Yves Saint Laurent Beauté launches a global sustainability program – WWD

PARIS – Yves Saint Laurent Beauté has partnered with Re:wild, an NGO, on a sustainable development program aimed at protecting biodiversity.
Dubbed Rewild Our Earth, it’s the brand’s broadest environmental commitment to date.
“We always try to be relevant and coherent, and to resonate with the spirit, the state of mind, the DNA and the codes of Monsieur Saint Laurent”, explained Stephan Bezy, international general manager of Yves Saint Laurent Beauty, at L’Oréal.
He quoted the creator’s famous phrase: “I participated in the transformation of my time”. (Which translates to: “I participated in the transformation of my time.”)
Saint Laurent has always been fashionable. When feminism was on the rise in the 60s, it offered women a wardrobe that stuck with what was traditional men’s attire, for example.
“He really resonated with the times,” Bezy said.
Fast forward to today and the environment is one of the most critical issues, especially how it affects biodiversity loss. 75% of Earth’s environment has already been severely altered, says UN
“We have a treasure in our hands; we better work hard to protect it,” Bezy said.
Specifically, Rewild Our Earth intends to protect and restore 100,000 hectares of land, nearly 10 times the size of Paris, by 2030. Safeguarding biodiversity in places negatively impacted by climate change climate, where YSL’s beauty ingredients are eliminated, is a priority. These include the Ourika Valley in Morocco, a country dear to Saint Laurent and which inspired him, and where beauty brand YSL launched its Ourika Community Gardens project in 2013 to restore environments to risk and empower local communities. Haiti, Madagascar and Indonesia are also on the list.
There is also a new brand sustainability platform, called Changing the Rules, Changing the Future, which is based on three main pillars including impact reduction, land rewilding and the Abuse Is Not Love.
The brand also unveiled its first sustainable development report, which shows the efforts of YSL Beauté across its entire business.
Last year, the company participated in the United Nations Decade of Ecosystem Restoration. And for its new program, YSL Beauté is collaborating with Re:wild, which works in 188 conservation areas in 89 countries on “rewilding,” or the protection and restoration of biodiversity, and to advance ecological restoration in global scale. It involves conservation based on an effort to activate natural processes, repair damaged ecosystems and restore degraded landscapes.
“As a global society, our livelihoods and the health of our planet depend on nature; we are all connected to the natural world,” Penny Langhammer, executive vice president of Re:wild, said in a statement. “In order to fight climate change, we don’t need to reinvent the planet, we just need to regenerate it and create opportunities for our ecosystems to recover. Through this long-term collaboration with YSL Beauté, we will continue our efforts to protect and restore the most irreplaceable areas on Earth.
In the Ourika Valley, the brand cultivates various ingredients, such as marshmallow, iris, jasmine, walnut and saffron. In Haiti, there is the sourcing of vetiver, an ingredient of the perfumes L’Homme, La Nuit de L’Homme and Opium. Madagascar is linked to vanilla and geranium, which can be found in Black Opium, Libre, Le Vestiaire des Parfums and Y, while the supply of patchouli is in the spotlight in Indonesia. This ingredient is used in Mon Paris, Black Opium and Le Vestiaire des Parfums.
“With this ambitious new program, YSL Beauté affirms the importance of championing work on Earth System Change: one of nine “planetary boundaries” identified as the limits of the Earth which, if crossed, will seriously compromise the suitability of our planet as a habitat for human development,” said Caroline Nègre, Scientific Director and International Sustainable Development at YSL Beauté.
The brand’s goal to reduce its impact focuses on transitions to low-carbon and circular economies, as well as setting targets in line with current climate science. To reduce its environmental footprint, YSL Beauté is taking numerous measures, such as prioritizing bio-based ingredients, so that they represent 70% of the total by 2023. It is moving to completely carbon-neutral factories in France this year.
YSL Beauté launched the Abuse Is Not Love program in 2020 to fight against domestic violence through an associative prevention program. It is now present in 19 countries, including the United States and China, and has trained more than 130,000 people. Abuse Is Not Love will roll out to 33 countries by the end of the year and aims to educate 2 million people by 2030.
To learn more, see:
YSL Beauté steps up its Abuse is not Love program
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