When honeybees want to communicate—to show the location of food, say, or a great new place to live—they perform a waggle dance.

At Burt’s Bees, we have a waggle dance of our own—it just takes a slightly different form. In the past, we released our own formal reports detailing our commitments and goals; the 2012 Sustainability Report was the final report of this kind.

Since then, we have been included in the integrated financial and sustainability reports of our parent company, The Clorox Company. Their annual reports have been recognized for their transparency and excellence in corporate responsibility reporting.

In addition, we're moving towards providing more real-time updates on our progress towards our
2020 sustainability goals both here and through social media. This starts with our 2016 Sustainability Goals Update. We look forward to continuing to tell our story. (And we’ll keep dancing, too.)

Operational Footprint

we do as bees do

Have you ever seen a bee's footprint? Neither have we. All those little gals do is fly from here to there, getting pollen all over everything as they quest for the perfect building material. But they take only what they need—and they leave their environment better than the way they found it.

At Burt's Bees, we take our cue from nature. We've committed ourselves to making the world a little greener, a little cleaner, by doing what bees do best: working hard on natural products that people love.

That's why, for example, we've committed ourselves to a policy of sending zero waste to landfill. With over 350 employees in three facilities, not a single piece of garbage goes to the dump. Not one. Really. How? Each month, our employees diligently volunteer to check over 200 recycling;composting, and waste to energy bins, ensuring everything is sorted properly.

We're also serious about energy use. We know that our purchased electricity is the largest contributor to our carbon footprint—so we've outfitted our facilities with energy-efficient lighting, resource management software, and efficient production equipment. Our conscientious employees look for ways to save energy and water. And we're focusing more on the impact of our supply chain, including contract manufacturers.

But we also know that, as our brand has grown, so has our water usage, jeopardizing our 2020 sustainability goals. That’s not good enough for us. In the face of global freshwater scarcity and limited nonrenewable energy sources, it’s more important than ever to take only what we need.

So, until we can be fossil fuel free and water neutral, we’re offsetting our environmental impact in other ways:

• Achieved Carbon Neutral certification from the Natural Capital Partners
• Purchased Water Restoration Certificates from the Bonneville Environmental Foundation, returning millions of gallons of water—the equivalent of our own consumption—to watersheds like the Colorado River River and the Middle Deschutes Watershed region in Oregon.

There’s still much to be done, but we’re determined to get there. Because we’re not just creating a better world for ourselves—we’re also doing it for the little yellow and black pollinators who live in harmony with nature, and to whom we owe so much.