Sustainable Development Goals ‏(SDGs)

The 17 UN goals represent a significant step forward in understanding the joint efforts that politics, business and society must make.

Key Facts

The 17 goals for sustainable development chart the road ahead on major global challenges, and identify the key areas of focus for the next years until 2030.
They create a common understanding of how governments, society and businesses of all sizes and from all industries can join forces to drive progress toward ending poverty, protecting the planet and ensuring prosperity.
Henkel has been following the developments associated with the SDGs closely, and continuously reviews its own targets and initiatives to ensure they reflect the priorities set out by the SDGs.
Due to our long history of commitment to sustainable development, as well as our broad product portfolio and presence in diverse markets, we can make a contribution to all of the 17 SDGs.
In particular:
- Goal 4: Quality education
- Goal 8: Decent work and inclusive, sustainable economic growth
- Goal 12: Responsible consumption and production
- Goal 17: Partnerships for the goals

Our role

At Henkel, we are committed to leadership in sustainability – and this commitment is anchored in our company values. We are actively supporting the achievement of the SDGs: The 17 goals represent a significant step forward in understanding the challenges and opportunities that need to be addressed in order to drive progress toward sustainable development.

The SDGs cover the full breadth of sustainability-related issues that are relevant for all stakeholders – both developing and developed nations, businesses as well as non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and parties at all stages of the value chain across all industries and sectors. By providing a common understanding and a shared focus, the SDGs will help structure discussions at national and industry levels, and will support diverse organizations in identifying priorities and entering into meaningful collaboration. This type of collective action is centrally important to success: By joining forces and bringing our individual activities together, we will be able to achieve much stronger progress toward sustainability than we could by acting separately.

Key issues and challenges

Putting the SDGs into action also presents some challenges, as is to be expected from any activity that reflects such a variety of parties with such a broad set of interests – and that confronts challenges with such wide-reaching scope.

It will be essential to prioritize goals, balancing interests and defining contributions at national and industry levels, if we are to make meaningful progress. Stakeholders around the world will need to learn together and identify effective ways to contribute to the 17 goals and their respective targets in a consistent and transparent manner. In particular, it will be important to create clarity on how existing measurement approaches can be leveraged and consolidated to provide meaningful data on progress.

Our approach and commitments

As a company, we are convinced that the goals provide a shared focus that can empower collaborative action and will accelerate progress toward sustainability. Sustainable consumption, packaging and plastics, combating climate change, water, human rights, equal opportunities and education are important topics for our work. By continuously reviewing our companyʼs goals and initiatives, we ensure that these are aligned with the SDG priorities that are relevant for us. Our activities support the SDGs because we have a long history of working intensively on various aspects of sustainability, as well as a broad product portfolio and a presence across diverse markets. In the context of our social commitment, for example, we track the percentage of projects we support that contribute to the achievement of the SDGs.

Henkel SDGs Contribution List EN ‏ (635.55 KB)