How Reckitt is Slashing its Scope 3 Emissions

Reckitt Benckiser Group PLC, better known as Reckitt, stands as one of the UK’s most prominent multinational consumer goods corporations. Based in Slough, the company has established itself as a major force in the health, hygiene and nutrition sectors. 

Reckitt’s extensive product line-up spans multiple consumer categories, featuring some of the world's most recognisable household names, with the company’s Powerbrands which are: Finish, Vanish, Lysol, Dettol, Mucinex, Durex, Strepsils, Nurofen, Harpic, Gaviscon and Veet. 

These 11 Powerbrands are split into self care, germ protection, household care and intimate wellness.

Building on a bedrock of sustainability

Reckitt is already built on a bedrock of sustainability, believing it and business success are fundamentally interconnected. Companies achieve long-term prosperity only by understanding their impact on people and the planet, working towards positive change and maintaining transparency.

In an era of climate change, biodiversity threats and public health challenges, this approach builds consumer trust, strengthens government partnerships and attracts investors while driving brand differentiation and innovation.

Reckitt’s Sustainability Ambitions, launched in 2021, align with the business strategy and embody the company's purpose of protecting, healing and nurturing in pursuit of a cleaner, healthier world. Reckitt aims to reach half the world's population with brands promoting cleaner, healthier lives and engage two billion people through programmes, partnerships and campaigns that create meaningful impact whilst supporting the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The organisation’s latest sustainability report demonstrates significant advancement across its environmental commitments.

The company has exceeded expectations on greenhouse gas reduction, surpassing its goal to cut operational emissions by 65% before the 2030 deadline. Additionally, a transition to renewable electricity is nearing completion, with the company approaching 100% clean energy usage.

Looking ahead, Reckitt has established ambitious revenue and emissions targets. The company aims to generate half of its net revenue from more sustainable product offerings by 2030, while committing to achieve complete carbon neutrality across its entire value chain by 2040.

Tackling the Scope 3 challenge with AI

Reckitt has committed to reducing its Scope 3 emissions by 50% before 2030 (using 2015 as a baseline) and reaching net-zero emissions by 2040. Having already exceeded its initial direct emissions reduction targets, Reckitt is now concentrating efforts on tackling Scope 3 emissions through strategic collaboration with an extensive supplier ecosystem.

Scope 3 emissions typically account for 96% of total corporate emissions, making them critical to address. Reckitt has partnered with CO2 AI and Quantis to tackle the significant challenge, harnessing their combined sustainability knowledge and advanced technology platforms to accelerate large-scale decarbonisation initiatives.

The company has transformed its approach from measurement for compliance reporting to measurement for strategic decision-making. It’s an evolution that requires deeper, product-level emissions insights derived from real operational data with unprecedented granularity. Throughout 2023, Reckitt systematically gathered more than 300,000 data points to enhance the precision of its emissions baseline.

CO2 AI's Generative AI technology converts these vast datasets into more precise and rapidly-generated carbon footprints.

The platform's proprietary system automatically identifies the most appropriate emissions factor for each operational activity within minutes, delivering transparency and automation to what was previously a manual, time-intensive and error-prone categorisation process.

David Croft, Global Head of Sustainability, says: “With insights from CO2 AI, we embed our sustainability agenda and enable future resilience and opportunity in our products, our supply chain and everybody’s day-to-day activity.”

Easier identification of alternative

Reckitt's Scope 3 emissions reduction strategy targets the highest-impact categories where the company wields greatest influence.

Most notably, product-level modelling now accounts for the majority of ingredients and packaging impacts – purchased goods and services that represent more than half of all Scope 3 emissions.

This granular approach enables easier identification of alternative, lower-carbon ingredients for raw materials, such as the bio-based citric acid now used in Harpic Power Plus Deep Clean tablets.

Outbound logistics, representing nearly 10% of Scope 3 emissions, are being transformed through the company's green logistics programme. Reckitt collaborates with customers, suppliers and distribution centres to evaluate low-carbon road and sea freight options, including fuel switches, electric vehicle trials and scaling, plus targeted fuel and transport efficiencies through optimised loading.

Support for third-party manufacturers continues through the Supplier Environmental Performance Programme.

In partnership with Manufacture 2030, Ricardo and Haleon, Reckitt has created a comprehensive toolkit helping suppliers improve resource efficiency and reduce environmental impact across their operations by building awareness of environmental standards whilst sharing best practice and guidance.

From 333 products to complete portfolio coverage

This technological advancement has enabled remarkable improvements in data coverage. One brand successfully expanded its analysis from 18 representative products to 2,190 distinct items, effectively quadrupling the emissions factors utilised and creating opportunities for focused supplier and ingredient-level interventions.

Within four months, Reckitt achieved precise emissions data coverage for all 25,000 products in its portfolio, enhancing the accuracy of its emissions footprint by 75-fold – expanding from 333 representative products to complete product coverage. This comprehensive dataset has unveiled new pathways for achieving 2030 emissions reductions while making substantial progress towards the aforementioned net-zero objective.

Through ingredient analysis, the partnership examined the top 25 substances that generate the majority of raw material and packaging emissions. These insights now inform ingredient selection decisions, product development processes and supplier engagement strategies focused on collaborative emission reduction actions.

Reckitt is equipping operational teams across its Brands, R&D and Procurement functions to drive meaningful action. These teams now have access to tools that visualise how their specific initiatives contribute to Reckitt's broader sustainability objectives, cultivating accountability throughout the entire organisation.