Is Energizer Holdings ethical?
Our research highlights several ethical issues with Energizer Holdings. The company has therefore been marked down in our rating system in a number of categories, including environmental reporting, habitats and resources, pollution and toxics, human rights, supply chain management, animal testing and anti-social finance.
Below we outline of some of these issues. To see the full detailed stories, and Energizer Holdings' overall ethical rating, please sign in or subscribe.
People
In October 2016, Energizer Holdings obtained a Worst Ethical Consumer rating for its supply chain management. The reasons for this included; poor auditing and reporting, as well as its lack of stakeholder engagement. It did, however, provide an external, free, anonymous complaints system available in 10 languages.
Ethical Consumer viewed Energizer Holdings' list of subsidiaries on Hoovers. This listed several subsidiaries in China and the Philippines, which are both currently considered by Ethical Consumer to be oppressive regimes.
Environment
Energizer was awarded a worst Ethical Consumer rating for their poor toxics policy. The company failed to publicly disclose data on the use of hazardous chemicals such as PVC.
However, since Energizer Holdings Inc had a conflict minerals policy, participated in a multi-stakeholder initiative and followed established reporting templates, the company received Ethical Consumer's middle rating for conflict minerals.
Animals
As of 2016, Energizer's corporate animal testing policy stated that it would "avoid animal testing on our products whenever possible" and that "Energizer only performs animal testing on products where required to do so by law, or where no acceptable alternative exists to assess the safety of a product for consumer use." i.e. it still tested on animals.
Politics
The total remuneration of the company executives in 2015 according to the exchange rate at the time of filing (1USD = 0.66 GBP, December 2015), recorded payments that were all over £1m, which Ethical Consumer considered excessive. Energizer Holdings therefore lost marks under Anti-social Finance.
Ethical Consumer Best Buy: No
Boycotts: No