We believe how we manufacture our products and the decisions we make as we scale this movement globally are intrinsically linked to our mission.
Thankyou Responsible Business Goals
Thankyou has set itself the following responsible business goals, which build on Thankyou’s endeavours to date:
1. All Thankyou’s partners are to be aligned with Thankyou’s Responsible Business Expectations
As Thankyou continues to grow, it’s essential that the partners we work with operate in a responsible manner.
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Our KPIs
- All Thankyou’s direct partners (partners Thankyou has a contract with) to commit to Thankyou’s Responsible Business Statement & Goals, Responsible Sourcing Policy and Code of Conduct.
- All Thankyou’s licence partners to commit to Thankyou’s Responsible Business Statement & Goals, Responsible Sourcing Policy, and Code of Conduct during the licence agreement stage of the partnership.
- All existing significant product suppliers for Thankyou managed products to be socially and environmentally audited and found to be compliant to Thankyou’s Code of Conduct standards by December 2022.
- All new significant product suppliers for Thankyou managed products to be socially and environmentally audited and found to be compliant to Thankyou’s Code of Conduct standards by date of first production.
2. All Thankyou packaging and product inputs to be responsibly sourced.
Thankyou is on a mission to gain full visibility across all of our product and packaging inputs and to ensure our product inputs are responsibly sourced.
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Our KPIs
- 100% visibility¹ of inputs for all existing Thankyou managed products by December 2022
- 100% visibility¹ of inputs for all new Thankyou managed products by date of first production
- Responsibly source² Thankyou’s inputs (described below) by 2025
- Any product & packaging input which is greater than > 50% of total procured weight (per product)
- All palm oil (including derivatives) to be RSPO certified
- All products to be ‘Cruelty Free’ (not tested on animals)
- All products to be Greywater safe
- All products to be rosewood oil free or certified
- All paper inputs to be responsibly sourced (e.g. FSC / SFI certified or an equivalent certification standard)
- All inputs deemed as socially and/or environmentally ‘high risk’3 by an internal materiality assessment (Thankyou performed) to be responsibly sourced through either a certification scheme, or a third-party audit
- In addition, all packaging inputs must meet the requirements specified in Goal 4.
Currently
- We use FSC and SFI certified wood pulp across our baby and book category.
- All of our palm oil found within our personal care range is from RSPO certified sources.
- All of our personal care products are cruelty free.
- Some of our personal care inputs are certified organic and plastic-free certified.
- Visibility is defined as having transparency on the total weight of input procured per year, the country of origin it is procured from, and any sustainability certification or social and environmental information on the sourcing process.
- ‘Responsibly Source’ means all inputs will either be certified by an independent, social and environmental certification, or each level of a product’s supply chain adheres to our Code of Conduct by passing a third-party, social and environmental audit.
- Thankyou’s impact team performs a risk analysis based upon available data from existing research on social/environmental issues found in high-risk industry sectors and countries.
3. Thankyou becoming 100% carbon neutral by offsetting its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
More than ever, measuring, reducing and offsetting our carbon footprint is of paramount importance for organisations operating responsibly.
As of 2020, Thankyou is a certified carbon neutral organisation for its operations by Climate Active. Carbon emissions associated with our products and supply chain estimations were also included and offset as part of this assessment.
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Our KPIs
Thankyou measures and offsets 100% of its operational and product GHG emissions using FY20 as a baseline year, which is externally validated by a third-party environmental audit.
4. Thankyou minimises its impact on waste
Thankyou will focus on consumer packaging by adopting goals to ensure packaging uses less resources, more easily recycled, and use materials which can be returned and reused, with the goal of minimising waste associated with the consumption and generation of consumer packaging.
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Our KPIs
For all existing and future Thankyou products to meet these goals by December 2025:
- 100% reusable, recyclable or compostable packaging
- 70% of plastic packaging being recycled or composted
- 50% of average recycled content included in packaging
- To phase out of problematic and unnecessary single-use plastics packaging
Please read more about the progress of our goals in our annual Australian Packaging Covenant Report here.
