Strategy for the Decisive Decade

Strategy for the Decisive Decade

Decisive Action for the Decisive Decade

In 2016, Kimberly-Clark established our Sustainability 2022 goals, which focused on improving the well-being of underrepresented and vulnerable communities while reducing waste, greenhouse gas emissions, and forest impacts associated with the manufacture of our products. We made significant progress against these objectives, but it became clear we needed to further increase our ambition to meet the scale of the challenge.

Science has highlighted the potential impacts and rapid acceleration of the twin climate and biodiversity crises, leading many to dub the 2020s "the decisive decade"—our last chance to avoid the worst consequences of environmental degradation. It is also clearer than ever that we cannot effectively and equitably address these environmental challenges if we don’t also tackle poverty and inequality and build access to education, health care, and sanitation.

That’s why we reset our sustainability strategy in 2020 as we looked forward across the next ten years. Refreshing our ESG materiality assessment helped us to understand how the global operating environment has shifted, and sharpened our focus on areas where we can make the greatest difference.

With our new strategy, we have increased our ambition to drive the action that we believe is proportionate to the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

Kimberly-Clark’s current aspiration is to improve the lives and well-being of 1 billion people in vulnerable and underserved communities around the world, while seeking to safeguard the natural systems on which we all rely.

Making a Difference in Our Value Chain

Recognizing that our direct environmental and social impacts are only part of our products’ full life-cycle effects, we have considered the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to focus our strategy on addressing key sustainability impacts and driving opportunities throughout our value chain.

Creating Shared Value to Solve Global Challenges

In the 21^st century, sustainability isn’t a brake on business but a driver, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals provide the best shared roadmap to necessary action in this critical decade. We’ve aligned our strategy and goals with that framework, putting our brand and innovation teams to work to create shared value and achieve our target scale of positive impact. By aligning our business planning with what the world really needs, we believe we can make meaningful contributions to climate action, gender equality, clean water and sanitation, and responsible consumption and production.

Doing the Right Thing

Our continued commitment to doing the right thing underpins our ambitions to create positive social impact and safeguard natural systems. Making lives better begins with prioritizing the health and safety of our customers, consumers, and employees; promoting diversity and inclusion within our business; and helping to protect the rights of workers across our supply chain. As part of our efforts, we strive to use the safest ingredients (as defined by a science-based approach to product safety) and provide open and transparent details about those ingredients.

Converting Words to Action

We implement our strategy by striving to further integrate sustainability objectives into our business and capital planning processes; align the priorities of our supply chain, brand, and innovation teams; and establish meaningful performance indicators.

Our sustainability programs and teams work at the global, regional, and local levels to drive actions, address gaps, and fuel progress toward our long-term goals and ambitions. Two additional groups support, oversee, and guide our sustainability efforts: our Sustainability Steering Committee, comprised of top Kimberly-Clark leaders, and our Sustainability Advisory Board of prominent external thought leaders.

Effective as of June, 2022