision 
to return; and protecting our frontline. (See more in Health, safety and 
wellbeing insight.) 
•	
Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) offers all Reckitt 
employees confidential, anonymous, impartial advice on topics from 
mental health to financial challenges. Help comes via multi-lingual 
web resources, as well as telephone support from a professional 
adviser. We now have EAPs across all countries (See Health, safety 
and wellbeing insight for more.)
•	
Remote working hub, offering comprehensive support on working 
from home sharing resources on team engagement, team meetings 
and time management
•	
Wellbeing hub, bringing together our resources to support our 
people’s wellbeing, including practical advice, tools and education  
for all.
•	
Financial support for employees to enable them to work from  
home safely.
Internal communication
Internal communication and engagement was essential in 2020.  
And although we could not make many site visits or hold face-to-face 
meetings, many of these meetings were held virtually instead. For 
example, the leadership team and Board Directors held virtual focus 
groups and town halls to share key messages. All our colleagues were 
encouraged to connect directly with senior leaders through email  
and during live-streamed Q&A sessions. 
Similarly, our Chief Executive, Laxman Narasimhan made virtual internal 
engagement across the company a priority. For example, his popular  
car pool conversation – informal chats with team members on their 
commute – had to stop during the pandemic. However, he continued  
to connect with colleagues through regular virtual ‘sofa chats’ and the 
Stronger Together series.

41
Reckitt  Our people – insight 2020
Our people continued
Setting global standards
While we celebrate our entrepreneurial culture and give people the freedom to succeed, 
this is always within a framework. We have clear expectations and policies which set global 
standards across our organisation. You can read more about these policies in our Code of 
Conduct, as well as our Health, safety and wellbeing, and Inclusion insight.
Our global workforce
Employment ratios by business unit
Business unit (excluding contingent workers)
% at 31 December 20201
CHQ (Reckitt 
Corporate)
Reckitt eRB & 
Greater China
Reckitt 
Health
Reckitt 
Hygiene
Reckitt 
Nutrition
Board
100%
Executive Committee2
75%
–
8%
8%
8%
Group leadership team
17%
9%
31%
26%
17%
Senior management team2
11%
7%
32%
28%
21%
Global employees
3%
13%
29%
31%
24%
1	 2020 global employed data for women and nationalities is based on data for 39,577 global Group employees, 
which is 44% of the average number of people employed by the Group during 2020.
2	Numbers do not equal 100% due to rounding.
C AS E S T U DY
RESPONDING TO THE 
CRISIS IN CHINA AND 
THE PHILIPPINES
Jingzhou city in Hubei province is home to one of 
Reckitt’s biggest manufacturing plants for Dettol. And 
it’s close to Wuhan, where the COVID-19 epidemic 
began. When Hubei went into lockdown, the factory’s 
products were desperately needed, but most of its 
400 workers had left the city for their Chinese New 
Year celebrations. Nearly 300 colleagues returned to 
work, often making challenging journeys during the 
holiday period. Reckitt arranged for 
accommodation to be provided for employees, to 
avoid commuting during the time when the virus was 
particularly prevalent. We also made sure the factory 
working environment was safe from the virus, 
through additional hygiene precautions and 
temperature checks. Nobody at the factory 
contracted the virus. The factory was awarded 
Reckitt’s highest accolade, the Sir James Reckitt 
Award, for its efforts. Similarly, in our Makiti infant 
formula factory in the Philippines, our people 
continued working under strict quarantine conditions 
to maintain production of vital children’s supplies 
under curfew conditions. Portions of the office 
were converted into accommodation for workers 
willing to stay on site for this emergency period, 
and a shuttle service transported other employees 
from their homes to work.

42
Reckitt  Our people – insight 2020
Our people continued
Hires and employee turnover
Business unit (excluding contingent workers)
Location (excluding contingent workers)
Age (excluding contingent workers)
Contract type
Total
Women
Men
Not 
recorded
Reckitt 
Corporate
Reckitt 
eRB & 
Greater 
China
Reckitt  
Health
Reckitt  
Hygiene
Reckitt 
Nutrition
<30 yrs
30–50 yrs
>50 yrs
Not 
disclosed
Permanent
Temporary
Third party 
contracts
Reckitt employees (total number)
39,577
17,482
22,061
34
1,142
5,253
11,630
12,131
9,421
8,037
26,624
4,913
3
38,219
1,358
7,022
New hires (total number)
8,157
3,772
4,342
43
264
786
2,742
3,011
1,354
3,577
4,156
423
1
6,701
1,456
5,854
New hires (rate) %
21%
22%
20%
126%
23%
15%
24%
25%
14%
45%
16%
9%
33%
18%
107%
83%
Total employee turnover (total number)
5,544
2,499
3,043
2
112
942
1,626
1,914
950
1,715
3,158
671
–
4,671
873
4,987
Total employee turnover (rate) %
14%
14%
14%
6%
10%
18%
14%
16%
10%
21%
12%
14%
–
12%
64%
71%
Voluntary leavers
3,419
1,586
1,831
2
85
589
1,036
1,118
591
954
2,075
390
3,202
217
NA
Percentage of voluntary leavers %
9%
9%
8%
6%
7%
11%
9%
9%
6%
12%
8%
8%
–
8%
16%
NA
Involuntary leavers
2,073
887
1,186
–
27
351
587
760
348
739
1,067
267
–
1,433
640
NA
Percentage of involuntary leavers %
5%
5%
5%
–
2%
7%
5%
6%
4%
9%
4%
5%
–
4%
47%
NA
Our commitment to respecting the right to freedom of association is 
embodied in our global Code of Business Conduct, and Policy on Human 
Rights and Responsible Business available on Reckitt.com. Reckitt fully 
complies with all applicable global and local laws regulating collective 
bargaining and recognises the right to freedom of association. This 
means that consistent with the law and with company policy, employees 
have the right to assemble, communicate and join associations of their 
choice, or not. As of 30 September 2020, 20% of our employees are 
represented by an independent trade union or covered by collective 
bargaining agreements. 
Reward and recognition
Benefits
We offer a range of different benefits at Reckitt. Some, such as pension 
and medical care plans, annual health checks, and health, accident and 
disability insurance provide important stability for employees and their 
families. We also offer life insurance for all our global employee 
population. Others, such as salaries, bonuses and long-term incentives, 
are linked to performance. Our benefits vary depending on location and 
are reviewed regularly to ensure they’re locally competitive. For example, 
our pension scheme is offered to more than 70% of our global 
employees. Exceptions might happen in local markets where pensions 
are provided by the state or where pensions are not commonly offered 
by employers. Reckitt’s global parental leave policy provides 26 weeks’ 
paid and 26 weeks’ unpaid maternity leave, and four weeks’ paid and four 
weeks’ unpaid paternity leave. The policy recognises that today’s families 
come in all shapes and sizes, so the same principles apply to all LGBTQ+ 
employees, as well as and including adopting and surrogacy families.
Salary and bonus
We pay our employees based on performance and this is applied 
consistently throughout the organisation. We reward on-target 
performance with total cash (i.e. salary plus bonus), but offer a high 
proportion of variable pay to encourage outstanding performance and 
creation of shareholder value. Employees are paid in relation to their role 
and location, with internal pay equity, pay ranges and external market 
benchmarks taken into account.
•	
Salary increases are determined by line managers based on factors 
such as individual performance ratings, talent ratings and local market 
practice. Country-specific conditions such as inflation are also taken 
into account.
•	
Our Annual Performance Plan (‘APP’) is operated consistently across 
the organisation and has more than 15,000 employees participating. In 
common with the Executive Directors, bonus payouts are based on 
Reckitt’s financial performance, with all employees being incentivised 
on net revenue and a profit measure, which varies based on role. In 
addition some roles have a third measure related to market share, net 
working capital or innovation.
•	
We also operate local bonus plans, for example for employees in sales 
and factories. 
For more details on how we pay our executives, please read the 2020 
Annual Report. For details on gender pay, please read the Inclusion 
insight and our Gender Pay report. 
Living wage (UK)
We have been paying the living wage in the UK for a number of years,  
but in 2019, we were formally recognised as a living wage employer by 
the Living Wage Foundation. Our commitment to employees and 
contractors is that they will receive a wage that exceeds the minimum 
and also recognises the actual cost of living in the UK. 
Share ownership
Our award-winning, all-employee share plan fosters a culture of 
ownership among our people. It gives employees the chance to save 
over a three-year period to buy Reckitt shares at a 20% discount to the 
share price at the start of this period. They can save anything from £10 to 
£500 and the scheme is risk-free, as people can take back the amount 
they’ve saved at any time. Around 55% of Reckitt employees globally 
take part in one of the three share plans on offer. Over the last three-
year period (2018–2020), over 9,250 employees saved a total of £48 
million to purchase Reckitt shares, making a gain of around 16% over  
the period (based on the average closing price in Q4 2020 of £68.45).

43
Reckitt  Our people – insight 2020
Our people continued
Developing talent
We need our people to have the right skills, capability and knowledge to 
perform at their best every day. All Reckitt employees have their 
performance reviewed each year against personal and business 
objectives. It’s also a chance for them to talk to their managers about 
their career ambitions. We use these reviews to help identify people 
with the potential to take on leadership roles in the future. 49% of open 
positions are filled by internal candidates.
We continue to believe in helping our people grow and develop through 
experience, moving colleagues to new roles and new markets. With 
global mobility more restricted during lockdowns, we ensure our people 
moving with Reckitt’s international transfer policy travel only when it is 
safe to do so. To support their moves, we offer benefits such as 
international healthcare, international pension, school fees, tax return 
support and home leave to foster our people’s international 
development. 
Our digital learning platform, launched in 2018, played a key role during 
the pandemic. It meant that we could continue to develop our people as 
they accessed remote learning programmes. This included our global 
leadership capability programmes, as well as functional development 
programmes. In 2020, our employees also accessed training topics 
including unconscious bias, crisis management and health and safety. This 
saw them participating in 264,826 hours of training in total during the 
year, an average of 7.08 hours per employee.   
Supporting young people to live our purpose
Now in its seventh year, the Reckitt Global Challenge has become an 
important graduate recruitment tool, growing from a university 
competition. University students are challenged to come up with a 
business idea based on a Reckitt product that shows performance, 
profitability and a social purpose. In 2020, the competition attracted 
hundreds of entries and participants came from 32 countries on three 
continents. The teams were asked for ideas that contribute to positive 
social change. The national winners had the chance to work at Reckitt, 
with their ideas going into our innovation pipeline and mentoring 
available to support their development.
We’re also proud supporters of One Young World, a programme bringing 
together young people from around the globe to discuss and try to solve 
the big environmental, social and human problems we face. The One 
Young World summit was cancelled in 2020 due to COVID-19, but we’re 
looking forward to its return in Munich in July 2021. 
Promoting wellbeing
The wellbeing of our employees is vital if they are to thrive at home and 
work. And supporting our people’s emotional wellbeing and mental 
health grew in importance during lockdown. Our company-wide 
wellbeing strategy is based around four categories: physical, emotional, 
financial and community. We partnered with two global wellbeing 
specialists to work alongside our Global Head of Wellbeing to support 
and share wellbeing resources. These include:
Wellbeing leadership training, to empower our leaders to support their 
own and their teams’ wellbeing.
•	
A series of global education initiatives featuring external speakers to 
share wisdom and top tips on issues like sleep, nutrition, exercise and 
managing your energy.
•	
Pilot programmes including the launch of a social wellbeing platform 
in the US, Mexico, UK and India. We will measure and review the 
success of these programmes before rolling them out globally.
•	
Over 60 of our employees in the UK are trained mental health first 
aiders.
•	
During lockdown we moved our fitness, yoga and meditation classes 
online and launched new local activities from cook-alongs to 
stepathons and triathalons.
•	
We update our global employee wellbeing hub regularly with 
different resources and podcasts on mental health, with over 3,000 
downloads to date. The hub also offers meditation from Headspace, 
the mindfulness app, and practical advice such as tips for coping with 
quarantine.
Listening to our people
In 2020 we replaced Culture Pulse with Glint, which asks employees for 
feedback more frequently. In June 2020, over 70% of our global 
employees responded, with 82% responding favourably to ‘I would 
recommend Reckitt as a great place to work’. This generated a score of 
81 (+7 compared to a global benchmark). In October 2020, 66% 
employees responded and 76% of these said they would recommend 
Reckitt as a great place to work, with a 78 score that was still four points 
higher than the global benchmark.
The highest scoring question in the October survey, cited by 86% of our 
employees was ‘We act responsibly and with integrity’. Our surveys also 
identified opportunities where we could improve. While our colleagues 
were broadly positive about our equal opportunities policy, investment in 
people and our status as a smarter, leaner workplace, we were not seen 
as an industry leader in these areas. We have set up our global Inclusion 
Board and implemented more focus in this area to address this feedback.
We also regularly check in with our employees through town hall 
meetings and our intranet. And we hold forums, focus groups and 
listening sessions with leaders, so everyone can have their say. 
Our confidential online and freephone service, Speak Up, is a safe, 
trusted channel for employees to raise concerns about violations of our 
policies and any unethical behaviour. (Read more about this in our Ethical 
behaviour insight.)

44
Reckitt  Our people – insight 2020
Our people continued
Looking ahead – focus for 2021 and beyond
In common with many other businesses, we found that the constraints 
from working through a pandemic also unearthed new possibilities. In 
July 2020, we launched Freedom Forum, a new crowdsourcing platform 
for employees to contribute to decisions in how we work in the future. 
We request ideas for a particular theme and the top five are proposed to 
leadership. Our first forum, workplace of the future, attracted over 600 
ideas and 10,000 votes. Our next theme will be sustainability.
Highlighted by the pandemic, a desire for smarter, more flexible working 
practices was a common response. We are addressing all of these areas 
in a spirit of continual improvement. And we’re interested in how flexible 
working might enhance wellbeing and our culture, as well as practical 
considerations. 
As our people spend longer working from home, they also want to find 
ways to balance their workload more effectively. We’re looking more 
broadly at how we can dedicate more time and resources to supporting 
their wellbeing and mental health. Although we’ve done some good 
work improving our provision for our people’s wellbeing, there is more 
to do. 
We’ve laid solid foundations to improve our progress in diversity and 
inclusion through initiatives such as our Employee Resource Groups and 
Stronger Together conversations. But we will continue to work hard to 
make our culture more inclusive and get better at measuring our 
progress, including the best way to manage our ethnicity reporting. 
Becoming a more diverse and inclusive organisation is central to our  
goal of doing the right thing, always. 
Listening to our stakeholders 
Reporting effectively across our many sustainability issues and providing 
regular updates on our programmes and activities is always a work in 
progress. So we appreciate your feedback – what should we keep doing, 
and where can we do better? 
Email us at sustainability@reckitt.com.
Or write to:
The Sustainability team
Reckitt Benckiser Group plc (Reckitt)
103–105 Bath Road
Slough
Berkshire 
SL1 3UH
UK
C AS E S T U DY
STRONGER TOGETHER: 
ENCOURAGING DIVERSITY 
AND INCLUSION 
CONVERSATIONS
Our new Stronger Together conversation series 
creates a global platform for our people to share 
stories and experiences on the inclusion topics that 
matter most to them. During the first, in May 2020, in 
the context of the Black Lives Matter movement, 
employees shared their experiences of being black in 
America, sparking a global response. As our people 
come from a range of different backgrounds, we 
started a company-wide conversation to include 
everyone who feels impacted due to their ethnicity, 
sexuality or gender. Over 4,000 employees attended 
these live sessions, which subsequently featured 
conversations on LGBTQ+ and women in STEM. We 
also invited guests and leaders from outside Reckitt 
to share their thoughts and personal experiences on 
subjects such as the role diversity plays in leadership. 
(See more in Inclusion insight.)

45
Reckitt  Inclusion – insight 2020
INCLUSION
Embracing our diversity to build a more inclusive world
We focus on inclusion because it’s the right thing to do – not just for our 
company, but for society.
We are over 43,500 people of 120 different nationalities, operating in 60 
countries across six continents. It is our collective responsibility to build 
Inclusion into everything we do, while ensuring to represent the people 
we are and the global community we serve.
Our purpose – ‘to protect, heal and nurture in the relentless pursuit  
of a cleaner and healthier world’; and our fight – ‘to make access to the 
highest quality hygiene, wellness and nourishment a right, not a privilege’ 
are ambitious and inclusive by design. Only through every one of us 
playing our part in a united and inclusive culture will we achieve our 
purpose and our fight.
Across the globe we have an interconnected vision that all our people 
have the Freedom To Succeed. For us, that starts with an inclusive 
environment where everyone feels able to participate and realise their 
full potential. Our company’s DNA is steeped in a rich, 200-year history of 
working collaboratively across the globe. The innovative, entrepreneurial 
spirit of our people is at its best when diverse teams unite, share ideas 
and create pioneering solutions.
There is more to do. The world is changing at a faster pace than ever and 
as it does, so do the needs of our people and the consumers we serve. 
We believe in doing the right thing, for 
everyone, always – whether they’re our 
people, our customers, partners, or the wider 
global community. Being diverse and inclusive 
is not an additional principle for us. We want it 
to be integral to the way we think and act.
That’s why we are focusing on inclusion its broadest sense, working to 
collectively shape our company and the broader society to be a place 
where everyone feels included and treated fairly and equitably; whether 
as consumers, partners or colleagues.
Progress against aim
Our aim is to have gender balance at all management levels by 2030. 
Currently, 30% of global senior management team roles are held by 
women and we want this to be 50% by 2030. This extends our previous 
target of 40% of our senior management team being women by 2022. 
The Reckitt Inclusion Board
Leaders have a powerful influence in changing culture. In 2020, we 
launched the Reckitt Inclusion Board, a cross-functional team of 13  
global senior leaders chaired by our CEO, Laxman Narasimhan. Our  
global Employee Resource Groups – women@reckitt and LGBTQ+  
– are represented on the Inclusion Board, along with all functions and 
parts of the world. This enables the Board to make inclusive, informed 
decisions based on the needs of our people. 
Our Inclusion Board drives our inclusion agenda and is accountable for:
•	
Strategic delivery
•	
Governance
•	
Monitoring, reporting and communication.
C AS E S T U DY
PARTNERING FOR 
PROGRESS
In 2020, Reckitt established a partnership with the 
United Negro College Fund (UNCF) in the US. This 
followed feedback from our people who said we 
could do more in this area. UNCF wants all Americans 
to have equal access to a college education. Our 
partnership will provide 100 scholarships for public 
health, nutrition or other STEM-related fields and 
we’ve committed to supporting our scholars 
throughout their four-year studies.

46
Reckitt  Inclusion – insight 2020
Inclusion continued
Listening and learning
We want to be better at inclusion. Our first step comes from listening to 
our people, assessing where we are and developing our understanding 
of how we can improve. In 2020, Reckitt partnered with EY to undertake 
an independent diagnostic to assess our progress and performance in 
terms of inclusion. This involved a review of our current practices and 
processes, and a global listening exercise in which more than 2,000 
people shared their opinions and ideas on a range of inclusion topics.  
We also ran 121 interviews with key stakeholders including the Inclusion 
Board, Global Executive Committee (GEC) and other Reckitt leaders.
This insight, alongside the assessment of our current state, identified our 
strengths and highlighted opportunities for improvement. It’s helped us 
expand our existing strategic roadmap for key areas to prioritise this year 
and beyond.
Our inclusion strategy focuses on six key pillars which we believe will 
make a major contribution in our progress at Reckitt – people, policies, 
partnerships, brands, procurement and leadership.
Building an inclusive culture for our people
We want to make sure everyone at Reckitt feels included. We will make 
this happen through ongoing engagement and interaction on the topics 
that matter to our people, using tools such as our Stronger Together 
conversations, training, and Employee Resource Groups (ERGs).  
(See page 3 for more information on these initiatives.)
Continuous improvement of our policies to raise the bar on Inclusion
Our policies define our approach, so it’s essential they are framed 
through a diversity and inclusion lens. From recruitment, learning and 
promotion opportunities, to celebrating religious holidays and parental 
leave, we want our policies to work for everyone. We review them 
regularly with this in mind. For example, our global parental leave policy  
is open to all new families, including LGBTQ+ employees, as well as 
adopting and surrogacy families.
Building selective partnerships
Beyond Reckitt, it’s important for us to set the right tone with our 
partners. We want to form partnerships with organisations who share  
our beliefs and principles. We want to learn from our partners, to improve 
our thinking and actions around inclusion. We also want to drive external 
awareness of our commitment to these issues through our partnerships.
Using our brands to encourage a more inclusive world
All around the world, our iconic brands like Durex and Dettol have served 
billions of people for generations. We know our brands are powerful 
messengers, helping to encourage healthier habits and change 
behaviour. For example, Durex’s sexual health educational work in 
Thailand saved the government £122 million per annum by preventing, 
among other things, sexually transmitted diseases, which can have  
a disproportionate impact on women and school-aged girls.
Supporting suppliers from diverse and minority communities
We want to buy from suppliers that demonstrate the same clear 
commitment to diversity and inclusion as we do. This is a new area  
of consideration, but we are proud to work with some suppliers who 
already have these policies in place. For example, one of our suppliers, 
BCI Packaging, offers vocational training for people with disabilities. 
We also welcome suppliers who create opportunities for women or 
disadvantaged young people.
Senior level focus and sponsorship
We want all our leaders to be confident in their support of driving 
inclusion – leading change, developing trust, building our capability in  
this area and making things happen locally. We support this through  
our inclusive leadership training.
Stronger Together conversations
In 2020, our Chief Executive, Laxman Narasimhan hosted regular ‘Stronger 
Together’ conversations – virtual town halls for all employees to talk 
openly about their concerns. This is a five-year commitment to shine a 
light on the inclusion topics that matter most to our people. We aim to 
host global Stronger Together conversations every few months, with an 
invitation sent to all those with a Reckitt email address. All sessions are 
also available to watch on demand.
In the first of these conversations in May 2020, in the context of the  
Black Lives Matter movement, Reckitt people spoke about the realities  
of being black in America. We also had a company-wide conversation  
to include everyone regardless of background, who feels impacted due 
to their ethnicity, sexuality, or gender. Since then, our conversations have 
also focused on LGBTQ+ and women in STEM, as well as our broader 
inclusion agenda.

