Our Healthy Lives Mission
Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health Commits $800M to Improve the Health of People, Planet

Sustainable Brands
Published 3 years ago. About a 4 minute read.
Image: Larry Crayton/Unsplash
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The Consumer Health division of the world’s largest healthcare company has launched its Healthy Lives Mission — with a commitment to invest $800 million through 2030 to meet ambitious goals of improving people’s health while protecting the health of the planet.

The company will use the investment to advance initiatives both inside and outside of the business, accelerating action to protect the environment and address important human health challenges. Just as a holistic health approach treats the whole person, the Healthy Lives Mission is built on the recognition that human health is interdependent with the health of communities and the planet.

“To thrive, people need healthy places to live, work and play. We are leveraging our science, scale and reach to improve the health of both people and the planet,” Thibaut Mongon, Executive Vice President and Worldwide Chairman of Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health, said in a statement. “To achieve this, we are aggressively tackling sustainability at all levels of our Consumer Health business — from how we operate our plants to how we design our products. Our 19,000 employees are the powerful force delivering this change; they are experimenting, they are energized, and they are making a real difference to our business and the world we share.”

The Healthy Lives Mission targets are:

By 2022

Polystyrene and black plastic containers eliminated from global portfolio
Reuse models expanded across Johnson’s® Baby, Aveeno® and OGX®
Transparency on ingredients

By 2025

100 percent recyclable, reusable or compostable plastic packaging
100 percent certified or post-consumer recycled (PCR) paper- and pulp-based packaging

By 2030

Aveeno®, Johnson's® Baby, Listerine®, Neutrogena® and OGX® strive to use 100 percent recycled plastic in bottles
100 percent renewable electricity powering operations
Maintain 100 percent RSPO certification for palm oil derivatives

Five of Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health’s global brands — Johnson’s® Baby, Neutrogena®, Listerine®, Aveeno®, and OGX® and three regional brands (Nicorette®, Carefree®/ o.b.®, Le Petit Marseillais®) — have already integrated sustainability into their brand strategies to meet the 2030 goals.

This involves navigating the complexities of delivering safe and effective products to improve people’s health, while also considering the planet’s health. For example, changes are underway to remove non-recyclable pumps from smaller Johnson’s® Baby bottles.

"We hear from parents that pumps are helpful for one-handed use when holding a baby, but pumps are definitely a tension point when it comes to sustainability, due to a metal component inside that prevents them from being recycled,” explains Karen Marchetti, Director of Global Baby Franchise at Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health. “As a baby brand, we also need to make sure we are shaping a healthy and sustainable planet for future generations. So, we’re making packaging changes to maximize recyclability."

By the end of 2020, Johnson’s® Baby will remove pumps from all products in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Africa with less than 500ml volume; replacing them with a flip-top cap — which is expected to result in about 24 million fewer pumps going to landfill.

Female hygiene brand Carefree® is reducing the dimensions of its packaging; and switching from printed to brown shipment packaging in Europe, the Middle East and Africa — significantly reducing the amount of packaging materials used and saving 500 tons of paper per year.

Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health is also focused on addressing complex preventable health issues — in particular, eradicating smoking and preventable skin cancers. Through strategic partnerships, the company is collaborating on initiatives to promote smoking cessation and sun-safe skincare practices.

For example, Nicorette® — a nicotine-replacement brand that the Company markets globally, outside the US (in the US, the brand is owned by GSK) — is working with the United Nations and the World Health Organization to improve access to smoking-cessation interventions and conduct smoking-cessation programmes in vulnerable regions around the world.

To educate about the risk of sun exposure and promote sun-safe practices, Neutrogena® commissioned a documentary in partnership with the American Academy of Dermatology, The Melanoma Research Foundation and one of Hollywood's top actresses and producers. In the US, Aveeno® is launching Restorative Therapy co-created with a leading onco-dermatologist, with cancer patients' unique skin care needs in mind. The gentle formulations are free of fragrance, parabens, sulfates and dyes.

Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health’s focus on the Health Lives Mission follows decades of work in caring for human health, and forms part of the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies’ corporate sustainability goals and commitments, which are reported on annually through its Health for Humanity report.

Of note is the potential to scale up the innovations resulting from the Healthy Lives Mission investment — as the company plans to share learnings across its brands, and even to other companies in the form of new processes and materials. Embedding the goals within the business and activating its 19,000 employees makes healthy lives everyone’s mission.

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