How ethical is Boots?
Our research highlights some ethical issues with Boots, including environmental reporting, supply chain management and animal testing.
Boots is the UK’s biggest chain of high-street pharmacy, health and beauty shops. It started as a single Nottingham store and is now a billion pound company owned by US-based private equity firm Sycamore Partners.
Below we outline some of these issues. To see the full detailed stories, and Boot's overall ethical rating, please sign in or subscribe.
Does Boots test on animals?
Boots UK Ltd’s own-brand products aren’t tested on animals and carry Cruelty Free International’s Leaping Bunny certification. This is one of the strongest certifications that brands use to guard against the risk of animal testing occurring in their supply chains.
However, Boots doesn’t score well in Ethical Consumer’s “Animals” ethical rating because it sells products from many brands that aren’t certified and which have less stringent requirements on animal testing. Its parent company Sycamore Partners has other investments in health and pharmacy-related companies, which are high risk sectors for animal testing, but doesn’t have any policy against animal testing.
So while Boots own-brand products are cruelty-free, its broader company group and other brands that it retails might well be involved in or linked to animal testing.
Is Boots palm oil-free?
Boots sells toiletries and make-up which are products that often use palm oil. Palm oil is a contentious ingredient because its production requires destruction of rainforests, which leads to climate damaging emissions, as well as loss of biodiversity, particularly orangutans.
Boots UK Ltd is not palm oil-free.
But all of its palm oil is certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), which is the world’s largest and most recognisable palm oil standard, with a stated aim to “make sustainable palm oil the norm”.
So Boots is taking some action to reduce the impact of its palm oil sourcing. Most of its palm oil is not certified to the highest and most stringent level of sustainability that RSPO offers, so there is more Boots could be doing to improve its approach to palm sourcing and improve its score in Ethical Consumer’s palm oil rating.
Does Boots source from Israel?
Boots doesn’t appear to have any formal links with the Israeli state or any operations in Israel, but when Ethical Consumer researched the company one product was found that was labelled as sourced from Israel: Optase eyelid wipes.
Boots therefore loses marks in Ethical Consumer’s Israel-Palestine rating, which assesses whether companies have any links to the Israeli state, including buying from Israel-based companies which pay taxes to the government.
Other than this, Ethical Consumer didn’t find any information suggesting the company had any links to Israel or Palestine.
How does Boots treat workers in its supply chain?
Boots has a code of conduct on supply chain workers’ rights that includes good policies on forced labour, child labour, freedom of assocation and discrimination. But it doesn’t guarantee payment of a living wage or have adequate protections against excessive working hours.
The company also lacks the other indicators of good treatment of supply chain workers. For example, it doesn’t publish the names of its suppliers or manufacture in countries with better legal protections for workers. There is also no evidence that it’s taking steps to eliminate trading practices that put pressure on suppliers to cut workers’ wages.
Tax conduct
Boots UK Ltd’s parent company Sycamore Partners owns several subsidiaries in tax havens which are holding companies, a high risk company type when it comes to tax avoidance. For example Staples Europe Holdings G.P. based in Bermuda. It therefore scores poorly in Ethical Consumer’s tax rating (subscribe to see the full score).
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The text above was written on 18th May 2026 and the research was conducted in February 2026.