47
Reckitt  Inclusion – insight 2020
129
Our employees at 
all levels represent 
129 different 
nationalities. 
50
Globally, our senior leadership 
community is made of over 
50 nationalities, representing 
a broad background of skills, 
cultures and experience.
8
Our Executive  
Committee, the most  
senior management level 
at RB, includes eight  
different nationalities.
Inclusion continued
Our Stronger Together conversations act as a platform for the Reckitt 
community to share their own experiences. For example, volunteers  
from the Reckitt community shared their stories of identifying as an 
underrepresented person, and the discrimination they faced. We also 
invite guests and leaders from outside Reckitt to share their thoughts  
on subjects such as the role diversity plays in leadership, and their own 
personal experiences. These stories help us all consider how different 
experiences affect people’s life chances.
As well as listening and learning, we hope that by opening up the 
conversation to all employees we can also raise awareness around our 
work on inclusion – to help embed it within our workplace culture and 
foster a more inclusive environment.
We also encourage Stronger Together conversations at a local level. In 
Malaysia in 2020, around 150 employees took part in a virtual Stronger 
Together conversation run over two sessions. They discussed individual 
experiences of discrimination and concluded with a series of 
commitments. Similarly, in August 2020, Greater China held a Stronger 
Together Lunch and Learn session from its Guangzhou head office.  
The UK and the US ran Black History Month, and both markets plus others 
ran LGBTQ+ Month. 
Employee Resource Groups
Our new Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) offer a network and safe 
space for our employees to share experiences, concerns and ideas.  
We will listen and learn from these groups, and want them to help inform 
Reckitt ‘s progress on building better inclusion. To date, we have two 
global ERGs – Women@Reckitt and LGBTQ+.
We also encourage the creation of local ERG groups to address specific 
needs and serve underrepresented or disadvantaged groups within their 
community. In the US, for example, we have five local ERGs – LEAP 
(focusing on Leadership education for Asian Pacific); BOLD (Black 
organisation focusing on leadership development); HOLA (Hispanic/Latinx 
network); LGBTQ+; and Women@Reckitt.
Women@Reckitt 
This group focuses on advancing women in the Reckitt workplace and is 
an evolution from our original D.A.R.E. (Develop. Attract. Retain. Engage) 
programme set up in 2015. The group provides opportunities for people 
to meet, collaborate and discuss the key issues that affect them. During 
the COVID-19 pandemic, of course, the group meets virtually. We have 
‘lean-in’ circles for networking across our global business, offering Reckitt 
women the chance to informally connect, and share stories and insights 
to help one another.
LGBTQ+
This group is for the LGBTQ+ community and their allies. The network 
provides a safe space, support and resources for Reckitt’s LGBTQ+ 
community to express their true selves at work. It holds forums for 
people to come together and discuss key topics, including what needs 
to change in society and at work to empower this community. For 
example, in February 2021 we launched our LGBTQ+ History Month, 
including a Lunch and Learn with members of the transgender 
community. This helped the wider Reckitt community understand why 
the use of pronouns is important, and explained some of the terms and 
language associated with LGBTQ+.
Women at Reckitt today
Our progress in 2020
Improving our gender balance is critical for us – from our hiring policies, 
through to our leadership development and succession planning.  
We also offer access to mentoring, global parental webinars and  
tailored leadership development programmes for women. 
Although just under half of our employees are women, we are less 
balanced at senior leadership level. Currently, 30% of global senior 
management team roles are held by women. We want this to be 50%  
by 2030. While we have made progress, we still have a way to go before 
we achieve better female representation within senior management.
While we have made progress, we still have a way to go before we 
achieve better female representation within senior management.
Our Group Board consists of five women and seven men, meaning 
women make up 42% of our Board, up from 36% in 2019.
Diversity across Reckitt employees
Lean in Circles
44
Total accelerate delegates since 2016
468
Total accelerate delegaes in 2020
167
Managers who benefited from supporting parental 
leave webinars in 2020
441
Colleagues who benefited from parental leave 
webinars in 2020
453
Woman in senior management position in 2020
30%
Overal % of women employees
44%
Target % of women in senior management  
positions in 2030
50%
Women in junior management positions
53%
Women in revenue-generating positions
49%
Women in STEM-related positions
35%

48
Reckitt  Inclusion – insight 2020
Inclusion continued
C AS E S T U DY
INCLUSION IN  
ACTION IN THAILAND
In Thailand, we’re working hard to ensure our 
female and LGBTQ+ communities are well 
represented at work. Initiatives included 
executive talks, in which Reckitt leaders share 
their thoughts on diversity; and new 
development programmes to better equip 
women for senior positions. Our Bangpalong 
site was recognised by the UN’s Office of 
Women’s Affairs and Family Development as 
one of the top 30 organisations in Thailand 
offering inspirational models that support 
gender equality and diversity.
Diversity across Reckitt employees
As of 31 December 2020
2019
2020
Nationalities in management – Executive Committee
5
8
Nationalities in management – Group leadership team
14
17
Nationalities in management – senior management team
55
50
Nationalities of global employees
120
129
Women employed – Executive Committee†
11%
17%
Women employed – Group leadership team†
11%
19%
Women employed – senior management team†
26%
30%
Women employed – global employees†
45%
44%
The Senior management team includes the Group leadership team (GLT), which itself includes the Executive Committee.
2020 global employed data for women and nationalities is based on data for 39,577 global Group employees, which is 44% of the average number of people employed by the Group during 2020.
† Assured by ERM CVS as part of their limited assurance scope; for details, see our Sustainability governance, reporting and assurance insight.
2020 highlights
•	
Reckitt celebrated Pride month in June 2020. This was an opportunity 
for everyone to listen, learn and understand more from and about the 
LGBTQ+ community.
•	
In Pakistan, ‘Veet X Women on Wheels’ helped to train 1000 girls to 
ride a bike, in partnership with the Salman Sufi Foundation and 
Women on Wheels.
•	
The proportion of women we employ in Greater China is 62%, up from 
59% in 2019, as the country focuses on improving its retention rate of 
women in middle and senior level managerial roles. The number of 
women in senior management has risen from 35% to 44% since last 
year, and 47% to 59% in the Nutrition China department.
•	
Accelerate, our tailored leadership development programme for 
women, benefited 167 women in 2020, bringing the total since 2016 
to 468.
•	
Parental transition programmes – 453 colleagues and 441 managers 
benefited from these virtual group sessions in 2020.
Closing the gender pay gap
As a UK-based group, we are required by law to produce a gender  
pay report which highlights any difference between average male and 
female hourly earnings. We‘re a business committed to doing the right 
thing, and gender equality is crucial for us as an organisation as well as 
society as a whole. By being more transparent and reporting gender pay 
for more markets, we will encourage others to do the same. So we’ve 
extended our reporting to ten of our main markets, covering 70% of 
our people.
A summary of our gender pay statistics:
•	
The median gender pay gap in the UK for the year to April 2020 is 
-6.1% at median and 5.1% at mean.
•	
This compares to the year to April 2019, when the gender pay gap 
was -3.8% at median and 6.8% at mean.

49
Reckitt  Inclusion – insight 2020
Inclusion continued
The table below sets out our additional voluntary disclosure for our other 
largest markets: 
Gender pay gap1
Mean 
difference
Median 
difference 
Brazil
-7.0%
-22.7%
China
11.6%
11.7%
India2
-167.8%
-148.5%
Indonesia
20.5%
10.7%
Mexico
-0.8%
-41.6%
Poland
9.1%
0.4%
Russia
18.6%
5.2%
Thailand
30.2%
18.6%
US
0.7%
-11.4%
1.	A negative number represents a gender pay gap in favour of women.
2.	In India, 99% of our employees in manufacturing are male. The impact of these 
demographics has resulted in a significant median pay gap in favour of females.
Further data and information on the initiatives Reckitt is taking on 
diversity and inclusion are set out in our gender pay gap report.
Global parental leave and benefits
We want our people to be excited about starting or extending their 
families without having to worry about their role at work, or be uncertain 
about parental leave. In 2015, we were one of the pioneers of a global 
maternity leave policy. We enhanced this policy in 2019 by increasing fully 
paid maternity leave from 16 to 26 weeks, for anyone who has been with 
us for one year. Similarly, we offer four weeks of fully paid paternal leave 
with the option of four more weeks of unpaid leave. The same maternity 
and paternity arrangements apply to everyone, including those having a 
child through adoption or surrogacy, and for LGBTQ+ employees 
becoming parents. For returning mums, everyone (subject to local law) 
can join a Stay in Touch programme and ask for a return-to-work mentor 
who has also recently come back from maternity leave. 
Embracing diversity
Whilst we’ve made progress in improving our gender balance and 
developing talented women, we recognise that fostering a more diverse 
and inclusive culture at Reckitt is about much more than gender alone. 
Here are some of our highlights in 2020:
•	
In March, Reckitt Spain set up a diversity and inclusion committee. It 
has since collaborated with the NGO, Down Catalunya Foundation, to 
create a new sex education manual to empower young women with 
Down Syndrome.
•	
Reckitt Pakistan organised gender neutral restrooms.
•	
Reckitt Philippines included LGBTQ+ partners as dependents under its 
healthcare policy, as well as including HIV (and STDs) in the list of 
issues covered.
•	
Reckitt India won the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion award at the 
Global DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) Summit. This followed 
efforts including revised policies for paternity leave and creche 
support, management training on unconscious bias and a new 
Rediscover programme to invite women on career breaks back to 
work.
•	
More than 1,200 of our senior managers went through inclusive 
leadership training in 2020.
Looking ahead – 2021 and beyond
There are three other important actions which will help improve our 
progress in diversity and inclusion in the future. 
•	
First, we will continue to listen to all of our people through our 
channels such as the employee Glint survey. This will help us better 
understand what’s important to them in terms of diversity and 
inclusion. We will use these insights to frame what we think and do in 
the future. For example, in February 2021 we celebrated LGBTQ+ 
History Month, following feedback from our people that we could do 
more to support our LGBTQ+ colleagues. The dedicated focus across 
the month helped increase knowledge and empathy among our 
wider employee base.
•	
Second, we will continue to communicate our thoughts, concerns and 
progress in this area regularly with our people, through our senior 
leaders and global initiatives like Stronger Together. 
•	
And third, we will continue to ask more questions so we can measure 
our progress in inclusion. We’ve been focusing on how we should 
report our ethnicity data in the right way and we’ll be putting this into 
action this year. We’ll also begin to track progress on our new target 
of gender balance at all management levels by 2030, aiming for an 
equal split of men and women across our business.
Listening to our stakeholders 
Reporting effectively across our many sustainability issues and providing 
regular updates on our programmes and activities is always a work in 
progress. So we appreciate your feedback – what should we keep doing, 
and where can we do better?
Email us at sustainability@reckitt.com.
Or write to:
The Sustainability team
Reckitt Benckiser Group plc (Reckitt)
103–105 Bath Road
Slough
Berkshire 
SL1 3UH
UK

50
Reckitt  Health, safety and wellbeing – insight 2020
HEALTH, SAFETY 
AND WELLBEING
As an employer of over 43,500 people around 
the world, we’re proud of the standards we 
set and the care we take over the health, 
safety and wellbeing of everyone who works 
with us – whether they’re full-time, part-time  
or contractors. 
Our approach to health, safety and wellbeing
Today, health and safety means much more than simply reducing 
workplace accidents and employee illnesses – it’s also about 
safeguarding and enhancing our people’s wellbeing. And with wellbeing 
and self-care at the heart of our purpose as we work to protect, heal and 
nurture for a cleaner and healthier world, it makes sense that we must 
also support our people’s mental health and wellness.
We want all our employees, wherever they are in the world, to 
experience the same high standards of health and safety. Our health and 
safety standards cover all of our sites in 190 different countries, setting 
the bar higher than local, national or regional laws. And, of course, safety 
hazards vary depending on whether our people are working from home, 
or at a commercial office, manufacturing facility, R&D lab or warehouse.
We’re making continuous improvements to strengthen our duty of care 
to our people across the world. This includes improving the robustness  
of our systems by investing in technology to improve how we report, 
manage and solve health and safety issues. We’re also continuing to 
embed our processes in order to deepen our people’s understanding 
and awareness of the precautions they need to take. We continue to 
both train our employees and give them the necessary tools to improve 
their health and safety at work.
Our duty of care to our people is also about improving resources to 
safeguard their wellbeing. With many more of our employees working 
from home this year due to COVID-19, the increased blurring between 
work and home life brought their wellbeing into sharp focus. We’ve 
invested in partnerships with world-leading health and wellbeing experts 
to share advice and tools, run seminars and build awareness of healthy 
living practices among our employees.
Health and safety performance
We continued to improve our health and safety performance this year. 
We had 36% fewer lost work day accidents compared with 2019.
Year 
TRFR
LWDAR
Total accidents
Actual lost 
work day 
accidents
2019†
0.19
0.076
181
74
2020†
0.14
0.050
132
47
We also saw a reduction in the number of accidents per 100,000 hours 
worked, by 26% compared to 2019, a 65% drop since 2013. 
It’s important to apply consistent and recognisable health and safety 
standards across Reckitt. We use the globally recognised safety 
certification, ISO 45001 to audit our manufacturing sites, because we 
believe it complements our existing health and safety internal audit 
programme and governance processes. This has seen us evolving  
our standards from OHSAS 18001 to ISO 45001. In 2020, 96% of our 
manufacturing sites were accredited to this international and 
independent certification standard.
Our performance in 2020
Aim
Continued 
reduction of 
lost work day 
accident rate 
(LWDAR)
Aim
All 
manufacturing 
sites to be 
covered by 
Group 
certification  
to IS0 45001
†	 Assured by ERM CVS as part of their limited assurance scope; for details, see our 
Sustainability governance, reporting and assurance insight. 
Note: All accident reporting KPIs are based on 100,000 hours worked
2020
53%
†
reduction in 
LWDAR since 
2012
2020
96%
of 
manufacturing 
sites covered 
by Group 
certification  
to ISO 45001
Aim
Continued 
reduction of 
total recordable 
frequency rate 
(TRFR)
2020
65%
†
reduction in 
TRFR since 2013
  Total Recordable Frequency Rate (TRFR)
  Lost Work Day Accident Rate (LWDAR)
0.40
0.30
0.20
0.0
0.10
0.50
2016
2015
2014
2013
2020
2018
2019
2017
Reckitt accident performance

51
Reckitt  Health, safety and wellbeing – insight 2020
Health, safety and wellbeing continued
Health and safety performance over time
This table lays out our health and safety performance since 2012. Please note, we make some assumptions when calculating working hours (used for 
our LWDAR data) which are outlined in our Reporting Criteria and Basis of Preparation.
Metric
Units
20121
20131
20141
20151
2016
20172
20183
20193
20203†
Change  
vs 2012 
Lost workday  
accident rate (LWDAR)4
per  
100,000 hours
0.107
0.107
0.093
0.080
0.084
0.121
0.084
0.076
0.050
-53%
Employee fatalities
Number
1
0
0
1
2
0
1
0
0
–
Contractor fatalities
Number
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
–
Severe accidents5
Number
1
1
2
3
1
2
4
3
0
–
1	 Assured by EY in 2012–2015.
2	Assured by PwC in 2016 and 2017.
3	Assured by ERM CVS in 2018,2019 and 2020 see our Governance, Reporting and Assurance Insight for further information.
4	At manufacturing, warehouse and R&D commercial sites, resulting in at least one day of lost time, per 100,000 hours worked. LWDAR 2018–2020 also includes organised travel.
5	A severe accident is a permanent disability, including loss of sensory motor dexterity: e.g. loss of a fingertip.
†	 Assured by ERM CVS as part of their limited assurance scope; for details, see our Sustainability governance, reporting and assurance insight.
2020 highlights
Health and safety
Our accident rates continued to improve in 2020 despite our 
manufacturing operations having to meet increased global demand for 
some of our products because of COVID-19. Many sites had extra people 
to support increased production of important antibacterials such as 
Dettol and Lysol in response to the pandemic. Highlights include:
•	
Creating the Global Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) Centre of 
Excellence – we strengthened the collaboration and communication 
of our environmental, health and safety teams across the world with a 
new virtual hub for our EHS employees.
•	
Establishing a new virtual EHS network that uses video conferencing 
technology to connect all 150+ EHS employees so they can share 
relevant content such as new legislation or new standard operating 
procedures (SOPs).
•	
Launching a global EHS intranet page that enables EHS teams to share 
resources such as policies, videos and posters.
•	
Holding regular virtual town halls and webinars where EHS senior 
management share best practice, case studies and news.
•	
Revising our EHS standards into interactive PDFs so that they’re more 
engaging and user-friendly for employees. The new format has more 
functionality, like scoring. With ten completed so far, we’ll continue to 
roll these out in 2021.
New ways of working in health and safety
This year, we introduced some new ways of working, some of which 
were in response to COVID-19:
•	
Risk profiling our auditing programme so that we can focus on  
higher risk areas in our manufacturing and R&D sites. This means  
we allocate our resources more efficiently and audit high-risk sites 
more frequently.
•	
Using mobile and video technology meant our teams could conduct 
virtual audits even during the COVID-19 travel bans.
•	
Holding regular EHS governance calls that allow our regional teams  
to share global and local health and safety issues. This frequent 
discussion is particularly important to keep up to date with changing 
rules.
•	
Introducing a new self-taught safety training module for staff at our 
Sitarganj site in India, some of whom were working from home due  
to COVID-19. Alongside this, we provided extra learning and a weekly 
assessment via a mobile messaging app group.
•	
Launching a global online reporting tool and mobile app that makes  
it easier and faster for employees to report potential issues.
Boosting awareness of health and safety 
Technology and data gathering is only part of the solution. We also need 
to continue to make sure that our employees are engaged, mindful and 
knowledgeable about health and safety.
•	
Creating a new global framework that provides a roadmap to develop 
the skills in our EHS teams to encourage career development. It 
outlines how employees can move from one role to another with the 
expectations, knowledge and experience needed for each role.
Wellbeing
If we can empower our employees to be their best more of the time, 
they can perform better at work and at home, and feel better about life 
in general. Highlights include:
•	
Expanding our global, comprehensive wellbeing strategy, which is 
based on four categories: physical, emotional, financial and 
community. 
•	
Partnering with two global wellbeing specialists to work alongside 
our Global Head of Wellbeing to support and share wellbeing 
resources such as Headspace, the meditation app.
•	
Running a series of global education initiatives featuring external 
speakers to share wisdom and top tips on issues like sleep, nutrition, 
exercise and managing your energy.

52
Reckitt  Health, safety and wellbeing – insight 2020
Liveyourbest 
Our four pillars
LIVEYOURBEST  
Inspiring a happier and healthier life
Emotional
•	
Mental health
•	
Headspace and 
resilience
•	
Work/life balance
•	
Mindset and leadership
Financial
•	
Financial education
•	
Financial planning
•	
Minimum wage 
and benefits
Community
•	
Give Time initiative
•	
Connecting 
people with issues 
that matter
•	
Building internal and 
external social and 
professional networks
Physical
•	
Brain and energy
•	
Nutrition and the 
psychology of food
•	
Sleep
•	
Environment, 
movement and exercise
Health, safety and wellbeing continued
Despite COVID-19, in 2020 we did this by:
•	
Running virtual training through town halls and webinars. We also 
released new eLearning modules to make sure the global pandemic 
didn’t stall our progress. 
•	
Delivering three virtual training sessions on accident investigation for 
European and global teams, with plans to roll this out in Asia in 2021, 
and three sessions on machine safety for the engineering and facility 
teams as well as the health and safety community.
•	
Coaching and training our teams virtually on how to manage  
accident investigations. 
•	
Introducing a monthly health and safety update called Safety Tips. 
These regular, topical tips offer simple advice and guidance for site 
teams to review, share and discuss. 
•	
Improving our behavioural safety campaign and Safety Observation 
Programme, giving employees access to our global online reporting 
tool and mobile app to simplify, speed up and encourage reporting. 
•	
Welcoming three graduates to the safety team for six-month 
placements as part of our three-year UK graduate scheme.  
We hope this will embed safety in other functions as the graduates 
move into their permanent roles after completing the scheme.  
Boosting awareness of wellbeing 
We continue to raise employee awareness of the wellbeing resources 
we offer. The diagram below outlines our Liveyourbest programme.
C AS E S T U DY
KEEPING OUR PEOPLE SAFE: 
NAVIGATING OUR NEW 
NORMAL TOGETHER
We put the health and safety of our employees first following 
the outbreak of COVID-19. We swiftly launched a comprehensive 
guide to keep all our employees safe at work, whether on the 
frontline in our manufacturing sites or adjusting to the realities 
of home working. 
We followed five guiding principles – putting our people first; 
locally-led decisions to reopen; a phased and gradual return 
to the workplace; mutual accountability through involving our 
employees in the decision to return; and protecting our frontline. 
Our latest guide can be found here.

53
Reckitt  Health, safety and wellbeing – insight 2020
Health, safety and wellbeing continued
Reckitt markets access global resources and also develop their own 
initiatives to best support our people:
•	
Our UK-based healthcare division ran a wellbeing day to build 
awareness of healthy living practices through balanced diet, regular 
exercise and mental health support.
•	
Globally, we run Liveyourbest seminars on issues like sleep, nutrition, 
exercise and managing your energy.
•	
Local offices run their own initiatives to suit their people and working 
environment, on topics like exercise, sleep, and stress management 
through town halls, manager sessions and training sessions run by HR.
•	
We improved our facilities with an eye to wellbeing, for example by 
ensuring many of our sites have subsidised canteens with healthy 
food options, and we have a multi-faith and meditation room in Hull.
•	
Our global wellbeing hub and remote working hub offer employees 
relevant content and resources from podcasts to practical advice on 
meditation and comprehensive support on time management, for 
example (see case study on this page).
•	
This year, due to COVID-19, we moved our fitness, yoga and 
meditation classes online and launched new local activities from 
cook-alongs and stepathons to triathalons.
Managing health and safety
Our health and safety management systems are developed in line with 
our Occupational Health and Safety Policy, global standards, Code of 
Business Conduct and location-specific guidance. And we regularly 
review and revise our global standards. 
All our systems are independently verified via external health and safety 
audits, which we carry out at all sites on a three-year cycle. These audits 
generate detailed improvements when needed, which our sites then 
carry out with the support of our global health and safety team. For 
example, in 2020:
•	
We improved road safety at our sites in Tatabanya in Hungary and 
Hosur in India with speed bumps, safety barriers and speed 
restrictions. 
•	
In Cileungsi, Indonesia, we installed entry gates and additional CCTV 
around the site to improve security and help our incident 
investigations.
C AS E S T U DY
EMPLOYEE WELLBEING 
HUB: PROTECTING THE 
MENTAL WELLBEING  
OF OUR PEOPLE
With mental health under increasing pressure  
due to the pandemic, we wanted to support our 
employees. Drawing on insights from our employee 
survey, Glint, we hosted forums to normalise and 
destigmatise mental health by asking our Global 
Executive Committee members to share their own 
experiences. And our Global Executive Committee 
also contributed to our podcast series, which was 
downloaded over 2,000 times in its first month.  
We encourage the wider Reckitt community to  
get involved by submitting their own questions. 
Our global employee wellbeing hub is regularly 
updated with different resources and podcasts  
on mental health, with over 3,000 downloads to 
date. It also offered meditation from Headspace, 
the mindfulness app, and practical advice such  
as tips for coping with quarantine. Similarly,  
our remote working hub offered comprehensive 
support on working from home, sharing resources 
on team engagement, team meetings and  
time management.

