Colgate-Palmolive is an American multinational consumer products company that specialises in the production, distribution and provision of household, health care, personal care and veterinary products.
Due to the millions of families and homes that use its products worldwide, and thus its potential for climate impact, Colgate was identified as a CA100+ focus company.¹ CA100+’s Net Zero Company Benchmark² assesses the performance of focus companies against the initiative’s three high-level goals: emissions reduction, governance, and disclosure. A key component of the benchmark is for companies to report in line with the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) enabling investors to assess the robustness of companies’ business plans against different climate scenarios.
In 2019, as the lead engager for the CA100+ collaborative, we introduced the initiative to the vice president of global sustainability and the senior vice president of investor relations. We shared the initiative’s goals, including strong climate change governance, action to limit global warming to well below 2°C and disclosure in line with the TCFD.
We continued to engage with the company through the period 2019-2022, in both EOS-exclusive and CA100+ engagements, although the company explained it was using the framework internally but was not ready to commit to public TCFD reporting.
In a meeting with CA100+ in Q4 2021, we were pleased to learn that the company was working towards publishing its first TCFD report, with publication expected in H1 2022.
Following this, the company published its inaugural TCFD report in April 2022 which outlined the company’s strategy for managing climate-related risks and opportunities. We appreciate this increased transparency and believe the company will benefit from aligning its disclosure with the full recommendations of the TCFD.
The report highlighted key areas of progress, including the formation of an ESG Reporting Task Force to address the increasing demands for additional ESG disclosure from its stakeholders and a Water Security Task Force focused on developing a comprehensive water security framework and recommending water security assessment tools for Colgate’s global operations.
We continue to engage the company on disclosing the results of more robust scenario analyses, with a focus on the potential impacts to the business under each scenario, as well as more information on its strategy for reducing its Scope 3 emissions to net zero by 2050.
