Sustainability: A Strategic Focus

Essilor has always believed that fulfilling its mission to provide everyone, everywhere, with quality vision care solutions to protect and correct their eyesight needed to be achieved within the framework of sustainable development. The company has thus developed a three-pillar approach: Reducing our environmental footprint, Caring for our people and Working with society, that materializes this long-time strategic focus and guides its decisions. Essilor is also committed to help advance Sustainable Development Goals as defined by the United Nations in 2015 to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all, over the next 15 years. At this time, the Essilor Group actively contributes to 13 of the SDGs. Essilor Canada has embraced this commitment to sustainable development as well and made it a strategic priority. Under the leadership of its Environment, Health and Safety team, considerable progress was made.

Essilor Canada’s Best Practices for Sustainability

Water conservation was the first aspect to be tackled, with energy conservation and waste management next on the agenda. A range of projects has allowed Essilor Canada to reduce its overall water usage per lens by half in less than four years, thus decreasing energy consumption. We also decreased our paper usage by five million pages in just a few years and our packaging for edged and mounted lenses was redesigned so that part of the plastic could be eliminated or replaced with recyclable/re-usable materials. All along, Essilor Canada’s Environment, Health and Safety team takes every occasion to educate and motivate employees by providing training, organizing special activities and sharing our progress.

Our dedication to environmental conservation is also reflected in the laboratory equipment we supply to eye care professionals, for example the National Optronics dry-cut edger. Our traditional systems use minimal water when on recirculating pump, and our flagship and new lab edgers, Mr. Blue and Pro E 600, have a dry cut milling function which reduces water consumption by almost half.

Recognition for Essilor’s Sustainable Business Model

Recognized for its sustainable business model, Essilor Canada is featured in the book The Path Forward, Insights on a sustainable future from Canada’s corporate leaders, put together by Bullfrog Power^®, a Canadian green energy retailer operating in Canada. “This was a great opportunity to share our best practices, challenges and most significant learnings with other industries and organizations”, explains Christophe Derrien, Vice President Partner Laboratories, Quality & Environment, Health and Safety. “Working as a community, within the company and the industry, as well as with other industries, is key to developing sustainability”.

At the international level, as Infoclip.ca previously reported, Essilor has been selected again by the Dow Jones Sustainability Index World and Europe for its corporate sustainability leadership, and ranked second in the Health Care Equipment and Supplies sector. As well, for the 14th consecutive year, Essilor has been included in the FTSE4Good – a global investment index designed to identify companies that demonstrate strong environmental, social and governance practices, as reported on Infoclip last September. The inclusion of Essilor International in two leading sustainability indices underlines the Group’s position as one of the world’s best performing companies in terms of sustainable development.

Click HERE for the full press release.