54
Reckitt  Health, safety and wellbeing – insight 2020
Health, safety and wellbeing continued
Despite COVID-19, we audited 26 sites virtually using video and tablet 
technology. This means 96% of our manufacturing sites have now 
achieved ISO 45001 certification, up from 94% last year. We have two 
more sites left to audit, and aim to certify them in 2021, bringing our 
certification up to 100%.
Similarly, all Reckitt’s locations complete an annual health and safety 
assessment to make sure they’re working in line with our global 
standards. Our global health and safety audit programme then verifies 
the site’s self-assessment, examines the audit results and makes a call 
about how frequently the site needs to be audited in the future.
Listening to our people
Our Glint surveys, launched in 2020, are a new way to listen to our 
employees and better understand their wellbeing. Replacing the Culture 
Pulse survey, which focused on employee satisfaction, Glint also asks our 
people questions about wellness, mental health and other wellbeing 
issues. There were two general all-employee surveys and three that 
asked for specific, COVID-19 related responses during 2020. Reckitt 
scored highly on overall engagement. Over 70% of those surveyed 
responded, including a significant number of responses from our 
manufacturing employee base. The feedback showed a highly motivated 
workforce, strongly committed to our purpose. (Learn more about Glint in 
the Our people insight).
Supporting mental health
To support our people who are struggling, we continued to make our 
Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs) more consistent globally. We 
now have EAPs in each country. We also have a clear plan for people 
who need more support from a qualified line manager or HR colleague. 
We improved the mental health section on our intranet site by adding 
local mental health training for line managers and HR. This supplements 
last year’s training of 60 mental health first aiders from our UK business.
Working policies
We also support our employees’ wellbeing through our working policies 
and our parental leave provision. Highlighted by the pandemic, people 
increasingly want smarter, more flexible working practices. We’re 
addressing all of these areas in a spirit of continual improvement. And 
we’re interested in how flexible working might affect wellbeing and our 
culture.
Similarly, we recognise that some benefits are less resonant in a global 
pandemic. But they’re still important in the long term and can boost 
employees’ wellbeing. Our core benefits include global parental leave, an 
employee assistance programme, a global all-employee share plan, 
health insurance (where not provided by the state) and an international 
transfer policy. (More details on our benefits and policies can be found in 
the Our people insight.)
Work/life balance
For our employees, working from home brought different challenges for 
different groups. From working parents needing to homeschool or look 
after babies and toddlers with no childcare, to those living alone 
distanced from friends, family and colleagues. 
Our new working from home hub helped to share advice and encourage 
better habits with articles and tips and tricks forums. Listening to 
employee feedback from our Glint survey, we also established new rules. 
These included reducing meetings from one hour to 50 minutes to create 
some downtime as meetings increased. We’re also reviewing the timing 
of the start and end of the working day to take account of this 	
new normal. 
In 2020, to thank Reckitt employees for their hard work during our fight 
against COVID-19, we gave them two extra days of leave. 
Our focus for 2021 and beyond
It’s difficult to say what the world might look like after the global 
pandemic. But our five guiding principles will continue to inform our 
approach both for when employees return to work in the office, and in 
terms of protecting frontline staff in our manufacturing facilities. We 
believe there will be a phased return to the workplace with decisions 
made locally. 
Health and safety
In 2021, we’ll be looking to improve our health and safety processes so 
we can deepen our understanding of incidents. 
One of the ways we can do this is by taking full advantage of our 
environmental, health and safety technology. We’re already beginning to 
move away from physical audit forms to equivalents on mobile and tablet 
devices to boost efficiency. 
New tools and technology can improve how we report and analyse 
incidents, deepen understanding through risk prediction and therefore 
contribute to better performance. The more deeply we understand the 
reasons behind the incidents by spotting trends or commonalities, the 
more we can adapt our working practices to create an even safer 
environment.
Similarly, we don’t yet capture and analyse data around process safety, 
which are non-people related incidents. These might include spills of 
liquids or other materials. We’ll develop ways of monitoring and tracking 
these incidents.
At the moment we take a local-led approach to behavioural safety 
development, but we’re looking at how we can be more globally 
consistent to improve standards in some local sites. We know that safety 
isn’t simply about tools and policies, it’s also about encouraging a safety 
culture across the business. We plan to improve our Safety Culture 
assessment programme by developing a new auditing process that will 
look beyond legal compliance to measure the culture of our sites. 
Wellbeing
There is still much to do to make wellbeing a priority for all our people. 
Feedback from employees across all regions tells us that support and 
resources around resilience, mindfulness, sleep, nutrition and stress 
management would be popular. We will continue to address these 
issues. And we’ve introduced activities in Liveyourbest for these areas 
around mental wellbeing, plus pilot programmes including the launch of a 
social wellbeing platform in the US, Mexico, UK and India in 2021. 
Finally to make a meaningful difference, we need to be able to measure 
our employees’ health and wellbeing. It’s not easy. But one of our 
priorities in employee health this year is to identify these wellbeing 
metrics through our Glint survey so we can track our impact and 
progress. We’ll be looking to identify the key themes and links between 
wellbeing, engagement and performance. 
Listening to our stakeholders 
Reporting effectively across our many sustainability issues and providing 
regular updates on our programmes and activities is always a work in 
progress. So we appreciate your feedback – what should we keep doing, 
and where can we do better?
Email us at sustainability@reckitt.com.
Or write to:
The Sustainability team
Reckitt Benckiser Group plc (Reckitt)
103–105 Bath Road
Slough
Berkshire
SL1 3UH
UK

55
Reckitt  Partnering for social impact – insight 2020
PARTNERING FOR 
SOCIAL IMPACT 
Social impact lies at the heart of our fight to 
ensure access to the highest quality hygiene, 
wellness and nourishment is a right and not a 
privilege. We develop strong partnerships to 
empower people and invest in communities 
where we can make the most difference, 
in our pursuit of a cleaner, healthier world.
Everyday changes make a lifetime of difference
Through our brands and working hand-in-hand with our partners, we’re 
empowering people to make small changes in their daily lives that can 
transform the wellbeing of a whole community. To promote awareness 
for a cleaner, healthier world, our ambition is to reach half the world with 
our products and engage two billion people through our programmes, 
partnerships and campaigns. Our own impact is through our purpose-led 
brands, our business throughout our value chain and the partnerships and 
social investment we create, especially through our Fight for Access 
Fund. 
Our social investment programme focuses on projects where we can 
make a measurable, sustainable and meaningful difference. One such 
activity is Project Hope in Pakistan, where we train rural women as 
door-to-door ‘sehat aapas’ (‘health sister’ in Urdu) to encourage good 
habits like handwashing and boiling water, while selling a basket of 
Reckitt and partner health and hygiene products. Not only does this 
provide these women with a livelihood, it also helps them help others  
by improving the hygiene and health of their neighbours. Another 
example is our partnership with the United Negro College Fund in  
the US, in which we provide 100 four-year scholarships to students  
from marginalised communities.
Our brands can also contribute to the wider government and public 
health agenda. For example, Durex’s sexual health educational work in 
Thailand contributed around £122 million per annum to the government’s 
public health agenda by preventing, for example, sexually transmitted 
diseases. Similarly, an Oxford Economics study showed that we helped 
to reduce US national healthcare costs. Our self-care products mean that 
consumers can get treatment over the counter from their local pharmacy, 
for example, therefore saving $2.6 billion (£1.85 million) of clinicians’ time 
each year.
These projects are all partnerships for a reason: we can’t make the 
positive impact on people’s lives that we want to by working alone. 
We don’t have all the answers. That’s why we work closely with expert 
partners in local communities to change lives for the better, focusing on 
the three areas where we believe we can make the biggest difference:
•	
Clean water, hygiene and sanitation
•	
Sexual health and rights
•	
Maternal and child health.

56
Reckitt  Partnering for social impact – insight 2020
Partnering for social impact continued
Our progress in 2020
In 2020, we continued to evolve and improve our social impact 
programme, working with existing partners, and some new ones,  
so that we now have projects in 66 countries compared with 27 in 2018. 
These projects cover our three focus areas (see previous page).
In an extraordinary year, clean water, hygiene and sanitation took centre 
stage in the collective and urgent battle against the spread of COVID-19. 
Our total investment of £52.8 million in 2020 far exceeded our £12.2 
million investment in 2019. We’ve committed to allocating the equivalent 
of 1% of our annual adjusted operating profit every year. This target isn’t 
simply about a financial investment, but includes the work our brands are 
doing on the ground; the time our people volunteer; and the products 
we donate in emergencies.
Making a difference through the Fight for Access Fund
In March 2020, we launched our Fight for Access Fund, marking a new 
phase in our strategy to serve communities. We put this money to work, 
through our brands, on programmes that have a lasting, positive impact 
on people’s lives. Our fund is already helping to improve access to better 
health, hygiene and nutrition in a number of ways, like donating funds to 
organisations on the ground and providing education and information.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our immediate interventions were aimed 
at breaking the chain of infection and supporting people, including the 
most vulnerable, with access to vital health and hygiene products and 
resources. Reckitt’s support included product donations and media 
space donations to governments for public health ads; brand-led 
campaigns promoting the importance of good hygiene, handwashing 
and self-care; and supporting emergency relief organisations and 
on-the-ground partners. As a result, the 2020 performance figures on the 
right were higher than previous years. Consequently, the target ‘inform 
one billion people with health and hygiene messaging and behavioural 
change communications by 2025’ has now been reached, and the new 
target is included in our new 2030 strategic ambitions (see below). We’ve 
furthered our ambitions to create lasting impact and a fair, diverse and 
inclusive society as a responsible employer, and in our value chain.
Our strategic ambitions
By 2030 we pledge to:
•	
Engage two billion people with purpose ledge partnerships, 
programmes and campaigns to promote awareness for a cleaner, 
healthier world
•	
Deliver a lasting difference in communities through our Fight for 
Access Fund and programmes
•	
Donate one million volunteers by 2030.
Total investment 
£52.8m
(2019: £12.2m)
Additional funds leveraged 
 
£11.3m
(2019: £11.6m)
People who have experienced 
a measurable and sustained 
positive improvement in their 
lives (impact)
771,202
(2019: 596,268)
We’ve made significant progress against our previous 2025 targets due 
to Reckitt’s social impact initiatives and investments in 2020. Whilst the 
pandemic increased our investment and engagement within 
communities, many of our employees lived in lockdown so our 
volunteering time was less than in 2019. However, in 2020, Reckitt 
employees still gave 23,147 hours of support to good causes globally 
through our Give Time scheme. For more information, see page 5.
People engaged face-to-face 
(engage)
33.6m
(2019: 16.5m)
Total number of people 
informed through health 
and hygiene messaging 
and campaigns (inform)
457m 
†
(2019: 191m)
Combating COVID-19
In 2020, our immediate and urgent priority became the collective battle 
to stop the spread of COVID-19. £52.8 million from our Fight for Access 
Fund supported governments and frontline health workers in 66 
countries, primarily for COVID-19 support but also for our ongoing 
programmes. The fund also matched donations from our local markets 
provided they addressed an unmet need, linked to a brand, and were 
given to a recognised charity or government organisation. 
Our local countries donated to the cause in four different ways, through:
•	
Cash donations, including the purchase of essential PPE supplies
•	
Vital hygiene products such as Dettol and Lysol
•	
Time and expertise
•	
Media time and space for public health ads.
Many of our local markets donated their media spend. This was 
redirected away from Reckitt brand advertising to organisations making 
COVID-19 public health campaigns on TV, digital, print and outdoors. 
Donated media constitutes some of our 2020 numbers on informing one 
billion people through educational programmes and communications. 
Some of the donated media space was given to local governments;  
and we also helped amplify public health messaging through our own 
brand campaigns. 
2020 performance
†	 Assured by ERM CVS as part of their limited assurance scope; for details, see our 
Sustainability governance, reporting and assurance insight.

57
Reckitt  Partnering for social impact – insight 2020
Partnering for social impact continued
C AS E S T U DY
DISINFECT TO PROTECT 
FROM COVID-19
In Asia, Lysol and the Philippine Red Cross (PRC) joined forces to 
break the chain of COVID-19 infection by improving hygiene and 
boosting early diagnosis through our campaign, Disinfect to 
Protect. Lysol Philippines contributed PHP36 million (£560,000)  
to boost mass testing. Half of this donation built a mass testing 
facility, The Philippine Red Cross Molecular Laboratory. The other 
half supported a COVID-19 Samaritan fund that prioritises testing 
for 4,500 of the most vulnerable Filipinos including pregnant 
women, the elderly and those with pre-existing health 
conditions. Lysol supplemented this financial support with 
product donations to keep frontline health workers safe  
in the testing facilities and labs. 
For example, our TikTok Dettol #HandWashChallenge dance taught 
people to wash their hands correctly and has been viewed 125 billion 
times. Indeed, #HandWashChallenge was especially successful at 
spreading a vital public health message to a younger audience. Similarly, 
our public health information campaign through covid-19facts.com 
reached 38 million through social media and had 2.5 million users across 
20+ countries, helping to combat fake news on the virus. (See our 
Self-care insight paper for more on this.)
Examples of how we helped battle the spread of COVID-19 include: 
•	
Globally, we donated over 27 million products, including one million 
litres of Lizol and Harpic disinfectant for Indian hospitals, and 10 million 
bars of Dettol soap to vulnerable communities in India
•	
We donated over 15 million face masks to frontline workers across the 
world
•	
In China, we gave £6 million to support frontline workers in Wuhan 
with urgently needed medical equipment
•	
In the UK, we distributed 150,000 care packages to help frontline 
workers stay safe, and donated £1 million to help protect NHS workers 
with vital supplies
•	
We donated pre-purchased media space to the UK government to 
help amplify its public health messaging campaign
•	
Lysol provided $2 million (£1.4 million) in matched funding to the US 
Center for Disease Control (CDC) Foundation.
Fairness across the value chain
Our responsibility goes beyond our own employees and communities to 
people working in our value chains, even those not directly employed by 
us. Supporting human rights across our value chain is an important part of 
our community engagement. We want to ensure people have decent 
and sustainable livelihoods and good working conditions because this in 
turn will strengthen the health and wellness of their communities.
For example, our programmes help improve productivity for the 
smallholder farmers that provide us with natural raw materials, or 
recognise sustainably sourced suppliers with premium payments. You 
can read more about our approach in our Human rights and Ecosystems 
insights.
Looking ahead to 2021 and beyond
We’ll continue to work to meet our pledges through developing and 
growing our partnerships, while looking for new ways to solve the issues 
in our three focus areas. Our swift response to the COVID-19 emergency 
demonstrated that our purpose to provide health and hygiene protection 
has been effective. We know that we make a bigger difference when 
we work with our partners, rather than alone, and we’ll continue to grow 
our partnerships to make lives better. 
How we partner for social impact
As a company we’re judged on our results, and we expect the same from 
our social impact programmes. We want to invest in people, 
communities and countries where we can have the most impact. And we 
recognise that working in partnership creates wider resources, wider 
capabilities and creates greater change. 
We have robust processes to guide how we select new partners, design 
projects and measure the impact of our initiatives. And during COVID-19, 
despite our immediate and urgent response, we continued to maintain 
due diligence as we worked with our existing partners. 
We don’t compromise on standards of governance and the strict criteria 
from our 2019 governance plan applies to all our social impact 
partnerships. We measure the impact of every partnership against strict 
key performance indicators. We are guided by the London Benchmarking 
Group framework, the global standard for measuring companies’ social 
investment and impact. And a digital platform, the Goodera 
measurement system, tracks all our globally funded partnerships and 
reports their impact. The management overheads of our social impact 
programmes are £250,000. 
Our Social Impact Report details more of our programmes. We work 
hard to ensure we measure the impact of our initiatives as best we can. 
We want to both ensure we’re making a difference where it matters, but 
also to learn how we can strengthen our programmes and improve our 
performance.

58
Reckitt  Partnering for social impact – insight 2020
Partnering for social impact continued
Clean water, hygiene and sanitation projects
The issues of clean water, hygiene and sanitation are built into the DNA of 
our brands and business. And beyond our urgent activities to battle the 
spread of COVID-19, we’ve continued to promote handwashing and good 
sanitation as part of our longstanding social impact programmes across 
Africa, Asia and the Middle East. In some instances, these programmes 
have been adapted to include COVID-19 messaging. 
 
The Banega Swachh India (BSI) campaign
Our BSI campaign has been stressing the importance of hygiene as a 
foundation for health since 2014. The spread of COVID-19 through India 
added urgency to the programme:
•	
Since launch, BSI has changed the behaviour of over 13 million school 
children, reducing diarrhoea and improving school attendance.
•	
BSI launched ‘Healthily’, the digital self-care app, to empower families 
to treat some medical issues at home (see our Self-care insight).
•	
The campaign donated return-to-school kits with sanitiser, face 
masks and public health posters to over one million schools.
Harpic’s Mission Paani – India
Harpic’s partnership with India’s News 18 in 2020 served to highlight the 
water crisis with a nationwide publicity campaign to encourage water 
conservation. Over the past three years, it also set up community pilot 
programmes in some villages to construct and renovate water harvesting 
structures, which collect and store water from rainfall, swollen rivers and 
streams in monsoon season. In response to the pandemic, the partners 
launched the Swachhta aur Paani campaign in October. This emphasised 
the importance of maintaining clean water supplies for good hygiene.
Expanding our partnership with water.org into Kenya
In Kenya, where we’ve led handwashing campaigns to encourage good 
hygiene for many years, the biggest obstacle has always been access  
to clean, safe water supplies. In 2020, we extended our longstanding 
partnership with water.org into Kenya, donating KSh69 million (£460,000) 
from our Fight for Access Fund. This funding will enable water.org to help 
68,000 Kenyans living in poverty over the next two years to access safer 
water and sanitation.
Lysol’s Here for Healthy Schools Program in the US
Over the next three years, Lysol will invest over $20 million (£14.3 million) 
to expand its Here for Healthy Schools Program. By 2022, it aims to reach 
15 million school children in 58,000 ‘Title 1’ schools across the US, which 
often serve low-income families. Lysol’s initiative provides educational 
resources to support the reopening of schools and encourage children  
to learn healthy habits to protect against the spread of germs.
Sexual health and rights projects
Through our brand, Durex, we have a longstanding commitment to 
combating HIV and AIDS, which is a particular challenge in Africa. 
Here are just some of 2020’s social impact programmes.
UNAIDS
We partnered with the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS 
(UNAIDS) to protect people with HIV and AIDS during the pandemic. 
We used the UNAIDS network to distribute hygiene packs to around 
220,000 people across Africa containing a three-month supply of  
Dettol soap and JIK bleach.
Keeping Girls in School
The existing Durex partnership with (RED) and Global Fund in South Africa 
continues its great work in keeping girls in school. To date, the programme 
has had a positive impact on 54,410 girls’ lives, provided 75,284 HIV tests 
and distributed 372,829 condoms to young men and women. 
This initiative to keep girls in education is match-funded by the Bill  
and Melinda Gates Foundation. The $10 million (£7.1 million) programme 
aims to reduce new HIV infections in young women, reduce teenage 
pregnancies, improve access to sexual reproductive health services  
and encourage girls and young women to stay in school. 
Maternal and child health projects
For building long-term health, we believe the first 1,000 days of life 
– from conception and gestation in the womb up to a child’s second 
birthday – are critical. For this reason, we support a number of different 
initiatives including the following.
Best Start in Life
In China, we doubled our existing partnership with China Children and 
Teenager Fund (CCTF) to provide $10 million (£7.1 million) by 2025. The 
Best Start in Life programme provides vital advice and nutrition packs for 
pregnant mothers, monitors their health during pregnancy and encourages 
exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life. It continues to be 
particularly important to support expectant mothers throughout the 
pandemic and lockdowns.

59
Reckitt  Partnering for social impact – insight 2020
Partnering for social impact continued
We’re hoping that this programme will help to break the cycle of 
malnutrition in the remote western regions of China. One common and 
damaging side effect of poor nutrition is when a child’s height falls too 
far below the healthy average for their age, leading to health problems. 
This condition affects over eight million children in China. We’re working 
with rural hospitals, training 5,000 professionals in local maternal and child 
healthcare centres to reduce the prevalence of this condition by 50–80% 
by 2022.
Following the success of our programme in China, we rolled out similar 
initiatives to support mothers and children in their first 1,000 days in 
Mexico, Thailand, India and the Philippines.
Finding new ways to volunteer during the pandemic
Another way we make a positive social impact is through our employees’ 
volunteering time and expertise to needy causes. Although the COVID-19 
pandemic made volunteering much more difficult this year, our people 
rose to the challenge and found entrepreneurial ways to give time 
virtually instead. Some spoke to elderly and vulnerable people on the 
phone, helping to alleviate loneliness and isolation. Others wrote letters 
to key workers, carers and health professionals to thank them for their 
important contribution during COVID-19. 
Give Time
Our employee volunteer programme, Give Time, offers Reckitt people, all 
around the world, the chance to work within their communities for two 
paid volunteer days per year. In 2020, Reckitt employees gave 23,147 
hours of support to good causes globally through this scheme. By 
donating skills, expertise and time they were able to add real value to 
issues close to their hearts.
Raleigh International
There is also an opportunity for Reckitt people to volunteer on a 
longer-term basis through our 13-week programme in partnership with 
Raleigh International. In the beginning of 2020, before the spread of 
COVID-19, four Reckitt employees managed teams of young volunteers in 
rural community projects in Nepal, Tanzania and Costa Rica. This brings 
together young leaders with local communities to build long-lasting, 
positive initiatives such as replanting forests and constructing toilets and 
handwashing facilities in schools. 
Lead 2030
Formed by One Young World, Lead 2030 is the world’s biggest prize for 
young leaders making an impact on the UN’s Sustainable Development 
Goals (SDGs). Reckitt volunteers provided online mentorship for young 
people seeking funding for their social enterprises. Our mentors shared 
practical and business tips to help them develop marketing strategies, 
e-commerce platforms and other key resources for their business plans.
Listening to our stakeholders 
Reporting effectively across our many sustainability issues and providing 
regular updates on our programmes and activities is always a work in 
progress. So we appreciate your feedback – what should we keep doing, 
and where can we do better? 
 
