- Biodiversity assessments
- Supports corporate sustainability goals
- Multi-site project
- Stakeholder engagement
- Fast-moving project
L’Oréal, the world’s largest cosmetics company, established a global sustainability initiative, “L’Oréal for the Future,” which strives for 100% of their industrial facilities to document measurable increases in biodiversity within their local environment by 2030.
Challenge
Increases in biodiversity can only truly be measured against a baseline of the current physical landscape and bio-ecologic attributes. Establishing this baseline at each site is critical to the measurability and success of the project.
Solution
GZA has recently completed a three-season (spring, summer, fall), 16-site survey of L’Oréal distribution and production facilities, including 14 in the U.S. and two in Canada. A baseline evaluation of biodiversity at each facility is being established, using a variety of standard techniques to survey wildlife. An arsenal of specialty wildlife survey equipment was deployed, including acoustic bat monitors, wildlife live traps, game cameras, avian vocalization recordings, high-intensity entomological lights, and malaise traps, to document a large cross section of taxa groups. Communication with stakeholders at the local and corporate levels has also been maintained through blog posts and photographs of site inventories as well as informal presentations to each site’s management group. Proposing and designing ecological improvements at each facility – whether leased or owned, situated within a densely industrial area surrounded by pavement, on a sprawling corporate setting with sterile, manicured sod, or amidst a rural environment with plentiful fields – to strive to double each site’s biodiversity score will constitute the next phase of the project. L’Oréal’s vision is that each site be adaptively managed to reach its bio-ecologic potential.
Benefit
GZA’s comprehensive baseline data and assessment provides the foundation for L’Oréal’s progress towards increased biodiversity at each site. The ongoing communication with stakeholders facilitates engagement and enthusiasm for the project and the company’s sustainability goals.