5. Thankyou minimises its impact on water scarcity
After working in developing contexts to ensure low-income communities gain access to safe water services, we know water scarcity is a serious issue globally. Therefore, we will measure our water consumption and also ensure the environment our partners work within are kept safe.
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Our KPIs
- All existing Thankyou product suppliers to ensure they are adhering to local environmental protection regulations by safely disposing of hazardous chemicals during the manufacturing process, to ensure waterways are protected
- All new Thankyou product suppliers to ensure they are adhering to local environmental protection regulations by safely disposing of hazardous chemicals during the manufacturing process, to ensure waterways are protected by date of first production
- Measure and report on Thankyou’s direct total water usage (operations & products) annually by December 2023
6. Thankyou reports on the progress and impact of its environmental and social goals
Thankyou will publish the progress and impacts of Thankyou’s Responsible Business Goals annually. Please see our first report here.
Initiatives we participate in
We are proud to be a signatory of the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC). We are committed to the Ten Principles of the UNGC in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption. You can view our latest, Annual Communication on Progress Report here.
Please note some ingredients used in our products also carry the following social and environmental certifications attached to them: Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), Responsible Sourced Palm Oil, Plastic-Free Certified, Certified Organic.
Our product sustainability journey
“Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.” – Mark Twain
To be honest, when we look at an increasingly, complex, global supply chain, it can start to feel overwhelming and paralysing. We are under no illusions that meeting our Responsible Business Goals by 2025 will be both challenging, and ambitious. Sometimes, we also know that the best place is to “begin”. There’s a great quote we live by at Thankyou from Mark Twain: Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.
While we know we aren’t satisfied with our progress, here are a few examples that demonstrate our deep resolve to continuously improve and meet our responsible business goals.
Licence partner model
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As we’ve gone on this journey, we’ve watched some of the world’s largest multinationals tackle responsible business practices, at a global scale. One of the biggest observations is those last two words, global scale.
Size, scale, ownership all equates to influencing power. This means not only being able to set ambitious responsible business goals, but also influencing stakeholders across the entire supply chain to implement and achieve these goals.
You see, just like any small organisation partnering with third-party, global suppliers (meaning we do not own any factories), we’ve encountered challenges which are relative to our size and scale.
Can a customer like Thankyou, which makes up a tiny percentage of a supplier’s budget, fundamentally change a supplier’s business practice, to responsibly procure inputs, or meet our code of conduct standards for example?
We all hope it would, but it’s often not the case.
After trying to do this over the last 14 years, we fundamentally believe a licence-partner model is the only way we can achieve our Responsible Business Goals. Partnering with an organisational that is driven by its care of the planet and its people is truly the way forward, and we are excited about finding a partner that will not only meet our Responsible Business Goals but exceed them.
Walking away from our genesis (Thankyou Water)
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Thankyou started as a bottle of water. From day one, we said we thought it was a silly product but, while it existed, we wanted to provide a choice to consumers that did some ‘good’. However, as we have matured, we realise we also need to mature as a brand. We’d hoped we could find a sustainable solution but many of the paths we explored turned out to be nothing more than greenwashing. So we made the call to simply walk away leaving literally millions of dollars on the table, but all in the pursuit of a more sustainable future.
While we can’t reveal what the future of Water will be today, we are proud to announce that we have de-launched our entire single-use plastic bottled water range. While it doesn’t make commercial sense (even our retailers were shocked by this decision), we knew it was time to say goodbye.
To read more about the decision to exit here’s our announcement: We’re announcing the end of Thankyou Water
Plastic-free personal care range
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Over the last year, we introduced refills to some of our most popular personal care products, extending the lifespan of our personal care range while decreasing our waste.
We have developed a plastic-free collection of solid body bars, lotion bars and hair bars. The range is vegan friendly, made with recirculated water, is fully recyclable, made up of recycled material, and represents another step forward in looking at minimising our waste footprint.
Like any good journey, this is the beginning of a continual pursuit to be better.