Email us at sustainability@reckitt.com. 
 
Or write to: 
The Sustainability team 
Reckitt Benckiser Group plc (Reckitt) 
103–105 Bath Road 
Slough
Berkshire
SL1 3UH
UK

60
Reckitt  A responsible approach across our global value chain – insight 2020
3,413 raw and 
packaging 
material 
supplier sites in 
67 countries
Primary 
transport 
(freight in)
Natural raw 
material supply 
chain
53 factories 
in 30 countries
283 third-party 
manufacturing 
sites in 
44 countries
236 distribution/ 
embellishment 
centres in 
55 countries
Secondary 
transport 
(freight out)
People 
purchasing over 
20 million 
products a day
A RESPONSIBLE 
APPROACH ACROSS OUR 
GLOBAL VALUE CHAIN 
Our responsibilities start right at the origins of the raw materials in our 
products, and end only with a product’s use by consumers. The starting 
point could be on a tiny rubber tree smallholding in Thailand producing 
what will eventually become latex in Durex condoms, or an Irish 
family-owned dairy farm which supplies milk for our Enfa infant formula. 
We also think about the working practices of our suppliers and business 
partners, and the human rights of people who work for them. That goes 
for our own manufacturing operations, too, and the communities around 
them. And it goes for the standards followed by our customers, from 
global retailers, to small independent stores and e-commerce networks. 
It also includes the way our products are distributed, used by consumers 
around the world and eventually disposed of.
All these factors affect the environmental footprint of our products. As 
we design new products and packaging, we’re taking them into account 
to reduce the carbon and water footprint while progressively making 
sure they reflect the need for consumers to use energy or water when 
they use our products. In the longer term, and even now in some cases, 
such as in water scarce countries, this may be critical to how well our 
products fare in the marketplace and how well we service the needs of 
consumers around the world. 
We know it’s a large and complex task to measure and understand the 
impact our value chain has, and could have. We also know there’s a lot 
still to do. But we know the work makes a difference to tackling global 
challenges like widespread biodiversity loss, climate change and the 
rights of some of the poorest workers in society. It also has benefits for 
Reckitt. This care for the value chain is more essential than ever to the 
long-term strength and success of our purpose-led brands. Today, 
everyone is paying ever closer attention to how businesses like Reckitt 
conduct themselves, how we contribute to tackling global issues and 
how we set ourselves and our brands up to be resilient and successful in 
the future. And how we measure up has a direct effect on our reputation 
and success.
Here, we lay out our global value chain and how we aim to manage it 
sustainably by protecting its ecosystems and the human rights of people 
living and working in it.
We have a responsibility to map, monitor and 
manage the impact we make across our value 
chain. To this end, we’re developing ways of 
measuring every aspect to make sure we,  
our suppliers and their suppliers stick to our 
values and standards. 
Our product value chain

61
Reckitt  A responsible approach across our global value chain – insight 2020
1%
Oceania
9%
South 
America
3%
Africa
4%
Middle East
5%
Central 
America
33%
Asia
33%
Europe
12%
North America
A responsible approach across our global value chain continued
OUR SIX PRINCIPLES
We believe we can make a positive, long-lasting difference 
by focusing on: 
1.	 Transparency and traceability 
2. 	Safeguarding the human rights of people throughout our 
value chain 
3. 	Protecting biodiversity and ecosystems 
4. 	Reducing environmental impacts 
5. 	Animal welfare 
6. 	Partnerships to help deliver impact and scale
Find out more about each area in these insights: Human 
rights and responsible business throughout our value chain, 
Protecting ecosystems, Product stewardship, Climate, 
Water, and Social impact. For more on how we support  
our own people, see our insight: Our people.
Working with our suppliers 
Good relationships with our suppliers are the bedrock of everything 
we’re trying to achieve. We choose suppliers based on quality, cost, 
location and how they follow our policies and standards, including our 
Human Rights and Responsible Business and Responsible Sourcing of 
Natural Raw Materials policies and standards. They range from large, 
multinational companies with their own business and ethical conduct 
programmes, to small local businesses, often in emerging markets, and 
many have good working practices despite a lack of formal programmes. 
Many of our relationships with suppliers are direct. But even here, it can 
sometimes be hard to gauge the effect we have on natural and human 
ecosystems. For latex, for example, it means assessing our suppliers but 
also the farmers who tap the liquid latex from the rubber trees on their 
plantations. The success of their farms is depends on their productivity 
– how much latex they can tap and how much they get paid for it. World 
prices have been low and this create challenges for farmers at a basic 
level to support their families. We’ve been working with the farming 
communities through our partner, Earthworm Foundation, to help 
strengthen farm productivity and create more ways to strengthen 
livelihoods. This year we’re going further by introducing our Fair Rubber 
commitment. This provides latex farmers in Thailand with a price 
premium that supports their livelihoods. It helps farmers with a more 
sustainable livelihood and also sustains the supply of latex we depend 
on. We’re also working with the farmers to reinforce sustainable farming 
principles and even improve the quality of latex so that, in the future,  
they can supply more. 
In other cases, where we don’t work with farmers or growers directly,  
we must understand the origins of our ingredients. This is particularly 
important with fragrances, where we work with specialist developers 
who create fragrances using botanicals from all over the world. Whether 
it’s Moroccan geraniums or lavender grown in southern France, we need 
to be sure we understand the ultimate source. 
Some of the places from which we source our natural raw materials have 
less formal supply chains, dominated by smallholder farms. Establishing 
traceability here is more difficult, but it matters just as much. It also 
means we can help support farmers’ livelihoods where we need to. 
We currently back smallholder farmer programmes in Malaysia, Indonesia 
and Thailand.
Global distribution of Reckitt’s manufacturing facilities,  
direct suppliers and third-party distribution and 
embellishment centres

62
Reckitt  A responsible approach across our global value chain – insight 2020
A responsible approach across our global value chain continued
When we design our products, we use our Sustainable Innovation 
Calculator to consider their overall environmental footprint. This means 
we can progressively design products to reduce their carbon and water 
footprints, considering each stage of the value chain, from ingredients all 
the way through to consumer use. Selecting different ingredients and 
packaging, or designing a product to be used by consumers in a different 
way, helps reduce the environmental footprint. This contributes to our 
ambition to be carbon neutral by 2040. For more information on our 
approach, see our Sustainable innovation insight. 
Listening to our stakeholders 
Reporting effectively across our many sustainability issues and giving 
regular updates on our programmes and activities is always a work in 
progress. So we appreciate your feedback. What should we keep doing? 
And where can we do better? 
Email us at sustainability@reckitt.com. 
Or write to: 
The Sustainability team 
Reckitt Benckiser Group plc (Reckitt) 
103–105 Bath Road 
Slough
Berkshire
SL1 3UH
UK
Understanding the risks in our supply chain 
We’ve examined our operation and our suppliers to spot the biggest risks 
to human rights, health and safety, and environmental and business 
integrity. With help from experts inside and outside our business,  
we’ve looked at factors including country of operation, the commodity 
supplied and the sector’s profile. 
Based on that, the risks we focus on most are: 
•	
Working hours
•	
Fair wages
•	
Health, safety and environment
•	
Freedom from forced labour
•	
Freedom of association
•	
Gender, diversity and inclusion
•	
Effective grievance mechanisms
•	
Access to water and sanitation
•	
Sexual health and rights
•	
Access to health, hygiene and nutritional products
•	
Marketing practices
•	
Product safety
•	
Data privacy.
As well as these risks, we focus on particular countries and regions: 
Malaysia and the Middle East, which have large numbers of migrant 
workers; and Africa and Asia, where understanding of labour rights is less 
developed and enforcement is weak. 
Certain kinds of suppliers represent a high risk, too, including third-party 
manufacturers, embellishers, distribution centres and some raw and 
packaging material suppliers, mainly in Latin America, the Middle East, 
Africa, North and South Asia. These are a priority for our programmes to 
audit and monitor suppliers and develop their capabilities. 
To help, we keep up to date with research from external sources and 
work with NGOs and peers to better understand key risks and how best 
to deal with them.
We take a similar approach when it comes to the natural raw materials 
we use and the value chains they’re part of. We look at risks to the 
ecosystems themselves, like deforestation, water scarcity and intensive 
farming. Also, many people live and work in these ecosystems, and 
depend on them. So we also consider their human rights, and those of 
their communities.
We currently focus on five raw materials as a priority: 
•	
Palm oil – in Southeast Asia, we’re working with suppliers and 
partners to monitor deforestation and establish which most need 
conservation efforts. We’re also establishing traceability to the mills 
and plantations and safeguarding workers and ecosystems, often 
through partnerships.
•	
Latex – we’re improving standards for plantation workers and 
smallholders’ livelihoods in South East Asia, as well as protecting 
ecosystems through our partnerships such as Earthworm Foundation.
•	
Dairy – most of our dairy farming suppliers are in western Europe, 
Australia, New Zealand and the US. Here, we focus on animal welfare 
and effective environmental action through the Sustainable Dairy 
Partnership (SDP).
•	
Natural fragrance – working through partnerships with suppliers, we 
focus on traceability in informal supply chains to protect ecosystems. 
This can be challenging because infrastructure and support are 
limited. 
•	
Timber – used in our paper and cardboard for packaging, timber  
can be from many sources. So we use internationally accepted 
certification schemes to combat deforestation. We also use recycled 
paper to reduce the amount of virgin paper from newly-cut forest 
plantations. 
We’re embedding our policies and standards with the suppliers of these 
priority materials. This helps make sure our business is equipped to 
source natural materials that will bring sustainable benefits to the whole 
value chain, as well as to our consumers. For more information on these 
raw materials, see our Protecting ecosystems in our value chain insight.

63
Reckitt  Human rights across our value chain – insight 2020
HUMAN RIGHTS 
ACROSS OUR  
VALUE CHAIN
Supporting the rights of people in our value chain isn’t just vital to running 
a sustainable business. It’s also the right thing to do. This impulse sits at 
the heart of all we do, alongside our purpose to protect, heal and nurture 
in the relentless pursuit of a cleaner, healthier world.
Our global value chain involves an enormous range of people. They could 
work directly for us, or for our suppliers, producing goods or providing 
services. Or they could be far upstream in our supply chain, farming the 
raw materials we use. Our impact also reaches into the surrounding 
communities and extends to the consumers who use our products.
It’s essential for us to identify and address the impact on human rights 
across our value chain, putting right problems where we can and working 
with others where we can’t deliver change alone.
Good working conditions and labour practices are fundamental to this 
work. Practices like charging workers recruitment fees and demanding 
they give up their passports can’t be part of our supply chain, and we  
do all we can to prevent them. In recent years, we’ve focused most on 
sectors and regions where the risk of human rights infringements is 
greatest. But with audit and engagement programmes firmly in place, 
we’re now broadening the scope of what we do so that we can cover 
a growing number of lower-risk suppliers too. We’re also expanding our 
due diligence into our indirect supply chain, including contract labour, 
promotional goods, haulage and shipping.
Increasingly, we’re taking a broader view of human rights. Our fight to 
make access to the highest quality hygiene, wellness and nourishment 
a right, not a privilege, reflects this. We’ve invested in internal resources, 
including regional human rights managers covering Asia, the Middle  
East and Africa. And since 2017, we’ve trained 98%† of management 
employees assigned the training on human rights. This helps knowledge 
of human rights issues permeate how we think and work day to day.
Many of the issues central to our work on human rights are complex  
and culturally deep-rooted. We prioritise people who are especially 
vulnerable, like children and migrant workers. Where they face 
exploitation and discrimination, this is often part and parcel of long-
established employment practices and business behaviour, and in many 
cases quite legal. These are issues not just for us, but for industries, 
nations and the world as a whole. We can’t fix them with instant 
measures. Instead, we work with partners, NGOs and governments,  
and stay close to our suppliers to find the most practical, equitable 
answers that bring progressive change.
Our brands, operations and business 
relationships touch millions of people around 
the world. We want to make sure their human 
rights are respected, from their working 
conditions to their access to health, nutrition 
and hygiene products. So we make a 
worldwide effort with our suppliers and 
partners to see that this happens.
We strive to understand the socio-economic forces at work across our 
supply chain and how they shape the actions of the people they touch. 
This lets us make interventions to sustain livelihoods, which keep our 
supply chain resilient. Ultimately, this is sound business. If we support a 
smallholder, it maintains the quality of the raw materials they supply to us. 
If we take steps to make sure people work a manageable number of 
hours a week for a fair wage, they’re likely to be more productive. And 
facilities they work in are less likely to suffer down time.
For more on our global value chain and how we manage it, see our 
Responsible approach across our global value chain insight. Our work on 
human rights links to how we protect ecosystems and communities – 
see our Protecting ecosystems across our value chain insight. And find 
out more about how we support our employees in Our people and 
Inclusion insights.

64
Reckitt  Human rights across our value chain – insight 2020
Human rights across our value chain continued
HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2020
Progressing despite COVID-19
We have a critical role to play in tackling the direct and 
indirect impacts of COVID-19 across our value chain by:
•	
Making sure consumers have access to products that 
break the chain of infection
•	
Protecting the health and safety of our people
•	
Safeguarding the rights and wellbeing of people  
in our supply chain.
Visits to factories, plantations and other sites are an 
important way for us to find out more about human rights 
issues in our supply chain, and improve our suppliers’ 
capabilities. COVID-19 posed our programmes a clear 
challenge in 2020, as it stopped us making these visits. But 
our regional human rights managers have good relationships 
with suppliers and know their standards well. So we’ve been 
able to respond by conducting remote audits, including virtual 
tours, interviews and document-checking. That’s let us carry 
on due diligence work and make sure workers’ rights are 
respected, as well as supporting suppliers. We also brought in 
25 new suppliers to meet higher demand for our hygiene 
products. 
We audited 179 suppliers in 2020, with 67% (117) achieving a 
pass rating – an improvement of 16% on 2019. Also, we’re 
seeing tangible improvements in standards at suppliers we’ve 
supported for a number of years, with the pass rate increasing 
from 31% to 69% since their first audit.
†	 Assured by ERM CVS as part of their limited assurance scope; for details, see 
our Sustainability governance, reporting and assurance insight.
Broadening work, deepening partnerships
In 2020, we added 82 higher-risk raw and packaging material suppliers to 
our programme. We continued our raw and packaging material supplier 
audit programme by auditing 71 sites primarily across China, India, 
Thailand and Brazil. We’ll also continue to support the raw and packaging 
material suppliers we assessed in 2020 by building their capability and 
sharing best practice. 
In 2020, we also started to review and risk-assess our indirect supply 
chain to better understand and define how we can increase human 
rights engagement in 2021.
We continued our partnership with the Danish Institute for Human Rights 
(DIHR), which is helping us evolve our human rights programme, gather 
valuable information and shape our priorities for action. In particular, we 
worked with the institute to identify human rights impacts across the 
whole value chain in Thailand for Durex condoms and Enfa infant  
formula (see case study on this page).
In March 2020, we joined the Consumer Goods Forum (CGF)’s Human 
Rights Coalition of Action – Working to end Forced Labour. It aims to 
advance the CGF’s Forced Labour Resolution and Priority Industry 
Principles, in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and  
Human Rights (UNGPs). Members act individually or together through 
business and supply chains to target forced labour and support 
responsible recruitment.
We’ve broadened our natural raw materials agenda to look beyond our 
main ingredients (latex, palm oil and timber). We’re also tackling 
ingredients in fragrances, surfactants (used in detergents) and dairy for 
our infant nutrition brands. We’ll carry on expanding our policies to focus 
on the materials with the highest human rights and ecosystems risks. See 
more in our Protecting ecosystems across our value chain insight.
Finally, we conducted a pilot with BetterBuying, an initiative focusing on 
good purchasing practices that will change relationships between buyers 
and their suppliers, to examine the impact of our purchasing practices on 
the financial, environmental and social sustainability of our suppliers. This 
will help us understand where we need to improve our buying practices 
to create stronger, mutually beneficial partnerships with suppliers.
C AS E S T U DY
GAUGING THE ECONOMIC 
IMPACT OF DUREX CONDOMS 
IN THAILAND
After assessing the human rights impacts of our Durex and  
Enfa value chains in Thailand with the Danish Institute for Human 
Rights, we wanted to understand our positive and negative 
impact in economic terms. So we partnered with the 
consultancy Route2 to assess the total economic contribution 
of our Durex condom value chain in Thailand. Here are the 
highlights:
Our total economic contribution to Thailand through sourcing, 
manufacturing and using Durex condoms in 2019 was 
£142 million. 
•	
Sourcing – our supply chain procurement activity generated 
a value of £3.8 million, amounting to £0.11 for every £1 we 
spend. We also created 2,790 jobs in our supply chain.
•	
Manufacturing – our own factory and commercial operations 
related to Durex condoms generated a value of £16.4 million. 
The biggest positive impact was through local employment 
(£1.1 million), vocational qualifications (£1.4 million) and 
training (£1.1 million).
•	
Consumer use – the biggest contribution came from people 
using Durex condoms, which generated £122 million of value: 
£12.5 million in avoided STI/STD wellbeing and healthcare 
costs, £95.8m in avoided deaths from diseases like HIV and 
£13.4 million from avoided unplanned pregnancies and 
abortions. This is equivalent of £1.75 a year for every person 
in Thailand or £103.19 a year for consistent condom users.
•	
Brand partnerships – by supporting the Planned Parenthood 
Association of Thailand (PPAT)’s programme of sexual health 
initiatives to Thai and Myanmar workers in Thailand’s natural 
rubber supply chain, we reached 1,883 people, creating 
a total benefit of £74,609, with a benefit to each person 
worth between £17 and £872.

65
Reckitt  Human rights across our value chain – insight 2020
Human rights across our value chain continued
Human Rights Due Diligence Process
In addition to our traditional direct and indirect suppliers, all significant 
investment agreements (greater than £50 million) undergo a due 
diligence analysis of human rights. This is conducted mainly through our 
manufacturing due diligence and factory visits. On the rare occasions 
that access to a facility is not possible, due diligence is carried out by 
accessing publicly available information on the Company’s human  
rights performance.
Our focus for 2021 and beyond
We’re increasingly focusing on understanding our societal impact, 
creating a framework to capture what we learn, and developing 
programmes to deal with issues we discover. We’re implementing the 
recommendations that came out of our work with the Danish Institute for 
Human Rights (DIHR) in 2019. This includes publishing our human rights 
impact assessment (HRIA) from Thailand, and running assessments in 
other countries and contexts. 
The study in Thailand was our first country-level human rights impact 
assessment, examining the value chain for our Durex and Enfa brands. 
Alongside our report with DIHR from 2019, it’s given us a valuable 
perspective on human rights issues in our value chain. It’s also given us a 
list of priorities to work on.
Now that we’ve identified our salient human rights impacts (see next 
page), we can frame our human rights ambitions for the future. We’ll 
maintain our audit programme but continue to expand our work to 
embed human rights, develop activity throughout our value chain and 
measure the impact of our work.
Our ambitions are to:
•	
Embed the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights into 
our business, implementing the recommendations from the DIHR’s 
corporate gap analysis
•	
Conduct human rights assessments for the ten highest-risk markets 
by 2030 and establish country-level human rights governance 
mechanisms
•	
Tackle our salient human rights issues
•	
Train 100% of our employees on human rights by 2025
•	
Publicly report on progress in line with UNGP guidelines by 2022.
GOING BEYOND AUDIT TO TREAT 
SUPPLIERS AS PARTNERS
C AS E S T U DY
We’ve noticed that auditing our 
suppliers’ approach to human rights 
doesn’t always lead to lasting 
improvement. In many cases, we’ve 
audited suppliers again and again, 
only to see the same issues 
appearing. 
Suppliers don’t always have the 
capabilities or resources to spot 
and understand the root causes of 
issues, or grasp the changes it will 
take to stop them. So they need 
support to build their 
understanding and boost their 
performance.
Our Capability Building Programme 
has been underway since 2018. It’s 
a mixture of training workshops, 
site visits and regular technical 
guidance. In 2020, we’ve conducted 
more than 25 in-person and virtual 
visits to sites, developing a far 
closer, more partnership-based 
relationship with our suppliers. 
We’d planned to do more visits, but 
COVID-19 meant we had to switch 
to a virtual approach to support 
suppliers.
Niroshan Dalpethado, General 
Manager at CDDEF, one of our 
third-party manufacturers in Sri 
Lanka, said: “It’s always an 
indispensable learning, every time 
we interact with Reckitt, whether 
it’s an audit, training session or 
knowledge-sharing. These 
engagements enable us to lift our 
standards to a par with global ones. 
This adds immense value to our 
systems.”
Workshops have helped make 
improvements in workplace safety 
and working hours, and modern 
slavery issues like employers 
keeping workers’ passports and 
charging recruitment fees. This 
creates a better, fairer working 
environment for thousands of 
people in our supply chain. Despite 
COVID-19, we’ve carried on 
supporting our suppliers virtually to 
keep up progress.
Vishal Gupta, our General Manager 
in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, says 
the switch from compliance to 
making lasting improvements has 
led to, “visible and fantastic 
progress, both in the infrastructure 
and mindset of our suppliers. 
They’re more aware of our human 
rights requirements, and 
committed to lasting 
improvement.”

