Priority 3: limiting the environmental impact of products and services
Limiting the environmental impact of products and services was more central than ever to people’s expectations in 2020 and the Lagardère group continued with its effort to address this.
At Lagardère Travel Retail, these expectations concern primarily product safety and traceability, as well as preventing food waste and use of single-use plastics. This was reflected primarily in 2020 by improvement in the offering, providing as much transparency as possible and increasing the proportion of local and ethical products. In Foodservice, Lagardère Travel Retail France wanted to significantly increase its foodservice offering dedicated to local and organic products on the basis of a sustainable development approach or with certification. The division also decided in 2019 to ban the buying of single-use plastic consumables in its proprietary foodservice brands around the world. This initiative was implemented in Europe in 2020 and will be pursued in other regions in 2021.
Lagardère Publishing maintains its commitment to responsible management of paper associated with its publishing activities and also took action in 2020 on the issue of reducing plastic use. Hachette Livre France mapped out in detail the various materials used across all its book production and distribution chains, in order to be able to focus in 2021 on devising an action plan to reduce its use of plastics.
Furthermore, in addition to controlling the energy efficiency of its various buildings, the Group’s consolidated carbon footprint, in the process of being assessed in 2021, will allow it to identify ways of cutting greenhouse gas emissions that can be implemented within the various activities concerned.
Lastly, the drive to raise awareness about environmental responsibility continued in 2020 across all the Group’s media publications. For example, via its Elle International network, 40 editions of Elle magazine worldwide published a “Green” issue to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Earth Day, while Paris Match, voted magazine of the year by SEPM, published a series of reports on heroes of the planet.
This mission to raise awareness also involved the Group’s employees by means of various internal initiatives, such as the creation of a sustainable development and CSR academy, and the commitment by staff at Lagardère Travel Retail France to plant 350 trees in order to offset the carbon footprint of their travel.
98% of paper bought and supplied in 2020 is certified and/or recycled.