66
Reckitt  Human rights across our value chain – insight 2020
Human rights across our value chain continued
Our partnerships
We can’t solve human rights issues alone, or even just by working  
with suppliers. We must also work with our extended supplier network, 
government, industry, NGOs and other stakeholders to develop the 
insight and tools we need to make meaningful change happen.
Danish Institute for Human Rights
We’ve worked with the DIHR to make the UN Guiding Principles on 
Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) part of our work. We see this  
is as central to respecting everyone in our value chain. 
A corporate-level analysis of our human rights performance in 2019 led to 
35 recommendations. They ranged from making human rights part of our 
policies and procedures to defining our position on issues like contract 
labour management, procurement practices and working conditions.
In 2020, the DIHR supported us to map our salient human rights issues  
to help us focus on the ones most at risk through our activities and 
relationships across our value chain. To test this mapping, we also got the 
views of internal and external stakeholders, including NGOs, customers, 
investors and peers. In the future, we’ll target and report progress on: 
•	
Working hours
•	
Fair wages
•	
Health, safety and environment
•	
Freedom from forced labour
•	
Freedom of association and right to collective bargaining
•	
Gender, diversity and inclusion
•	
Effective grievance mechanisms
•	
Access to water and sanitation
•	
Sexual health and rights
•	
Access to health, hygiene and nutritional products
•	
Marketing practices
•	
Product safety
•	
Data privacy.
Oxfam GB Advisory Services
Our partnership with the DIHR has highlighted opportunities to enhance 
our approach to making sure there’s respect for human rights across our 
value chain. We’re now working with Oxfam in areas including:
•	
Workers’ wellbeing – developing a scalable approach to assessing 
wellbeing in our supply chain to complement our existing audit and 
capability-building work.
•	
Site-level grievance mechanisms – developing a toolkit to help 
suppliers implement grievance mechanisms. This will give workers 
effective channels to raise grievances without fearing consequences, 
and in the knowledge that they’ll be investigated properly and fairly.
•	
Gender equality and women’s economic empowerment – 
integrating gender into our supply chain sustainability activities to 
promote gender equality. 
Our other partnerships
•	
AIM-Progress – we’re on the leadership team of this global 
sustainable sourcing forum of top FMCG manufacturers and suppliers. 
We also co-chair the Capacity Building workstream. In 2020, we 
co-sponsored a series of virtual supplier webinars and eLearning 
courses on responsible recruitment in Malaysia to help suppliers 
better understand our expectations and get practical guidance on 
how to strengthen their recruitment and employment practices for 
migrant workers.
•	
Consumer Goods Forum – being part of the CGF helps us work with 
other leading brands, manufacturers and retailers committed to social 
and environmental sustainability. In turn, this helps us boost our 
collective impact through safe, resilient and sustainable value chains. 
In 2020 we joined the CGF’s Human Rights Coalition of Action – 
Working to End Forced Labour. This aims to advance the CGF’s Forced 
Labour Resolution and Priority Industry Principles, in line with the 
UNGPs, by targeting Forced Labour and supporting responsible 
recruitment markets.
Tackling modern slavery 
We’re working with suppliers, peers and experts including NGOs to 
tackle ongoing challenges facing migrant workers. They include 
employers keeping workers’ passports, poor accommodation and 
excessive recruitment fees paid in workers’ own countries. We 
particularly face these issues in Malaysia and the Gulf States.
In 2020, we negotiated with a contract manufacturer in Malaysia to repay 
around $800,000 of recruitment fees to migrant workers from February 
2021. And in the Middle East, we negotiated with a supplier to return 
passports to 432 workers at multiple sites. We’ll continue to work with 
peers, NGOs, suppliers and governments to make progress in tackling 
these practices.
Reinforcing our standards
We want to make sure everyone’s rights are respected. To reflect the 
dynamic human rights landscape and our new ambitions on sustainability, 
we’ve started a review of our human rights and responsible sourcing 
policies, which we’ll complete in 2021.
C AS E S T U DY
RETURNING PASSPORTS TO 
MIGRANT WORKERS IN THE 
MIDDLE EAST
In the Middle East, passport retention by employers is 
widespread. Around 35 million migrants, mainly from Asia and 
Africa, live and work in the region. We’ve been working with 
some of our strategic suppliers to make sure employees have 
free access to their passports. And that’s led to one of our 
suppliers returning the passports of 432 workers at all three of 
their sites. Where workers ask their employer to hold their 
passport for safekeeping, we insist there’s written consent, with 
a clearly documented and understood process for workers to ask 
for their passport back at any time.
Passport storage lockers at a supplier site

67
Reckitt  Human rights across our value chain – insight 2020
Human rights across our value chain continued
For details of our approach and activities for our employees,  
see the Our people insight.
Our compliance monitoring programme
Our compliance monitoring programme helps us identify and address 
any human rights shortfalls in our business and value chain. It’s run by a 
team including four regional experts in China, South Asia, the Middle East 
and Africa, who work with our suppliers, sites and procurement teams.
The programme has five stages:
1.	 Engagement – we communicate our requirements and expectations 
to all Reckitt facilities and suppliers. For our suppliers, this is at the 
start of any commercial relationships and is integrated into the 
commercial contract. 
2.	 Self-assessment – for suppliers, this is completed on Sedex and 
builds awareness, engages and gives suppliers access to eLearning 
and training resources to allow them to improve their practices. All 
Reckitt facilities have to complete an annual self-assessment of 
compliance. 
3.	 Site risk assessment – all Reckitt facilities are assessed on the 
inherent risk associated with their country of operation, product area, 
sector profile and site function as well as their management controls 
risk. These are coupled with previous audit ratings, which reflect 
management controls and are considered in assigning a site a risk 
rating. Suppliers also undergo a site-level risk assessment and are 
assigned an overall risk rating. This overall risk consists of inherent risk 
and, if applicable, the latest audit rating.
4.	 Auditing and addressing non-conformities – critical and high-risk 
sites are audited at least once every three years, through our own 
teams or external specialist support. After the audit, sites have to 
complete a time-bound Corrective Action Plan which is reviewed by 
our Human Rights team before being accepted. We give support to 
sites if they need it. 
5.	 Training – engagement and training help build understanding of 
issues, put them right and stop them happening at all. This can be 
done through on-site or online capacity building visits, as well as 
sharing resources and best practices. We also co-sponsor supplier 
events, which builds up the capability of our suppliers in key regions. 
For more details of our monitoring programme, see our Modern Slavery 
Report.
Reports from our Speak Up! Service
As well as our audit work, we have grievance processes in all countries, in 
line with local laws. In 2020, we received 439 cases through Speak Up!, 
our formal whistleblowing channel. For more details about Speak Up!, see 
our Ethical behaviour insight.
We initially earmarked 173 cases that could raise issues that breach our 
policy on human rights and responsible business. As of 4 January 2021, 96 
of these cases had been closed following internal investigations, with 38 
cases being partially or fully substantiated. Of the 38 cases*:
•	
5% relate to disciplinary practices. 
•	
76% relate to discrimination, including sexual, moral or verbal 
harassment, favouritism, or gender and race discrimination.
•	
11% relate to working hours, pay and pay disputes.
•	
8% relate to health and safety (mostly working conditions).
Actions taken ranged from training and changes to policies or 
procedures, to disciplinary action and dismissal. Of the remaining 77 
cases, 26 have been referred elsewhere for informal review (e.g. 
employee relations matters) and 51 cases are still pending closure.
Listening to our stakeholders
Reporting effectively across our many sustainability issues and giving 
regular updates on our programmes and activities is always a work in 
progress. So we appreciate your feedback. What should we keep doing? 
And where can we do better?
Email us at sustainability@reckitt.com.
Or write to:
The Sustainability team
Reckitt Benckiser Group plc (Reckitt) 
103–105 Bath Road
Slough
Berkshire
SL1 3UH
UK
*	 percentages are rounded
C AS E S T U DY
TACKLING RECRUITMENT  
FEES IN OUR MALAYSIAN 
SUPPLY CHAIN
In 2018, we found critical issues for migrant workers at a supplier 
in Malaysia. They included passport retention, poor 
accommodation and discriminatory and unethical recruitment 
practices that saw workers charged recruitment fees, often 
leaving them in debt.
 
We’ve been working with another multinational company that 
uses the same supplier so we can tackle these issues and 
improve conditions. In 2019, we piloted a scalable, five-step 
approach to end the practice of charging recruitment fees, which 
is endemic. It’s based on developing responsible recruitment 
practices that employers can use in the future, and paying back 
recruitment fees to existing workers.
In 2020, we negotiated repayment of around $800,000 of 
recruitment fees to workers from February 2021. We’re now 
looking to use the same approach with other suppliers in Malaysia 
and the Middle East.

Reckitt  Protecting ecosystems in our value chain – insight 2020
68
Our product supply chain
PROTECTING 
ECOSYSTEMS 
IN OUR 
VALUE CHAIN
We use natural raw materials in about 70% of our products, including 
packaging. It could be milk in Enfa infant formula, latex in Durex condoms, 
or palm oil in the surfactants that go into our detergents. These materials 
come from a network of direct and indirect suppliers around the world, 
including farms, plantations, smallholdings and large global companies. 
We might not buy the materials in their raw form, but we’re their ultimate 
user. That makes us just as responsible for their sustainability as the 
suppliers we deal with.
We work hard to map the journey our natural raw materials take. This 
means we can monitor and manage our impact on both natural and 
human ecosystems. And this helps us address major global challenges, 
including loss of biodiversity through deforestation, maintaining human 
rights and improving livelihoods across our supply chain. 
It’s a large and complex task. But since we set our first targets in 2012, 
we’ve made a lot of progress. We’ve created standards to guide our 
decision-making and put programmes in place to track and reduce our 
impact. We realise there’s still much to do, though, and we’re working all 
the time with our suppliers, partners and other stakeholders to monitor 
what we do, and change what we need to.
Here, we look at our impact on ecosystems across the supply chain,  
and on people who live and work in those ecosystems, farming and 
harvesting natural raw materials. This includes protecting vulnerable 
groups, like children, migrant workers and smallholders. And it means 
improving conditions for communities by understanding socio-economic 
conditions to strengthen their livelihoods.
We also look at ongoing work with third-party initiatives we’re part of, 
and that we’ve joined this year. These programmes help us measure and 
control our impact. And we sum up our work on key raw materials like 
latex, palm oil and dairy in this insight.
Most of our products use natural raw materials, 
which we source through a large global 
network of suppliers, from large companies  
to smallholders. This has an impact on both 
natural and human ecosystems. We work hard 
to monitor that impact, and manage it, by 
working with our suppliers and partners.
3,413 raw and 
packaging 
material 
supplier sites in 
67 countries
Primary 
transport 
(freight in)
Natural raw 
material supply 
chain
53 factories 
in 30 countries
283 third-party 
manufacturing 
sites in 
44 countries
236 distribution/ 
embellishment 
centres in 
55 countries
Secondary 
transport 
(freight out)
People 
purchasing over 
20 million 
products a day

Reckitt  Protecting ecosystems in our value chain – insight 2020
69
Protecting ecosystems in our value chain continued
Highlights in 2020
Boosting the traceability of palm oil
One of our priorities is to work with our suppliers to identify the 
plantations and processing mills that provide the palm oil we use. 
This enables us to pinpoint the greatest challenges in meeting our 
No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation (NDPE) commitment on palm 
oil. To achieve this, we’re working with the not-for-profit organisation 
Earthworm Foundation and our suppliers to establish traceability in our 
complex palm oil supply chains. 
In 2020, we also started working with the not-for-profit organisation 
Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), and their sustainable 
development consultant Transitions, through the Action for Sustainable 
Derivatives (ASD) programme. This is helping to identify better ways to 
achieve our NDPE commitments in the supply chains for our surfactants. 
We and the other companies involved are aiming to make the supply 
chain more transparent by pooling data and experience, monitoring risks 
and increasing commitment. 
Among other things, ASD also aims to:
•	
Create a global map of the palm oil derivatives supply chain
•	
Harmonise approaches to transparency, risk monitoring and evaluation
•	
Find ways to work together on new tools, methodologies and 
field projects
•	
Increase recognition for the complexity of the palm derivatives 
supply chain.
Through this, we aim to include complex ingredients like surfactants into 
our targets and report on them in 2022.
Strengthening our paper traceability
We’ve strengthened our review of paper and board origins, so that we’re 
even more rigorous about traceability to either certified or recycled origins 
for paper pulp. This has meant more challenges to the data we get from 
suppliers. Our percentage of paper (pulp) from certified or recycled 
sources is higher than in 2019. But we narrowly missed our goal of 100% of 
paper and board to be from certified or recycled sources. We aim to reach 
this as soon as possible, and before 2025. 
Engaging with suppliers
In 2020, we engaged even more with our suppliers of important 
ingredients like palm oil, latex and dairy. This included using a ten-point 
questionnaire based on our Responsible Sourcing Standard, to help us 
understand how suppliers match our principles. We used the results for 
meetings to help suppliers conform more closely to our standard, and 
make them aware of our programmes to monitor and manage 
ecosystem impact. 
So far, we’ve worked in this way with the suppliers of 70% of our palm oil 
ingredients, plus eight dairy suppliers and two suppliers of fragrances.
In January 2020, we visited palm oil mills and plantations in Indonesia and 
Malaysia to better understand human rights in the supply chain, working 
with international ethical trade consultancy Impactt, and Earthworm’s 
human rights-focused Respect Programme in Malaysia. This helped 
highlight action for individual suppliers to take, but also showed that 
many human rights issues in the palm oil supply chain are endemic to the 
industry and need collective action. This is why we’re supporting a mix of 
projects with mills, plantations and smallholders including:
•	
Making Earthworm’s Tools for Transformation more widely available 
through our direct soap noodle supplier, IOI
•	
Implementing our supplier Wilmar’s child protection policy with tier 2 
suppliers, through BSR’s Children in Plantations initiative in Malaysia 
and Indonesia
•	
Backing Earthworm’s Ethical Recruitment Initiative, aimed at curbing 
exploitation of migrant labour
•	
Assessing individual mills on their human rights. We assessed a 
third-party mill with Wilmar and Earthworm in Indonesia in 2020, and 
plan to do similar work in future.
With Earthworm, we also worked with direct suppliers to engage with 
palm oil processing mills close to deforested areas and understand any 
role they had in the deforestation. Making sure suppliers don’t buy from 
plantations established on recently deforested land or from plantation 
owners implicated in forest clearance is part of how we implement our 
NDPE policies.
OUR PRODUCT INSIGHT PAPERS
We want consumers to trust our brands; to feel confident that our 
products are safe and cause no harm to the ecosystems or the 
people that they touch during their life cycle. Product stewardship 
is ultimately about the overall integrity of our products, which 
combines several aspects of responsible business. The overall topic 
is covered by several insights to make the subjects more accessible.
They are:
•	
Product stewardship – ingredients and transparency: the 
processes we follow to consistently innovate and produce safe, 
environmentally friendly products, and our work on ingredient 
labelling to help our consumers make informed decisions when 
buying them.
•	
Protecting ecosystems across our value chain (this insight): the 
steps we take to safeguard our planet for future generations. 
•	
Plastics and packaging: how we seek to use less material, reduce 
virgin material, and use recycled and recyclable components in 
our packaging.
•	
Sustainable product innovation: how we develop our products to 
make them more sustainable for the future.
•	
Product safety and quality: how we maintain and control the 
safety of our products to safeguard our consumers and the 
environment, and how we consistently achieve the same 
standards of quality when manufacturing those products around 
the world.

Reckitt  Protecting ecosystems in our value chain – insight 2020
70
Protecting ecosystems in our value chain continued
2020 PROGRESS  
AGAINST TARGETS
•	
88% palm oil traceable for suppliers globally, excluding surfactants, 
one of the many compounds that make up detergent (90% in 2019).
•	
98% paper and board from certified or recycled sources, excluding 
third-party manufacturing sites (2020 target 100%; 97% in 2019).
Supporting programmes on the ground
This year, despite COVID-19, we were able to carry on supporting 
programmes on the ground that help us monitor and curb our impact on 
ecosystems. We also joined initiatives to progress this work. 
 
For instance, we reinforced our commitment to NDPE principles by joining 
the Consumer Goods Forum’s Forest Positive Coalition of Action. It 
includes 18 of the world’s leading consumer goods retailers and 
manufacturers. Together, we’re committed to eliminating deforestation, 
and forest degradation and conversion from commodity supply chains. The 
aim is to transform how we do business and make a positive impact on the 
world’s forests. We also expect everyone we work with – producers, 
traders and suppliers – to do the same. Working with the CGF and 
through its partnerships with other NGOs like ProForest and the Tropical 
Forest Alliance, we can have even greater impact on the ground. 
We took part once again in the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) Forest 
Survey Report, scoring B for timber, B for palm oil, B- for cattle and B- for 
soy. We feel CDP is an effective way to measure our impact on forest 
ecosystems, and we’ll continue to use it in 2021. 
We’re part of Production and Protection Beyond Concessions (PPBC), a 
working group of the Palm Oil Collaboration Group (POCG), which is made 
up of a variety of producer, trader, FMCG and retailer companies looking at 
how to protect forests that are being cleared outside of legally sanctioned 
concession areas for oil palm. It’s estimated that over 40% of deforestation 
happens in those areas. So we’re working with suppliers and the PPBC 
group to create common ways of working and take action with supply chain 
partners to address the risk of further deforestation and illegal land use.
Working with our suppliers, we’ve built up our understanding of upstream 
supply chains. For example, with our soap noodle supplier IOI, we’ve used 
Earthworm’s Tools for Transformation to engage with 85 mills in Malaysia. 
This helps us understand how IOI can implement NDPE principles and 
also provides practical NDPE tools.
Looking ahead to 2021 and beyond
We’re strengthening our standards for key natural raw materials, as well 
as looking for ways to go further where we can. This includes 
independent certification where it’s available. We’ve also started new 
partnerships with NGOs to help control risks in specific natural raw 
materials like latex. 
We introduced a new Responsible Sourcing Standard in 2020, updating 
the original from 2015. It gives us a clear set of principles for sourcing 
natural raw materials in the right way. We’ll use this to drive our 
commitment to live our values in our upstream supply chains and to pave 
the way to achieve more. By 2030, we want to achieve a tangible 
contribution to biodiversity, through the practice of regenerative 
agriculture, and to have made a significant contribution to restoring lost 
ecosystems in the supply chains of commodities that are important to us. 
To further drive compliance with our new standards, we’re working with 
the assurance, inspection, testing and certification company Intertek to 
assess natural raw materials suppliers. Through Intertek’s Inlight system, 
each supplier will get an overall risk rating of critical, high, medium or low 
which will let us prioritise engagement with suppliers. We’re also utilising 
the standard across our business from R&D to marketing, and brands like 
Air Wick are already using it. Reflecting the focus of brands like Botanical 
Origin and Air Wick on natural fragrances, we’re working to restore 
ecosystems, such as in the Great Plains in the US. 
In 2021 we’ll continue to evaluate the risks to biodiversity and ecosystems 
across everything we do. From this evaluation, we’ll develop appropriate 
targets to protect and regenerate the biodiversity and ecosystems where 
we have most impact, through both sustainable agricultural practice and 
regeneration programmes. We’ll be sharing more detail of our approach 
and plans for the future during 2021 as we complete our evaluation. 
C AS E S T U DY
OUR WWF PARTNERSHIP
Reckitt is partnering with WWF over three years to create a 
movement to fight for nature. WWF and Reckitt’s Hygiene 
business will together:
•	
Preserve and restore 2,100 km of freshwater across two major 
river basins in the Amazon and Ganges (two of the world’s 
most important freshwater ecosystems).
•	
Innovate for a more sustainable world, including improving 
understanding of the impact of household products on 
aquatic environments, and explore how to improve the 
innovation pipeline.
•	
Inspire millions to fight for nature through impactful brand 
partnerships with our consumers and engaging our 
employees.
As part of our partnership, Air Wick is working with WWF to bring 
its purpose to life and connect people to nature. The Air Wick 
team is activating this purpose in various markets, including 
Australia, the UK and US, to raise awareness of the importance of 
nature and how we can all do more to protect and restore it. 
Reckitt will support WWF projects to restore wildflower habitats 
to reverse the decline of biodiversity. For example, in the US, Air 
Wick is helping to reseed one billion sq ft of native grasslands 
and wildflower habitat in the Northern Great Plains.

Reckitt  Protecting ecosystems in our value chain – insight 2020
71
Protecting ecosystems in our value chain continued
How we protect ecosystems
Our natural raw materials come from all over the world. This gives us a 
wide array of challenges. The measures to tackle them, from the private 
sector, government and civil society, also vary across regions and crops. 
So we need a policy framework that gives us consistency in the midst of 
inconsistency. 
Our policy covers all natural raw materials and helps protect the 
ecosystems they come from, as well as the livelihoods and human rights 
of the workers and communities involved in them. Our detailed 
standards set out what we expect for the natural raw materials (NRM) we 
use in our products, and strengthen our approaches to:
•	
Traceability and transparency – the origins of our natural raw 
materials have to be clear, whether it’s a smallholding or a plantation 
for palm oil, a dairy farm for milk or an ocean for krill. This also applies 
to the location where natural raw materials are first processed, for 
example the palm oil mill near to the plantation.
•	
Protecting vulnerable groups – including women, children, migrant 
labourers and smallholders.
•	
Protecting important ecosystems – including areas defined by the 
International Union for Conservation of Nature as Protected Areas, 
nature reserves, wilderness areas, High Conservation Value, primary 
forest, peatlands and marine-protected areas.
•	
Reducing environmental impacts – to monitor and promote 
reductions in Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, water use, energy 
consumption and waste in NRM supply chains. 
•	
Animal welfare – we’re committed to the internationally recognised 
Five Freedoms, which protect animals from hunger and thirst, fear and 
distress, and discomfort, pain, injury and disease, and enshrine the 
freedom to behave normally.
We look at emerging good practice and bring in outside partners to help 
us assess the sustainability risk of our natural raw materials. Our priorities 
are about the impact we make through the material we use, and how 
vulnerable the material itself is. We’re mainly focusing now on palm oil, 
latex, dairy, natural raw materials for fragrances, krill, and timber used in 
our paper and cardboard. Our approach to managing each is different, 
because each has its own circumstances, ecosystem and human rights 
issues.
We’re making our policy and standards central to how our suppliers 
work. This makes sure we source natural materials that will bring 
sustainable benefits to the whole value chain and consumers. For more 
on human rights, see our Human rights insight.
Palm oil
Palm oil uses less land and costs less to produce a higher yield of oil than 
similar crops can. The downside is that this efficiency and the wide range 
of applications palm oil can be applied to has meant large areas of forest 
and peatland have been converted to cultivating oil palm, destroying 
landscapes and the biodiversity they support. 
We know we have a responsibility to restrict this impact, even though 
we’re a relatively small user of palm oil. When the World Wildlife Fund 
assessed us in 2019, we got a rating of 6.5, or ‘lagging behind’, on their 
palm oil scorecard. This was largely because of our limited use of 
certified oils. The scorecard is a helpful tool. But it doesn’t cover all the 
issues, especially with oil that’s highly processed in many locations, 
making certified traceability difficult and costly. We’ve committed to 
buying 15% more certified oils in 2021, increasing by 15% every year until 
all our palm oil is certified. We recognise the contribution of certification 
but we also want to make sure we capture and limit negative socio-
economic impacts not always covered by certification. This will help 
create change in wider production landscapes, plantations and farms 
through our support of landscape-level programmes. We’re working with 
the many stakeholders involved, including NGOs, governments, industry, 
local communities and the smallholders who make up around 40% of the 
whole palm oil network.
An example of this is our support of Earthworm Foundation’s programme 
to promote sustainable production. The outcomes include:
•	
Suppliers better equipped to implement strong sustainability policies 
and robust NDPE commitments, while promoting support for 
smallholders within their supply network
•	
Building sustainable livelihoods with communities that improve living 
standards and reduce the motivation to expand farms into forest 
areas
•	
Better welfare for workers through effective monitoring and targeted 
interventions which include safeguarding vulnerable children working 
in agriculture.
We buy products derived from palm oil, sourced from refineries in 
Malaysia and Indonesia. To help us source responsibly, we work to 
understand every step of the oil’s journey to mills which supply the 
refineries. In 2021, we’ll publish an updated list of these mills and direct 
suppliers on our website.
In 2020, we’ve worked with our NGO partners and suppliers on:
•	
Traceability and transparency – with Earthworm Foundation and 
Airbus, we’re using the Starling platform to monitor our palm oil supply 
chain with real-time satellite technology to understand the impact of 
our supply chains on deforestation. Satellite imagery and radar data 
from the Airbus Starling system shows us how land use changes over 
time. This pinpoints risk-prone areas and how close mills in our supply 
network are to them. It also helps predict deforestation patterns and 
means we can work with our suppliers to eliminate deforestation over 
time. Building on our 2018 pilot in Malaysia, we’re now using the 
platform in Indonesia, so we can hugely enhance our supply chain 
monitoring.
•	
Child labour – we’ve worked with specialist non-profit consultancy 
Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) to help implement our supplier 
Wilmar’s child protection policy further up the palm oil supply chain. 
We’ve supported workshops to build capacity of tier 2 suppliers of 
Wilmar and others.
•	
Migrant labour – we’ve continued supporting Earthworm’s Ethical 
Recruitment Initiative to develop practical tools and training resources 
for suppliers to help identify and mitigate risks to avoid migrant 
worker exploitation. Earthworm worked with one of our suppliers to 
identify a pilot site for the tool in 2021.
•	
Smallholders – we’ve continued our involvement in Earthworm 
Foundation’s Rurality programme, which develops better agricultural 
practices to diversify farmers’ incomes and improve rural livelihoods. 
Small farmers under economic pressure are more likely to cut down 
forests to grow more crops. Highlights in 2020 included:
–	 Remote training and coaching for over 300 smallholders, with over 
7,000 views on live webinars and videos in Sabah, Malaysia
–	 Over 7,000 ha of land monitored and managed by Human-Elephant 
Conflict (HEC) Committee which includes plantations, smallholders 
and the Sabah Wildlife Department

Reckitt  Protecting ecosystems in our value chain – insight 2020
72
Protecting ecosystems in our value chain continued
Latex
Natural latex is the main ingredient we use to make Durex condoms. We 
source it largely from Malaysia and Thailand, with smaller amounts from 
India and Brazil. Trees take up to seven years to mature, and plantations 
can be vulnerable to disease. To prevent this, our suppliers use different 
clonal varieties of rubber trees so that any plant disease that affects one 
variety won’t spread through the whole plantation. 
Rubber farming for latex has challenges including supply chain resilience 
and deforestation. But the few farms and plantations that produce the 
high-quality latex that our Durex brand needs are well-known to us. 
They’re generally long-established, with up to 100 years of carefully 
managed history in some cases. So our relationship with these suppliers 
helps us to manage risks and find better ways of working to support 
longer-term supply and better farm and worker standards.
Latex plantations and farming pose potential challenges to the human 
rights of plantation workers and farming communities. They can include 
exploitation of migrant workers, challenges to the community’s land 
rights or poor livelihoods for smallholders. Livelihoods are connected to 
the global price for natural rubber, which is often heavily influenced by 
the price of the synthetic rubber used in much larger quantities for 
products like car tyres. 
The human rights value chain assessment we carried out with the Danish 
Institute for Human Rights identified these risks. We’ve worked with our 
rubber plantation companies to make sure they meet our policy on labour 
standards and human rights. Critically, we’ve also introduced our Fair 
Rubber commitment. This will give latex farmers in Thailand a price 
premium to support their livelihoods and strengthen the supply of latex 
we depend on, and reinforce sustainable farming principles. The 
premium will also support the communities living and working on rubber 
plantations. Overall, this will enable us to deliver on our commitment to 
embed human rights in our business by addressing the issues raised by 
our assessment. Most importantly, we’re supporting the livelihoods of 
farmers, workers and their families, which will mean a sustainable latex 
sector in the years to come. 
In Thailand we’ll continue to work with Earthworm Foundation to improve 
the livelihoods smallholder latex farmers, helping the supply network to 
be more resilient for the future. We’re prioritising:
•	
Increasing farmer and household income from latex and other 
sources, such as livestock-raising
•	
Adopting regenerative agriculture practices such as agro-forestry, 
which can improve productivity and enhance ecosystems
•	
Improving living and working conditions, for example through the 
better use of personal protective equipment
•	
Enabling farmers to invest in their farm community for their long-term 
livelihoods.
Dairy
Infant formula products joined our portfolio when we acquired  
Mead Johnson Nutrition in 2017. We’ve since taken steps to map and 
understand the sustainability of our dairy supply chains. We’ve continued 
our work with the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative’s Sustainable Dairy 
Partnership (SDP). It’s a group of suppliers and industry peers who work 
to make the dairy industry more sustainable through a consistent 
approach to the commercial relationship between dairy buyers and 
processors. Members take responsibility for challenges like greenhouse 
gas production, human rights, deforestation and animal welfare.
Our largest suppliers are active members of the SDP. So far, we’ve 
helped to:
•	
Fund a digital platform for dairy processors and buyers to improve 
traceability and transparency by sharing data
•	
Develop training and communications materials for processors 
and buyers.
Related to this is a partnership between SDP and WWF to define an 
approach to tackling deforestation in dairy supply chains. We’re part of 
this because soy is in the feedstock for cows which provide milk that 
goes into our infant formula products.
–	 Government approval of around $1.3 million in financial support 
for replanting 656 hectares of oil palm plantation. The Rurality 
team in Riau Province, Indonesia, helped 231 farmers apply for 
the help
–	 Through these initiatives, we contributed to the Indonesian 
government’s targets to improve land productivity. In Riau 
Province, the annual replanting target was 25,000 ha, and in 
Pelalawan & Indragiri Hulu district, the target was 5,500 ha.

Reckitt  Protecting ecosystems in our value chain – insight 2020
73
Protecting ecosystems in our value chain continued
Paper and board
We use paper and cardboard to pack almost three-quarters of our 
products. While we use a small amount compared to some sectors, 
we still want to use sustainable sources of paper. In 2012, we said that by 
2020 all our supplies should either be recycled or approved by the Forest 
Stewardship Council (FSC) or the Programme for the Endorsement of 
Forest Certification (PEFC). We’re now applying even more stringent 
measures to improve traceability and data robustness. Although we 
improved our paper traceability this year we fell narrowly short of our 
target. But we’re still committed to our goal for 100% of our paper and 
board to be from certified or recycled sources. We aim to reach this as 
soon as possible, and before 2025. 
For primary packaging, like product cartons, we usually combine virgin 
paper from certified origins with recycled paper. We also use the highest 
practical percentage of recycled cardboard for the boxes used to 
transport our products.
Krill
We use krill in MegaRed oil supplements. Krill oil has human health 
benefits, but it’s also vital to the Antarctic food chain and supports 
a protected ecosystem including penguins, seals and whales. 
Environmental NGOs are calling for more marine-protected areas 
C AS E S T U DY
BOOSTING BIODIVERSITY 
IN EUROPE
Our manufacturing site at Nowy Dwór in Poland has joined a national 
project led by Poland’s League of Nature Conservation. It means our 
staff will look after four beehives, with support and training from 
the league’s experts. The league also collects and packs the honey, 
which the bees are expected to start producing from spring 2021.
At Reckitt Hygiene in Germany, graduates are also venturing into 
beekeeping with the help of a local beekeeper. And they’re 
planning an allotment both to produce fruit and vegetables and 
act as a habitat for insects and endangered species.
They’re also following up ideas that pursue the UN’s Sustainable 
Development Goals and our vision to create a cleaner world, while 
contributing to the local community. This is part of our Future Leader 
training programme. Three groups are making a social impact by 
volunteering, making their working environment more sustainable 
and working on ways to improve Reckitt’s sustainability training.
in the Antarctic. They also want fishing companies to do more to 
safeguard the marine ecosystem by seeing regulations as a baseline and 
voluntarily going beyond them. To keep our krill sustainable, we chose 
our supplier, Aker BioMarine, based on:
•	
Third-party verification – their Antarctic fisheries are certified by  
the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC).
•	
Engagement with the Antarctic scientific community – Aker 
BioMarine works with the Commission for the Conservation of 
Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), the body that regulates 
krill fishing and decides on conservation measures.
•	
A network of relevant stakeholders – our suppliers’ decision to  
back a network of ocean sanctuaries in the Antarctic was important 
in strengthening political momentum to protect sensitive 
Antarctic waters.
•	
A united industry approach – Aker BioMarine has been involved in 
setting up the ARK group, which brings together 85% of krill fishing 
companies. ARK has worked with the CCAMLR and others to develop 
a single, workable sustainable fishing approach including a voluntary 
agreement to restrict fishing in the buffer zones that protect penguin 
colonies in the breeding season.

Reckitt  Protecting ecosystems in our value chain – insight 2020
74
Protecting ecosystems in our value chain continued
Listening to our stakeholders 
Reporting effectively across our many sustainability issues and giving 
regular updates on our programmes and activities is always a work in 
progress. So we appreciate your feedback. What should we keep doing, 
and where can we do better?
 
Email us at sustainability@reckitt.com. 
 
Or write to: 
The Sustainability team 
Reckitt Benckiser Group plc (Reckitt) 
103–105 Bath Road 
Slough, 
Berkshire, 
SL1 3UH 
UK 
C AS E S T U DY
THE JOURNEY 
TOWARDS NATURE-
RELATED FINANCIAL 
DISCLOSURES
Reckitt has joined the informal working 
group creating an approach to financial 
reporting that could steer finance towards 
work that allows nature and people to 
flourish. The working group has been set up 
by the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial 
Disclosures (TNFD) and includes the UK 
government and the World Economic 
Forum.
In a two-year programme, the group will 
aim to determine the reporting, metrics and 
data that will let financial institutions 
understand the risks and dependencies and 
their impact on nature. The group will 
develop reporting frameworks in 2021 and 
look to test them in 2022 before launching 
them worldwide. It’s hoped the initiative 
will help the financial sector recognise 
investment and lending opportunities to 
support nature.

75
Reckitt  Climate change – insight 2020
CLIMATE  
CHANGE
Raw materials
Packaging
Manufacturing
Logistics & Retail
Consumer use
End of life
9%
7%
1%
6%
75%
2%
Climate change is increasingly centre stage in 
global consciousness, and in our work. 
We’ve set new targets to help us make our contribution to keeping 
global warming to less than 1.5°C. It means scrutinising our own 
operations and those of our suppliers along the full value chain, so we 
use as little energy as possible and keep carbon emissions down. And it 
means focusing on product design to make sure our products have a low 
carbon impact when our consumers use them.
As scientific knowledge and public awareness of climate change grow, 
so the urgency increases for business to do everything it can to halt the 
threat. We accept the challenge. We know that what we do now can 
make a significant difference, whether it’s switching to renewable 
energy or using less energy and water to make our products.
Climate change threatens ecosystems and the world’s social fabric. 
Changing weather patterns, including floods and droughts, undermine 
livelihoods, dislocate communities, create unrest and force economic 
migration. Every business has a duty to address the causes and 
consequences of this existential issue for humanity. Fulfilling this duty 
means being sustainable in all we do, from how we gather and source 
materials, to how we run our operations and our value chain.
Setting a new ambition
Since 2012, we’ve made progress against the targets we’ve set 
ourselves. In particular, we’ve surpassed our 2020 target to cut 
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 40%. Also, as of 2020, all our 
manufacturing sites in Europe, the US and India, and all our Hygiene 
business, only buy renewable electricity. This gives us confidence to  
push on to bigger achievements.
But we haven’t hit all our targets. We’ve fallen short of our target to  
cut energy consumption by 35% by 2020. In 2020, we achieved a 27% 
reduction per unit of production compared to 2012, while overall energy 
consumption went down by 17%. At a product level, we reduced  
carbon by 18% and water impact by 13%, both a step forward on 2019  
but still behind our target of 33%. Since 2012, our focus has been on 
manufacturing emissions. But we’re increasing activity on product 
footprints and we’ve strengthened our Sustainable Innovation Calculator 
to help make our product pipeline more sustainable. We’ve made some 
progress in 2020 but know we need to do more. This year we set 
ourselves a new task to contribute to the global effort for net zero 
emissions by 2050, in line with the Paris Agreement commitment to  
keep global warming below 1.5°C. In fact, we want to reach net zero  
at Reckitt by 2040.
Our work on climate change is framed by science-based targets, and 
we commit to:
•	
Cutting Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions by 65% by 2030, compared 
to 2015
•	
Cutting Scope 3 GHG emissions by 50% by 2030, compared to 2015
•	
Sourcing 100% renewable electricity by 2030, compared to 5% in 2015.
Our performance in 2020
Aim
40%
reduction in 
greenhouse 
gases (GHG) 
from 
manufacturing 
by 2020
Aim
35%
reduction  
in energy 
consumption 
by 2020
†	 Assured by ERM CVS as part of their limited assurance scope; for details, see our 
Sustainability governance, reporting and assurance insight.
1	 Excludes IFCN and includes manufacturing and warehouse.
2	For manufacturing only.
3	Excludes IFCN.
2020
53%
†1
2020
27% 
†
Our carbon impact
Aim
100%
renewable 
electricity 
by 20302
Aim
33%
reduction in  
our carbon 
footprint per 
dose by 2020
2020
62% 
†2
2020
18%
†3

76
Reckitt  Climate change – insight 2020
Climate change continued
These targets have been approved by the Science Based Targets 
initiative (SBTi). This independently assesses and approves companies’ 
targets in line with its criteria for targets needed to keep global warming 
to 1.5°C and the IPPC’s recommendations, while ensuring best practice in 
science-based target setting.
We’re encouraged that we’ve succeeded in cutting carbon emissions 
directly under our control, which come mainly from our manufacturing 
operations. But more than 75% of our carbon footprint comes from 
consumers using our products, with another 6% from transporting goods 
around the world. This is complex to deal with, and change comes slowly. 
So reducing our emissions in these areas is difficult. With our Finish 
dishwasher products, for instance, the carbon footprint is made up of 
consumers using electricity to power their dishwashers as well as us 
using energy to produce the product itself.
So we need to tackle how people use our products, as well as how we 
make them. This means looking at everything from how we design 
products and packaging to the ingredients we use, and the energy and 
water that go into using them. This includes how we deliver the product to 
consumers, and how consumers then use and dispose of them. We can 
shrink the overall footprint by using different ingredients, using recyclable 
or recycled packaging and changing product design so the product needs 
less water or energy to be effective. It’s about working with suppliers on 
the one hand, and appliance manufacturers and consumers at the other 
end of the value chain. This is how we reduce emissions over time.
The close link between climate change and water stress is also 
important. Some of our biggest and fastest-growing markets, like the 
Middle East and India, are in water-stressed areas. We must adapt 
products to reflect this reality, which creates extra complexity. Also, the 
impact of climate change means these water-stressed regions also have 
the biggest difficulties accessing hygiene and health services, making 
our products all the more important. We need to look at the whole 
context of every product, and make sure that in striving to cut emissions, 
we arrive at the right outcome for our consumers and our planet. For 
more on how we manage our water resources, see our Water insight.
Our full value chain, from sourcing raw materials and manufacturing 
products to consumers using and disposing of them, is a complex 
sequence of inter-dependent parts. Cutting carbon emissions in one part 
of the chain might increase them in another. For instance, we manufacture 
some of our products in a more concentrated form to reduce packaging 
material, and reduce carbon emissions from transport. But there are 
trade-offs with consumers then having to use and potentially heat more 
water to use the product. We consider these aspects in the product 
design phase, using our Sustainable Innovation Calculator.
Our new science-based targets help us manage this complexity and see 
the steps we need to take to play our part in keeping global warming 
under 1.5°C.
Progress against our targets
In 2020, we surpassed our target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 
from our manufacturing and warehousing operations by 40%. This was 
partly down to energy savings, but more significant was our growing use 
of renewable energy: 100% of the electricity we bought for our Hygiene 
factories came from renewable sources, compared to 79% in 2019.
Since joining RE100, the global initiative to use 100% renewable electricity 
by 2030, we’ve more than doubled our use of renewable electricity – and 
we’re now over 60% of the way towards this target. In 2020, switching 
supply to renewable electricity contracts, direct renewable power 
purchase agreements (PPAs) or investing in on-site renewables means 
sites in India, the US and EU have 100% renewable power. This year, we 
also installed extra solar capacity at our Mauripur factory in Pakistan.
In 2020, COVID-19 disrupted our usual audit programme. But we were still 
able to complete audits using our normal methodology and scoring 
systems, based on our environmental standards. We replaced site visits 
with virtual methods including self-assessment questionnaires and 
interviews. This will continue into 2021, though we expect to return to our 
usual methods when we can.
Energy consumption
Our company-wide energy monitoring and reporting system helps us 
continually improve how we use energy across our sites, regions and 
business units. In 2020, despite the disruption of COVID-19, we found 
more opportunities to save energy including:
•	
At our Anhui site in China and Mauripur site in Pakistan, we brought in 
a system that uses exhaust air to warm inlet air, reducing steam heat 
use and saving energy and natural gas. The Anhui team also upgraded 
from a manual to an automated water circulation system, which 
meant more energy, water and cost savings.
•	
At Cileungsi in Indonesia and other sites, we upgraded steam traps to 
continue the efficient recovery of condensation water, which cuts the 
water and energy we use.
•	
In Nottingham in the UK, we installed electric chillers to supply the 
factory with water, replacing an absorption chiller and cooling tower 
and saving over 30,000m3 of water a year, as well as over 2,000 
tonnes of GHG emissions. This is equivalent to around five million 
miles driven by an average petrol-fuelled car. We also installed more 
efficient chillers at our Bangpakong facility in Thailand.
C AS E S T U DY
CUTTING CO2  
EMISSIONS  
ON LOGISTICS
We’re working across our value chain, from the design and 
manufacture of our products to consumer use. For instance,  
the team at our Barcelona logistics centre have taken on the 
challenge by switching from lead to lithium ion batteries for their 
warehouse vehicles such as forklifts because they charge faster, 
last longer and have a bigger capacity. Taking advantage of this 
different technology was a new opportunity for the logistics 
centre and has led to a 16% cut in GHG emissions at the site.
The team at Barcelona has also worked on ways to load trucks  
on the Madrid route more efficiently, which has cut the number  
of trucks we need to use. That’s meant another 30% cut in GHG 
emissions at the centre. The team is now looking to make this 
change on other routes.

77
Reckitt  Climate change – insight 2020
Climate change continued
Greenhouse gas emissions across the whole value chain (Scopes 1–3)1
Total carbon footprint impact 2020 (Reckitt exc. IFCN)
Raw materials
Packaging
Manufacturing
Logistics 
& retail
Consumer use
End of life
Total
Carbon total (million tCO2e)
3.1
2.6
0.3
1.8
27.5
0.5
35.9†
Carbon g/dose
4.9
4.1
0.5
2.8
43.4
0.8
56.5†
Carbon % split
9%
7%
1%
5%
77%
1%
100%
The system had been developed with reference to the requirements and principles of recognised international standards such as PAS 2050:2011 and the greenhouse gas protocol.
Total carbon footprint reductions (Reckitt exc. IFCN)
2012  
(baseline)
2019
2020†
% change 
vs. 2012
% change 
vs. 2019
Carbon g/dose
68.6
62.1
56.5
-18%
-9%
Total carbon footprint impact 2020 for IFCN
Raw materials
Packaging
Manufacturing
Logistics 
& retail
Consumer use
End of life
Total
Carbon total (million tCO2e)
0.4
0.2
0.1
0.8
2.2
0.1
3.9†
Carbon % split
11%
5%
3%
21%
58%
2%
100%
1	 Pre-acquisition data for our IFCN business is not available. To ensure like-for-like comparisons, target performance trends vs. 2012 exclude IFCN.
†	 Assured by ERM CVS as part of their limited assurance scope; for details, see our Sustainability governance, reporting and assurance insight.
In 2020, we used 4,830,166 GJ of energy across our manufacturing and 
warehousing sites. We illustrate the breakdown below:
Energy breakdown
	 Electricity (Non-renewable) 
650,076 GJ
	 Electricity (Renewable) 
1,273,699 GJ
	 Fuel (Non-renewable) 
2,372,761 GJ
	 Fuel (Renewable) 
329,055 GJ
	 Other indirect purchased energy 
(e.g. heat, steam or other 
non‑renewable purchased energy) 
204,575 GJ
Our operations use different types of energy, from traditional forms of 
electricity and thermal energy to renewables and landfill gas. Together 
with our ambition to decarbonise our operations, we continue to look for 
ways to improve our energy efficiency and the way we use and reuse 
energy in our facilities. In 2020, our energy use (per unit of production) 
improved again, with a 27% reduction compared with 2012. Our overall 
energy consumption also went down by 17%. We did this by continuing 
to invest in new and more efficient equipment, as well as piloting new 
forms of digital intelligence to optimise operational energy use, like HVAC 
(heating, ventilation and air conditioning) systems. This year our total 
energy use was 2% lower than 2019, despite the increase in production 
during 2020.

78
Reckitt  Climate change – insight 2020
Climate change continued
As our understanding of our impact has grown, we’ve looked more 
closely at product design and worked with our suppliers to shrink our 
products’ impact up and down the value chain. At the same time, we 
have to make sure our products still deliver their health and hygiene 
benefits. Our science-based targets will help shape and guide this work.
Other emissions
We’re not a significant user of ozone-depleting substances (ODS), so we 
don’t report on them here. Also, whilst we do emit low quantities of 
common industrial air emissions like sulphur and nitrous oxides (SOx and 
NOx) and particulates (dust), these emissions are below set regulatory limits. 
For example, in 2020 our direct NOx emissions figure is 13.6 metric tonnes.  
Looking ahead to 2021 and beyond
We’ve gone beyond our 2020 GHG targets and set new ones for 2030,  
as part of our science-based targets. But we haven’t made as much 
progress on energy efficiency as we wanted. This is partly down to our 
focus on the quality of our product, and the impact of COVID-19 with the 
need to maximise ventilation to support the safety of our teams.
This hasn’t stopped us resetting our priorities, with a new vision for 
sustainability underpinned by a focus on people, planet and product. 
This is the backbone of our efforts to tackle climate change and support 
the drive to net-zero emissions – by 2040 in our own case. In 2020, we 
started a long-term partnership with the Centre for Risk Studies at the 
University of Cambridge Judge Business School. This will help us model 
our climate risks in detail and shape our priorities for the next decade.
We also want to show how we can help fight climate change by 
improving people’s health and hygiene around the world, here and now. 
That’s what’s behind our efforts to improve access to water in water-
stressed areas and turn them into water-positive areas by 2030. 	
0.0350
0.0300
0.0250
0.0150
0.0200
0.0400
2015
2014
2013
2012
2020
2017
2018
2019
2016
GHG emissions per unit of production
Carbon footprint per dose
Carbon footprint per dose is the only one of our four targets that 
includes emissions across the whole value chain (Scope 3). As we’ve 
seen here, these emissions are hard to reduce because they include 
consumer use. But, after focusing mostly on our own emissions, we’re 
increasingly broadening our work to tackle emissions both upstream and 
downstream of our operations. We’re also working to increase the share 
of our revenue that comes from sustainable products. For more on this, 
see our Sustainable innovation insight.
C AS E S T U DY
ADDING SOLAR ENERGY 
CAPACITY
We first installed solar power at our site in Mauripur, Pakistan,  
in 2018. The objective was to cover 50% of the factory’s energy 
demand from solar sources as soon as possible. We reached this 
in 2020 by adding a 370kW system to the 107kW already in place 
and the 30kW we added in 2019. This means the site’s GHG 
emissions will come down by 420 tonnes a year – equivalent to 
the effect of planting 70,000 trees.
Energy and Greenhouse gas (GHG) data
Energy usage
Units
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
Change 
vs 2019
Change 
vs 2012
Energy use per unit 
of production
GJ per 1,000 CU
0.4704
0.4488
0.4130
0.3959
0.3939
0.3767
0.3640
0.3672
0.3455
-6%
-27%
GHG emissions per 
unit of production1
tCO2e per 1,000 CU
0.0402
0.0392
0.0374
0.0347
0.0313
0.0278
0.0260
0.0232
0.0190
-18%
-53%
Note: all data for manufacturing and warehouses unless otherwise stated.
1	 GHG emissions data are in line with Scope 1 and 2 GHG protocol market-based approach.
2	Pre-acquisition data for our IFCN business is not available. To ensure like-for-like comparisons, target performance trends vs. 2012 exclude IFCN. Including IFCN, 2020 manufacturing data 
and warehouse GHG emissions were 0.0291 tCO2e per 1,000 CUs and energy use was 0.5888 GJ per 1,000 CUs.
†	 Assured by ERM CVS as part of their limited assurance scope; for details, see our Sustainability governance, reporting and assurance insight.

79
Reckitt  Climate change – insight 2020
Climate change continued
offsetting Trees for Change programme in 2006, we’ve seen we can 
make bigger inroads into reducing our carbon footprint through other 
means. But we’ll carry on maintaining the programme’s woodlands, and 
we won’t rule out more use of carbon offsetting.
We’ve developed a tool for our sites to forecast and track projects’ 
carbon and water impact as they evolve from concepts and proposals to 
approved projects. We’ve done this with Eco-Act, an international 
climate consultancy. The tool lets sites integrate future projects with 
current and past performance, so they can connect them to our 
environmental targets. And it includes financial data to let sites see return 
on investment alongside environmental gains.
We’ve also developed an Eco-Opportunities tool with consultancy ERM 
to help sites consider new opportunities based on sister sites’ initiatives 
on energy, water and other areas, plus external proposals. The tool lets 
them examine concepts based on investment cost, return on investment 
and environmental savings.
Climate-related risks and opportunities
Governance
Our Board is responsible for oversight of our climate change strategy, 
which the Executive Committee and management team deliver.
We report performance quarterly to our Business Unit and Global Risk 
Committees, and the Board’s Corporate Responsibility, Sustainability, 
Ethics and Compliance Committee (CRSECC). Our monthly KPI reporting 
lets site, regional and functional teams monitor performance and adjust 
what they do to stay on track to meet our targets and deal with 
emerging issues. For more details on how we report performance to 
senior leadership and the CRSECC, see our Sustainability governance, 
reporting and assurance insight.
We also take part in external benchmarking and indices. For climate change, 
the most recognised is the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) – we’ve scored 
an A- for our climate change disclosure in the last three years.
Strategy
We recognise the ever-closer connection between the health of the 
planet and the health of its people. Our business strategy sees the 
macro-trend of climate change as a key factor influencing both our 
development and society’s. So our approach seeks to mitigate and adapt 
to the risks that climate change will pose. At the same time, we look for 
opportunities to support society and people’s hygiene and health in the 
future. This is at the heart of living up to our purpose: the relentless 
pursuit of a cleaner, healthier world.
In 2018, we reviewed climate-related risks under various scenarios in line 
with the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial 
Disclosures (TCFD). Our approach included scenario analysis from a 
physical and transitional risk perspective, looking at world temperature 
increases of 2°C and 4°C and their possible implications. This includes 
risks and opportunities at the level of products and physical assets. For 
example, increasingly common extreme weather patterns could affect 
our manufacturing sites. We’re also considering the emerging policy 
landscape to address climate change and how low-carbon transition 
policies might affect our business. Our approach involves looking at risk 
in the short term (up to three years), medium term (three to six years) and 
long term (six to 12 years, and beyond). For more on this and our wider 
approach to corporate risk, see our 2020 Annual Report (pages 80–92).
Analysing scenarios had led us initially to focus mostly on our supply 
chain, building on work since 2012. We then broadened our work to focus 
more on product footprint. This complements the new objectives 
underpinning our 2030–2040 climate change ambitions, which are to:
•	
Use a science-based targets approach to accelerate delivery of the 
Paris Agreement on climate change by 2030, helping to limit the 
increase in the average global temperature to 1.5°C
•	
Reduce product carbon and water footprints, including ingredients 
and their supply chains, and further increase energy efficiency and 
use of renewable fuels
•	
Be carbon neutral by 2040.
At a site level, this also includes impacts like flooding or water stress. We 
recognise that some of our sites are in water-stressed locations, and 
we’re taking action to mitigate this risk. The initial analysis showed that in 
both the 2°C and 4°C scenarios there’s likely to be a risk to manage, but 
that it wouldn’t yet have a material impact on our business. We’re 
continuing to look into the potential risks and how we can mitigate and 
adapt to them in our value chain, specifically in product design and 
development.
Building on the initial analysis, in November 2020, we started working 
with the Cambridge Centre for Risk Studies, to deepen our 
understanding of the climate risks we face. They include policy 
developments, carbon pricing and physical risks to our operations, supply 
chain and commodities (e.g. palm, latex and dairy). This will also include 
modelling a digital twin of our business to help us visualise risks and 
opportunities under different scenarios and let us plan a response. We’ll 
publish the findings of this assessment, which will continue into 2022, in 
future Annual Reports.
It also motivates our fight to open up access to health and hygiene 
products in ways that mean more people around the world can afford 
them. We’ll also be supporting the 2021 Climate Change Conference in 
Glasgow (COP26) with our hygiene products.
As well as new targets on GHG emissions and renewable energy, we’ll 
continue our work on making more sustainable products. In particular, 
we’ll keep looking at ways to reduce our Scope 3 impacts through how 
we design products, the ingredients and packaging we use and how we 
encourage consumers to use and dispose of them. For more detail on 
this, see our Sustainable product innovation insight.
We’re looking particularly at:
•	
Our infant formula manufacturing sites – these factories are our 
largest users of energy and water
•	
The type of energy we use and the form it takes in our operations. 
For the emissions from our operations, we’ll continue to focus on:
•	
Improving energy efficiency: this includes refining processes and site 
design to reduce energy, as well as action plans for sites based on 
energy audits and new modelling tools. These target high energy 
processes, such as compressed air, to optimise them. And we’re 
progressively empowering our global community of environmental 
specialists with new digital tools so they can share good practice 
quickly across our network.
•	
Switching to less carbon-intensive energy sources: as members of 
the RE100 group, we’ve pledged that, by 2030, all electricity we buy 
will be from renewable sources. This commitment is an important 
part of meeting our GHG emissions target, given the large contribution 
electricity makes to our overall emissions. We’re also ending our use 
of coal even though it’s still common in some markets. For example, 
we’re replacing coal in South Africa in 2021 and will also complete 
new solar generation projects in two factories in Thailand this year.
•	
Innovation for transformational change: this includes more renewable 
energy from on-site technologies like solar, and progressively finding 
renewable sources for thermal energy. We’re examining how much 
heat our production plants and processes need to run efficiently so 
we can plan routes to decarbonise. We’re also developing 
partnerships with our suppliers to cut emissions. Our Environmental 
Performance Programme, run with our partner Manufacture 2030, 
helps our contract manufacturers improve in areas like energy 
efficiency. We’re planning similar action for 2021 and beyond.
We’ll also carry on using modelling tools to assess different options for 
reducing our overall impact. For example, since launching our carbon

80
Reckitt  Climate change – insight 2020
Climate change continued
possible. For new sites, we look to start activities that develop a 
sustainable long-term water supply to lower the risk of water stress.
Rising mean temperature and consumer preferences
Rising mean temperatures or other weather events might lead to 
changes in consumer preferences, demand and spending patterns. To 
mitigate this, when we develop products, we look at issues that apply in 
specific markets, like water stress. This has led, for example, to us 
developing liquid soaps for the Indian market under the Dettol brand to 
help people stay hygienic even when water might be scarce. Similarly, 
when we develop products, we use our Sustainable Innovation Calculator 
(SIC) app to assess how we can cut carbon and water footprints, 
whether it’s how we source natural raw materials or how consumers use 
and dispose of products. For more on sustainable innovation and how we 
manage our impact, see our insight on Sustainable product innovation.
For more details on climate-related risks and opportunities see our Carbon 
Disclosure Project (CDP) responses – https://www.cdp.net/en/companies.
Metrics and targets
As a leading global consumer goods company, we’ve established 
ambitious climate-related targets and metrics to boost performance in 
areas we can control directly, and across our value chain. These targets 
are in step with the Paris Agreement on climate change.
To help reach the Paris Agreement’s target to keep global warming to 
below 1.5°C, and realise our own ambition to be carbon neutral by 2040, 
we’ve set science-based targets (SBTi) for Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, 
and reaffirmed our commitment to RE100 to:
•	
Reduce absolute Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions by 65% by 2030 from a 
2015 base year
•	
Reduce absolute Scope 3 GHG emissions by 50% by 2030 from a 2015 
base year
•	
Increase annual sourcing of renewable electricity from 5% in 2015 to 
100% by 2030. We’ve already achieved 62% of this, as we buy all 
electricity for manufacturing in the US, UK and Europe, India and 
several other countries from renewable sources.
We’re also aiming to improve energy efficiency by another 25% 
compared to 2015. We’ve made progress since 2012, achieving 27% so 
far. We have plans to do more, with a focus on high-energy processes 
that are common in many sites. Alongside this, we’re choosing newer, 
more energy-efficient equipment when it’s time for routine replacement.
Beyond that, we’re evaluating ways to decarbonise our operations that 
give us the best value. We’re focusing specifically on thermal energy 
switching. What we do, and how fast we do it, will depend on emerging 
carbon pricing policies and the availability of renewable thermal energy 
technology. We’ve already started generating solar power at several sites.
These measures have so far helped us cut GHG emissions per product by 
53% since 2012. We’ve moved from focusing on Scope 1 and 2 emissions 
to look also at our products and their footprints. This includes work on 
product design and development, and emissions in logistics, as well as 
activity with suppliers. We’re committed to halving our Scope 3 product 
footprint by 2030 with our science-based target approach and using our 
Sustainable Innovation Calculator (SIC). This also reflects the fact that 
consumers are increasingly well-informed about sustainability and 
expect manufacturers to offer sustainable products.
Reducing water footprint is part of reducing product footprint, and we 
aim to halve ours by 2040. We’ve continued our water efficiency 
programmes, with a reduction of 39% since 2012 in the water we use to 
make our products. We’ve begun managing catchment areas in the most 
water-stressed locations, with measures like harvesting rainwater and 
returning it to the local area. To reach our goal of making all our water-
stressed locations water-positive by 2030, we’ll do this at two to three 
more sites each year.
Our climate-related metrics appear not just in this insight, but also our 
Sustainability governance, reporting and assurance insight, Water insight 
and our Annual Report (pages 24–27).
In the relentless pursuit of a cleaner, healthier world, we’re increasingly 
better-placed to meet our consumers’ growing demand for more 
sustainable products. By understanding our climate-related risks better, 
we can not only mitigate them but also use them to trigger more 
sustainable innovation and growth.
Listening to our stakeholders
Reporting effectively across our many sustainability issues and giving 
regular updates on our programmes and activities is always a work in 
progress. So we appreciate your feedback. What should we keep doing? 
And where can we do better?
Email us at sustainability@reckitt.com.
Or write to:
The Sustainability team
Reckitt Benckiser Group plc (Reckitt)
103–105 Bath Road, Slough
Berkshire SL1 3UH
UK
Risk management
In managing climate change risk, we look at our business operations as 
well as our products and value chain, and focus on where we can have 
the biggest impact. Through our Company-wide risk management 
process, we’ve identified sustainability as a risk. We identify and assess 
risk at the functional, business unit, corporate and Group levels to give 
both a ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’, three-dimensional view of risk.
Specifically, on climate-related risks, our 2018 scenario analysis gave us 
more detail on:
Transition risks and opportunities
Carbon pricing and regulation
Commodity costs might rise through low-carbon land management and 
international carbon pricing systems. Our procurement teams continually 
review supply chains to mitigate rises like this, and in the longer term we 
might consider alternative ingredients and materials.
An increasing carbon price, whether from market dynamics or policy 
intervention, might similarly affect manufacturing and energy costs. Our 
progressive improvements in energy efficiency will continue to mitigate 
this, alongside investing in renewable energy and more sustainable 
innovation. Our overall approach includes plans and targets for each of 
our sites. These contribute to our annual objectives and our ambition to 
become carbon neutral by 2040.
Physical risks and opportunities
Extreme weather and water stress
More frequent extreme weather events might increase commodity 
prices and make them more volatile, with impacts on agricultural markets 
like palm, latex and dairy. We continuously evaluate supply risk, keeping a 
balance of suppliers and origins where we can. We invest in latex supply 
in a way that aims to underpin sustainable supply, product quality and the 
livelihoods of the farmers at the heart of that supply chain.
More frequent weather events, like flooding or drought, can also have an 
impact on operational capacity at our sites, and our supply chain. We run 
global assessments of our sustainability risks, including climate change, 
flooding and water scarcity. To mitigate risks, we have activity underway 
in our water-stressed markets. These include progressively improving 
water efficiency and adopting a catchment area approach, which 
includes harvesting water and returning it to the local area. These 
measures support our broader aim to be water-positive in all these 
locations by 2030. We currently have 20 sites in water-stressed locations, 
and we’re running a water scarcity study to better understand how we 
can develop products that keep risks to water sources as low as

81
Reckitt  Water – insight 2020
WATER
Raw materials
Packaging
Manufacturing
Logistics & Retail
Consumer use
End of life
12%
8%
<1%
0%
80%
0%
The water we use, and the water our 
consumers use, are vital measures in our 
overall sustainability. That’s why we’re looking 
hard at how to use less water, be more 
efficient with what we do use, and recycle  
the water we harvest on our sites.
Millions of people live in parts of the world where water is scarce, or not 
safe enough to drink. And because of climate change, these numbers are 
set to rise. This makes it vital for companies like Reckitt to play their part 
in managing water carefully. Not only is it good for the planet and its 
people, but it’s good for business because it makes our supply chain 
more resilient.
We have to look closely at the water we use to run our business and 
make our products. But we must look just as intently at the water people 
need when they use our products, whether it’s Finish dishwasher tablets 
or Enfamil infant formula. We’ve been focusing on both these measures 
in our value chain since 2012, as we push to cut our impact on water.
Our work also includes helping people get better access to clean water 
and sanitation in the communities where we work. And through the 
products we make, we back efforts to ease the problems of water-
stressed areas in support of UN Sustainable Development Goal 6,  
which calls for clean water and sanitation for all.
In the last few years, we’ve cut water use in our own operations 
substantially. But the water we use for manufacturing makes up less than 
1% of our products’ footprint. Individual sites have hit their water 
reduction targets, used water more efficiently and treated wastewater 
more effectively. Some sites now discharge no industrial wastewater at 
all. Because COVID-19 increased demand for our hygiene products in 
2020, we had to boost production, and that’s meant we’ve used more 
water overall than in 2019. But, per unit of production, we’ve improved 
our water efficiency.
The infant formula and child nutrition (IFCN) business we acquired in 2017 
uses water as a key input in its ingredients and processes. So we’ve 
integrated this into our sustainable innovation programme and reporting 
systems. It will also be part of our targets from 2020 onwards.
We know there’s much to do as we focus on water in the complete life 
cycle of our products. We’re continuing initiatives to lower our impact in 
terms of how much water consumers use. They include reformulating our 
products using ingredients with a smaller water footprint, and showing 
consumers how they can save water when they use our products. For 
instance, our Finish campaign to save water, which started in Turkey and 
Australia in 2019, has expanded to the UK and US in 2020.
We’re also looking well into the future. In 2020, we launched a new 
partnership with the Centre for Risk Studies at the University of 
Cambridge Judge Business School. This will help us further understand 
climate risks and opportunities for our business, which includes 
pinpointing areas where access to water could become a significant 
concern in the future, and understanding what we can do to deal with 
these risks.
Our performance in 2020
Aim
33%
reduction in 
water impact 
per dose by 
2020
1	 Manufacturing and warehouse only.
†	 Assured by ERM CVS as part of their limited assurance scope; for details, see our 
Sustainability governance, reporting and assurance insight. Excludes IFCN.
Aim
35%
reduction in 
water use in 
manufacturing 
by 2020
2020
13%
†
reduction 
since 2012
Our water impact
2020
39%
1 †
reduction 
since 2012

82
Reckitt  Water – insight 2020
Water continued
Managing our water resources
We operate under a Group certification for ISO 14001, with all sites 
independently certified in 2020, except two which were delayed 
because of COVID-19 restrictions and are planned to be certified 
in 2021. Reckitt sites must also meet our Global Water Management 
standard. This goes beyond compliance, requiring all sites to reduce 
their water impact, which supports our planning for the future.  All sites 
have a water management plan in place, and these are reviewed every 
3 years as a minimum. 
We’ve made progress on reusing and recycling water at several of our 
sites. Some, including Hosur, Mysore and Irungattukottai in India, and 
Bangplee in Thailand, have achieved zero liquid discharges. That means 
they’re purifying, recycling or putting back into production all wastewater 
they generate on site. Some, including Hosur again, have started 
harvesting water, both to conserve it and as part of our wider catchment 
area approach to water stewardship.
Saving water
At our Anhui factory in China, the team saved water in 2020 by upgrading 
and automating the water circulation system to add a ‘sleep’ mode and 
an automatic shut-off when production ends. In Nottingham, in the UK, 
we’ve switched to electric chillers, replacing an absorption chiller and 
cooling tower and saving over 30,000m3 of water a year. And in Hull, also 
in the UK, the team have run a programme of incremental water 
efficiency improvements across many processes. They include vacuum 
pump controls, reducing pump flows and installing a new water filtration 
system. Individually they look small, but collectively they’ve cut the whole 
site’s water consumption by 6% in less than a year and increased its 
water efficiency by 13% compared to the previous year.
At each stage of product development, we run models using our 
Sustainable Innovation Calculator (SIC) to make sure we’re keeping water 
use to an absolute minimum. Our R&D teams use the SIC to check if new 
products are more sustainable than our existing products, and the 
measures include water. We’re one of very few global consumer goods 
companies to do this. For more on this, see our Sustainable product 
innovation insight.
Reusing water
We assess water scarcity at our sites using tools including the WRI 
Aqueduct tool, and through local site assessments. This shows where we 
can have the biggest positive impact, and where we need to do more. 
We look to improve water performance across all our sites, but especially 
in areas where water is scarce.
A priority for us is making sure we treat and reuse as much water as 
possible in these areas. This means challenging ourselves to find new 
ways to reuse water and use as little of it as possible.
Our factory in Agbara, Nigeria isn’t the largest user of water across our 
global sites, but we still want to lower our impact on the surrounding 
environment. That’s meant cutting down on the amount of water we use, 
which in this region is ground water. Because the water often has high 
ion content, making it unsuitable for production, pre-flushing used to be 
a recognised practice. Now we have a system for collecting the water 
that doesn’t meet our production standard. This lets us divert it to 
non-production needs, significantly reducing our overall water use in 	
the process.
Understanding our impact
We currently have 20 facilities in regions potentially affected by 
water-stress, and we have more to do to understand how we can 
mitigate risks by working in our sites’ water catchment areas. This has 
already led to initiatives like water harvesting, which captures rainwater 
so we can reuse it, or return it to agriculture. Our work with the 
Cambridge Centre for Risk Studies, begun in 2020 to help assess climate 
risk, will give us deeper insights into the developing risk of water scarcity, 
so we can make informed decisions to manage it effectively. This could 
include working alone or with others to create sustainable access to 
water. Water withdrawals in these areas in 2020 was 1,791,618m3 and 
water consumption was 1,199,662m3 (21% of our total withdrawals and 
49% of total consumption).
How we performed in 2020 – the data in detail
We measure and report on the water we use in our operations, our water 
impact by product, and the wastewater we discharge by destination and 
volume. All our reporting is against a 2012 baseline, except our Infant 
Formula and Child Nutrition (IFCN) data, which we show separately. We 
were pleased to keep our leadership status for water stewardship in the 
Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). In 2020, we kept our A- score for water 
security, which we first got in 2019. We’ve maintained the focus on 
disclosure, policies and water accounting that saw us improve from B- 
in 2018.

83
Reckitt  Water – insight 2020
Water continued
Product water footprint1
Total product water use 2020 
(Reckitt excl. IFCN)
Units
Raw material
Packaging
Manufacturing
Logistics & Retail
Consumer use
End of life
Total/average
Water use 2020
total (million litres)
699,400
557,800
5,800
0
1,862,900
0
3,125,900†
litres/dose
1.1
0.9
<0.1
0
2.9
0
4.9†
% split
22%
18%
<1%
0%
60%
0%
100%
Total product water use reductions (Reckitt excl. IFCN)
2012 (baseline)
2019
2020
% Change on 2012
% Change on 2019
Water use (litre/dose)
5.4
5.2
4.9†
-8%
-6%
Total water use for IFCN 2020
Units
Raw material
Packaging
Manufacturing
Logistics & Retail
Consumer use
End of life
Total/average
Water use 2020
total (million litres)
602,700
79,200
4,200
0
352,700
0
1,038,700†
% split
58%
8%
<1%
0%
34%
0%
100%
1	 Pre-acquisition data for our IFCN business is not available. To ensure like-for-like comparisons, target performance trends vs 2012 exclude IFCN. IFCN results are shown as a separate entry.
†	 Assured by ERM CVS as part of their limited assurance scope; for details, see our Sustainability governance, reporting and assurance insight.
Figures in the above tables have been rounded for presentation purposes.
Product water impact†
Total product water impact 2020 
(Reckitt excl. IFCN)
Units
Raw material
Packaging
Manufacturing
Logistics & Retail
Consumer use
End of life
Total/average
Water impact 2020
total (million e-litres)
316,400
353,800
5,200
0
3,897,800
0
4,573,200†
e-litres/dose
0.5
0.6
<0.1
0
6.1
0
7.2†
% split
7%
8%
<1%
0%
85%
0%
100%
Total product water impact reductions (Reckitt excl IFCN)
2012 (baseline)
2019
2020
% Change on 2012
% Change on 2019
Water impact (e-litres/dose)
8.3
8.8
7.2†
-13%
-18%
Total product water impact 
for IFCN 2020
Units
Raw material
Packaging
Manufacturing
Logistics & Retail
Consumer use
End of life
Total/average
Water impact 2020
total (million e-litres)
282,200
50,300
900
0
128,400
0
461,800†
% split
61%
11%
<1%
0%
28%
0%
100%
1	 Pre-acquisition data for our IFCN business is not available. To ensure like-for-like comparisons, target performance trends vs 2012 exclude IFCN. IFCN results are shown as a separate entry.
†	 Assured by ERM CVS as part of their limited assurance scope; for details, see our Sustainability governance, reporting and assurance insight.

84
Reckitt  Water – insight 2020
Water continued
In 2020 we didn’t incur any fines or prosecutions for environmental 
breaches or pollution, and we didn’t experience any significant spills.
We used more water this year than in 2019. This was mainly down to 
higher demand for our hygiene products in the COVID-19 pandemic, 
which meant we increased production. But the pandemic didn’t stop  
our teams’ efforts to monitor our water performance virtually through 
meetings, workshops and town halls. Nor did it stop us bringing in  
new water efficiency measures and product innovations.
For instance, at our factory in Cileungsi, Indonesia, we’ve installed a water 
recovery and recycling system that recovers de-ionised water rejected 
by reverse osmosis, so we can use it in production.
At a product level, water impact reduced by 13%, which is an 
improvement on 2019 but still some way short of our target. This is 
because absolute water impact is driven by sales of a few key segments 
(most notably bar soap). Coupling this with increased sales reduced the 
water impact per dose. Since 2012, our focus has been mostly on the 
water we use in manufacturing, and how efficient we are with it. But 
we’re now focusing more on product footprints and we’ve strengthened 
our Sustainable Innovation Calculator to help our product developers. 
We’ve made some progress in 2020, but know we need to do more.
Our focus for 2021 and beyond
We’ve set new targets which will focus our efforts in all parts of our work 
to limit our water impact:
1.	 Be water positive in water-stressed areas by 2030.
2.	 Reduce products’ water footprint by 50% by 2040.
3.	 Reduce water in our operations by 30% by 2025 versus 2015.
Over the coming years we’ll be working harder to understand the impact 
our products have all the way through their life cycle. So far, we’ve 
focused mainly on manufacturing, but we know we must also take the 
end-to-end view. This will mean looking for ways to cut our water  
impact at each stage, from design and manufacture, and ingredients and 
materials, to how people use and dispose of our products. For example, 
in 2020, Gaviscon launched a larger 48-unit pack of double action liquid 
sachets, for conventional and online sales channels in Germany and 
Belgium. This meant a significant reduction of water per dose.
How we use water in our operations
Our operations use water from a number of different sources, depending 
on the local area. Since 2012, we’ve reduced our water use by 39% (per 
unit of production). A factor in this was more efficiency in the way we 
use water in production, for example through cooling tower operations 
or during routine cleaning, while maintaining the same standards of 
hygiene. This year, our total water withdrawals (including IFCN sites) were 
8,703,654m3, an increase in absolute terms of 4% compared with the 
previous year, while we recycled and reused 241,179m3, up 8% since 2019.
Total water use (withdrawals) in our operations in 2020 in m3
	 Public supply (e.g. municipal) 
6,750,629
	 Private wells (e.g. groundwater) 
1,423,862
	 Surface water (e.g. rivers, lakes, 
rainwater) 
380,556
	 Other (third-party sources) 
148,607
Wastewater discharge by destination/volume
	 Sewers (treated before discharge) 
2,239,188
	 Sewers (untreated before discharge) 
381,628
	 Natural water bodies e.g. rivers 
(treated before discharge) 
3,334,171
	 Natural water bodies e.g. rivers 
(untreated before discharge) 
145,508
	 Other water discharges (treated/
untreated) 
141,922
Wastewater discharge
Total wastewater discharge this year was 4% higher than 2019, in line with 
our increased production and water efficiencies.
Wastewater discharges – quality
Units
2016
2017
2018
20191
2020
Direct chemical 
oxygen demand
metric 
tonnes
1,421
1,517
1,338
1,856
3,218
1	 2019 figure restated due to improvements in site estimated and reported data.
Water use – manufacturing and warehouse operations1
Metric
Units
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020†
Change vs 2019
Change vs 2012
Water use per unit of production
m3 per 1,000 
CU
0.964
0.788
0.718
0.675
0.657
0.612
0.598
0.605
0.592
-2%
-39%
Water discharge per unit of production
m3 per 1,000 
CU
0.496
0.344
0.289
0.281
0.289
0.238
0.246
0.268
0.268
0%
-46%
1	 Pre-acquisition data for our IFCN business is not available. To ensure comparison with our 2012 target baseline, 2020 data shown excludes IFCN. Including IFCN, 2020 manufacturing and warehouse water use was 1.061 m3 per 1,000 consumer units (CU) and water discharges were 
0.761 m3 per 1,000 CUs.
†	 Assured by ERM CVS as part of their limited assurance scope; for details, see our Sustainability governance, reporting and assurance insight.

85
Reckitt  Water – insight 2020
Water continued
Listening to our stakeholders
Reporting effectively across the breadth of our sustainability issues, and 
giving regular updates on our many programmes and activities, is always 
a work in progress. So we look forward to hearing your feedback. What 
should we keep doing, and where can we do better?
Email us at sustainability@reckitt.com.
Or write to:
The Sustainability team
Reckitt Benckiser Group plc (Reckitt)
103–105 Bath Road
Slough
Berkshire
SL1 3UH
UK
C AS E S T U DY
FINISH CAMPAIGNS  
TO SAVE WATER IN  
THE UK AND US
After launching campaigns to cut water use in 
Australia and Turkey in 2019, Finish has done the  
same in the US and UK.
In the UK, Finish teamed up with more than 40 
organisations to back Save Water, Clean Clever, a 
campaign to get people to cut down on the 143 litres 
of water they use each day through activities like 
pre-rinsing dishes. Partners include Love Water, 
a campaign involving more than 40 environmental 
groups, water companies, charities like Water Aid  
and the regulator OFWAT.
In the US, the Skip the Rinse Campaign, backed by 
National Geographic, The Nature Conservancy and 
GE appliances, is also aiming at behaviour change to 
stop households wasting water. For every household 
that pledges to ‘skip the rinse’ and save up to 2,996 
gallons of water a year, Finish will donate $1 to The 
Nature Conservancy up to a maximum of $400,000. 
By February 2021, pledges added up to 7.1 million 
gallons saved.

86
Reckitt  Water – insight 2020
Water continued
C AS E S T U DY
C AS E S T U DY
HARVESTING WATER IN INDIA
We want to become water-positive by 2030 in areas that are 
water-stressed. For our manufacturing sites, this currently 
includes 20 locations. At our Hosur factory in India, we’ve taken a 
step towards that target with a rainwater harvesting pond.
With new slopes and drains, it gathers rainwater that falls on 
roofs, gardens and pavements, and filters it with perforated 
pipes, gravel and sand. The water would otherwise run off into 
drains, but we can give it back to the environment on site 
instead. The 4,250m3 pond will help us give around 12,750m3 of 
water back to the environment each year.
COMBATTING COVID-19 
WITH MISSION PAANI
Harpic and news channel News18 launched Mission 
Paani in 2019 to raise awareness across India about 
water conservation and better sanitation. But in 
2020, the campaign switched focus to emphasise 
the value of saving water to boost hygiene and 
combat COVID-19.
Mission Paani launched two new projects during the 
year:
•	
A three-year pilot initiative with Water for 
People India Trust to make water conservation 
part of communities’ everyday life with a 
mixture of communication tools and community 
projects. The aim is to change behaviour by 
encouraging people to ‘measure-reduce-reuse’, 
backed by community organisations and 
Panchayati Raj institutions, which are a key part 
of rural governance.
•	
A water conservation and stewardship project 
with sustainable development NGO MYRADA to 
build and renovate water harvesting structures 
in ten villages. In three years, the projects aim to 
benefit over two million people directly or 
indirectly with water storage and a 10% increase 
in ground water level.

87
Reckitt  Reducing waste – insight 2020
REDUCING 
WASTE
We’ve come close to the point where our sites 
send no waste to landfill. Now we’re building 
on that to reuse and repurpose waste and, 
most importantly, produce as little of it as we 
can. It makes environmental sense, but it’s  
also good business. 
Waste is one of the biggest challenges facing our planet. Businesses like 
Reckitt have a responsibility to limit their impact and make sure not only 
their own operations but also their supply chains generate as little waste 
as possible, whether it’s from production or packaging.
Cutting waste from manufacturing to disposal
We focus on waste all the way from when we source and process 
ingredients to when consumers use our products. We have most control 
of this in our manufacturing processes. Minimising waste here makes us 
not just a good corporate citizen, but a better business: a less wasteful 
business is a more efficient and cost-effective one. We’ve had 
considerable success here in recent years. In 2013, 48% of our sites sent 
zero waste to landfill. In 2020, 96% had reached this target, as we both 
reduced waste and recycled, reprocessed or found better disposal 
options such as waste-to-energy. That drive to avoid waste has meant 
a 28% reduction since 2012.
Our performance in 2020
Aim
30%
reduction in 
waste from 
manufacturing
1	 Includes IFCN, for manufacturing operations only. 
2	Excludes IFCN, for manufacturing and warehouse operations only
†	 Assured by ERM CVS as part of their limited assurance scope; for details, see our 
Sustainability governance, reporting and assurance insight.
Aim
100%
waste  
to landfill
2020
28%
2†
reduction in 
waste per unit 
of production 
versus 2012
2020
96%
1†
of our 
manufacturing 
operations 
with zero 
waste to 
landfill

88
Reckitt  Reducing waste – insight 2020
Reducing waste continued
Waste in our manufacturing and warehouse operations
Units
2012
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020†
% Change 
vs 2019
% Change 
vs 2012 
Waste per unit of production2
Tonnes per 1,000 CU
0.01170
0.00940
0.00919
0.00863
0.00849
0.00841 
-1%
-28%
% of sites with zero waste to landfill
% of manufacturing sites
–
98%
100%
93%1 
96%1 
96%1 
n/a
n/a
Hazardous waste per unit of production2
Tonnes per 1,000 CU
0.00160
0.00126
0.00133
0.00140
0.00163
0.00180
10%
13%
1	 Includes zero waste to landfill status of our IFCN sites, acquired in 2017. 
2	Pre-acquisition data for our IFCN business unit is not currently available. To ensure comparison with our 2012 target baseline, 2020 data shown excludes IFCN. Including IFCN,  
2020 (manufacturing and warehouse waste was 0.0120 tonnes per 1,000 CUs and hazardous waste was 0.00173 tonnes per 1,000 CUs).
† Assured by ERM CVS as part of their limited assurance scope; for details, see our Sustainability governance, reporting and assurance insight.
We also focus on what happens to our products once consumers buy 
them. This means working to cut down on packaging waste by 
developing more recyclable and reusable packaging. Our Plastics and 
packaging insight has more on this.
In 2020, we continued to develop and track the impact of initiatives to 
cut waste in our manufacturing sites. While we’re close to our zero-
waste-to-landfill target, two of our US sites are an exception because 
the waste-to-energy facility they used has now closed. We’re looking for 
alternatives in the region to prevent waste going to landfill, as well as 
continuing to reduce waste in these factories in the first place. We’re 
also bringing the Mead Johnson business we acquired in 2017 into line 
with our waste standards, and they’re included in our targets for 2030.
Following regulations, updating standards
We continue to follow and aim to go beyond local and national 
regulations on waste management. In 2020, we reviewed all of our global 
environmental standards, including waste management, raising the bar 
on what we expect within the business. Among other things, it means 
we comply with waste legislation and set clear targets and objectives for 
people involved in waste management. This is our baseline and our 
approach, embodied in our waste management standard, is to progress 
through a waste hierarchy so we eliminate waste wherever possible. 
Where waste arises, we aim to reduce, recycle or recover materials. By 
segregating waste, we increase recycling and we work to find ways to 
recover materials so that we or others can reuse them.
Our factory at Chonburi in Thailand already avoids sending any waste to 
landfill, and has taken its waste management to the next level. No waste 
is incinerated – our first Nutrition site to achieve this. We did this by 
converting more waste streams to material which could be used by 
others, for example developing a new supply stream of spent processed 
milk and powder for farmers who can use it as animal feed. This points 
the way to a growing part of our work on waste – to reuse and 
repurpose it. We’re also able to cut waste directly from our product 
packaging, for instance by removing secondary shrink-wrap from Durex 
products in China and Thailand.
In our supply chain we’re working to cut waste by monitoring site waste, 
promoting waste reduction and urging our suppliers to use more 
recyclable and reusable materials. In 2020, we partnered with 
Manufacture 2030, a programme which allows retailers and 
manufacturers to measure environmental impacts. The programme will 
initially reach 289 third-party manufacturers spanning 40+ countries. More 
suppliers will join the programme through 2021 and beyond. We’ll be 
actively supporting suppliers in reducing their environmental impacts to 
create a cleaner world. Through Manufacture 2030’s cloud-based 
platform, the Bee, we encourage environmental performance 
improvement at an individual factory level, including waste efficiency.

89
Reckitt  Reducing waste – insight 2020
Reducing waste continued
Waste from manufacturing and warehouse operations by type and 
disposal method
2016*
2017*
2018
2019 
2020 
Total waste 
generated (mT) 
71,410
70,064
95,822
95,881† 
98,488† 
Total waste 
recycled, reused 
(mT) 
68,174
64,051
81,947
66,301† 
69,813† 
% waste recycled
96%
91%
86%
69%† 
71%† 
Total waste 
disposed (landfill) 
(mT)
2,696
6,031
 13,875
29,580 
5,365 
*	 Prior to IFCN acquisition.
†	 Assured by ERM CVS as part of their limited assurance scope; for details, see our 
sustainability governance, reporting and assurance insight paper.
Managing waste from our operations
Each of our manufacturing sites is accountable for managing and 
disposing of its waste. Our Global Waste Management Standard applies 
across all our manufacturing sites, covering every aspect of waste 
management, recycling and compliance. Sites report monthly on their 
progress and are assessed through our performance management 
process, as part of our overall Global Environment Standards 
management and compliance assessments. Also, detailed site audits, 
part of our annual audit programme, assess standards and controls on 
waste and other environmental risks and performance. The audits 
include assessment of proper disposal of all waste, including hazardous 
waste. In 2020, COVID-19 disrupted initial audit plans, but we were able 
to run virtual audits in the second half of the year and completed our 
programme for 2020.
Cutting waste beyond manufacturing
Our manufacturing sites are part of our global ISO 14001 environmental 
management certification. This, as well as our company waste standards, 
means they develop measures and controls to reduce waste and 
manage its disposal carefully. The standards encourage recycling and 
reprocessing of waste, with site environmental specialists identifying the 
best ways to do this locally. 
Beyond our manufacturing operations, we have similar aims. Our offices 
are also helping to cut waste. In India, our team has redesigned invoices 
to dramatically reduce waste paper. Invoices have to be printed out in 
India for legal reasons, but in their old form the documents ran to nine 
pages. We estimate this used as much as 99% of Reckitt India’s 
stationery. The new layout has cut the document down to just two 
pages, saving a projected five million sheets of A4 paper in 2020. As well 
as cutting waste and the use of paper, it’s also saving 100 tonnes of 
carbon emissions a year.
Overcoming challenges
Keeping waste to a minimum means more than just making our own 
production processes more efficient. For instance, changes in quality 
control, manufacturing equipment, labelling or consumer preferences  
can lead to unused or obsolete stock. We try to avoid issues like this  
by planning well and working with consumers to be able to anticipate  
how their preferences might change. This planning reduces waste at  
our manufacturing sites, eliminating materials that we wouldn’t use as  
we change the products we make. We also work with consumers, 
helping them recycle packaging. We aim to choose materials and design 
packaging so that it’s readily recyclable. For example, we only use one 
type of material in our award-winning trigger sprays, we’ve stopped 
using laminates of different plastics and we use new flexible films that 
can be recycled. More information on this is in our Plastics and packaging 
insight. For packaging that’s harder to recycle, we’ve also developed 
programmes to help consumers dispose of it and allow it to be 
reprocessed. An example is our partnership in the UK with Terracycle, 
a free scheme where people can drop off waste packaging which  
is then repurposed through reuse, upcycling or recycling.
Another challenge for us is the high cost of alternatives to landfill in some 
regions. Recycling waste for a new purpose or even waste-to-energy is 
preferable to landfill. But it can often involve more costs. It may mean 
extra costs for upcycling, transporting and storing the material because 
there are several stages before it’s reused. Also, facilities could be 
further away. We continue to find environmentally preferred and 
cost-effective ways of managing waste and move up the waste 
hierarchy in how we dispose of waste. 
Recovering, reusing and repurposing materials
Where we can, we’ll rework and reuse materials to avoid waste 
altogether, but our overriding aim is to maintain the safety and quality of 
our products. At our factory in Anhui, China, for instance, instead of 
having waste sludge from processing and manufacturing incinerated, we 
now send it to a supplier who makes it into fertilizer. Our team worked 
with third-party inspectors to make sure the material passed safety 
inspections.
At our Hygiene products factory in Tatabanya, Hungary, the team uses an 
ultrasonic washing machine to recover and rework plastic hooks from 
packaging that didn’t initially make manufacturing standards but can be 
reworked to the required level. As well as being environmentally better 
by saving 95% of hooks from recycling, it saves €50,000 a year in 
recycling costs.
Recovering and reusing plastic hooks at our Tatabanya factory

90
Reckitt  Reducing waste – insight 2020
Reducing waste continued
In South America, our colleagues are looking at innovative ways of 
repurposing waste, for example our waste latex from our Brazilian Durex 
factory becoming soles for shoes. Similarly, our factory in Cali, Colombia, 
sends 12 tonnes of waste corrugated cardboard a month to Smurfit 
Colombia, which supplies its cardboard boxes. It also sends two tonnes 
of waste polyethylene a month to make coloured plastic bags for sorting 
waste at recycling points. And the team is piloting the use of laminate 
waste from doy packs to make plastic storage pallets. When production 
starts, they estimate this will cut laminate waste by 30 tonnes a year.
Looking ahead – our focus for 2021 and beyond
This year we announced new targets for 2025 and beyond. Our ambition 
for zero waste to landfill from 100% of our sites continues. We’ve also set 
our sights on reducing waste from manufacturing and warehouses by 
25% by 2025. This builds on the 28% reduction since 2012 levels that we 
achieved by 2020 and extends our goals across our newly established 
Nutrition business unit. 
We’ll carry on looking for better ways to avoid, reduce, dispose of or 
recycle our waste. For example, by committing to ‘green chemistry’ 
principles, we’re starting to identify more recycled ingredients. For more 
on this, see our Product stewardship – ingredients and transparency 
insight. 
Our brands are also getting in on the act, encouraging consumers to 
behave in ways that avoid generating waste. An example is the 
partnership between Vanish and the British Fashion Council. 
VANISH MAKES FASHION 
MORE SUSTAINABLE
Vanish has started a partnership with the British Fashion 
Council (BFC) to make the fashion industry more 
sustainable, and to get people to find new uses for old 
clothes instead of throwing them away. Vanish also 
sponsored the 2020 London Fashion Week and is a 
founding partner in the Institute of Positive Fashion, the 
BFC’s new initiative to help make the British fashion 
industry more resilient by adopting circular principles. 
Vanish is co-sponsoring research on what it will take to 
create a viable circular fashion industry in the UK. It will 
also run a year-long programme with industry experts 
and influencers to get people to think differently about 
old clothes so they can be used again and again. That 
includes looking after clothes better, wearing them for 
longer and buying more used clothes. This aligns with 
Vanish’s purpose to give clothes many lives. 
Listening to our stakeholders
Reporting effectively across our many sustainability issues and giving 
regular updates on our programmes and activities is always a work in 
progress. So we appreciate your feedback. What should we keep doing, 
and where can we do better?
Email us at sustainability@reckitt.com.
Or write to:
The Sustainability team
Reckitt Benckiser Group plc (Reckitt)
103–105 Bath Road
Slough
Berkshire
SL1 3UH
UK
Our Cali factory is undertaking a pilot, using plastic waste to make pallets
C AS E S T U DY