According to the Naturewatch website, viewed in November 2020, Naturewatch was still calling for a boycott of L'Oreal, since its "continued use of ‘innovative’ ingredients, tested on rabbits, mice and guinea pigs, led to Naturewatch announcing a boycott of L'Oréal in 2000". This included subsidiaries of L'Oreal, such as Urban Decay. The website also stated that the Bodyshop had been removed from the boycott list as it was no longer owned by L'Oreal.
As the boycott call extended to L'Oreal's subsidiaries, company lost a whole mark under Boycott Call.

Ethical Consumer visited the Baby Milk Action website in October 2020 and found its long standing boycott of Nestlé over its irresponsible marketing of breast milk substitutes was ongoing.

Boycotters have long accused Nestlé of harming children through the unethical promotion of infant formula. Nestlé is one of the most boycotted brands in the UK as a result of its activities. Baby Milk Action is one of the organisations which calls for such a boycott. According to Baby Milk Action, which describes itself as a non-profit organisation which aims to save lives and to end the avoidable suffering caused by inappropriate infant feeding, Nestlé was targeted with the boycott because monitoring conducted by the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN) found it to be responsible for more violations of the World Health Organisation's marketing requirements for baby foods than any other company.

It stated that the boycott would continue until Nestlé accepted and complied with its four-point plan for saving infant lives and ultimately ending the boycott.

Nestlé therefore lost a whole mark under Irresponsible Marketing and a whole mark under Boycott Call.

In October 2020, Ethical Consumer viewed the website for the indigenous rights organisation Lakota People's Law Project, which, under the 'More you can do' section after clicking on one of its major actions or campaigns, called for a boycott of Nestlé and all its products.

It stated, "Nestle makes enormous profits each year and faces no legal accountability for stealing water. Now coffee empire Starbucks has struck a multibillion dollar deal with Nestle. We ask you to join the movement to #BoycottStarbucks, #BoycottNestle, and boycott all of their products. Nestle profits from water theft, habitat destruction, child slavery, & plastic pollution – don't support them!"

The company lost a full mark under Boycott Call.

In November 2020, Ethical Consumer searched the L'Oréal website. The company produced sunscreen, which was an area in which nanotechnology was very common.

A webpage about nanoparticles was found on the company's 'Inside Our Products' section of its website. It stated "At L’Oréal, we only use 4 ingredients at the nanometric scale. Nano titanium dioxide, Nano zinc oxide, Nano carbon black, Nano silica," the page stated that these had been deemed safe for cosmetic use by the EU’s Scientific Committee for Consumer Safety (SCCS).

Ethical Consumer considered nanotechnology to be a technology that carried potential environmental and health risks, and had not yet been
sufficiently established as safe, therefore any use of nanoparticles was marked down. The company lost half a mark under Controversial Technologies category.

According to a post on the NanoWerk website viewed by Ethical Consumer in Dec 2016, L'Oreal was one of the top nanotechnology patent holders in the United States.

The 2007 Corporate Watch report 'Nanotechnology: undersized, unregulated and already here', documented the growing evidence that nanomaterials pose a unique but so far poorly understood range of toxicity problems, along with concerns about the wider social and economic impacts of nanotechnology. L'Oreal therefore lost half a mark in the Controversial Technologies category.

Ethical Consumer contacted Lily's Kitchen in March 2019 and a response stated "Due to the way our freshly prepared meat is sourced, we're not able to guarantee that our non-organic meat has been fed GM free only. The majority of our crops come from the EU rather than the US where most GM crops are imported from, so the meat that we use which has been fed a GM diet is relatively low. As we don't create human food products or use ingredients product from GMOs we don’t meet the requirement for any declaration. "

In October 2020 Ethical Consumer searched the Lily's Kitchen website for an update on this information but only found one product that stated that it contained no genetically modified ingredients.

Some of Lily's Kitchen products were organic, and thereby would not contain meat from animals fed on GMO animal feed, however this was not the case with all products.

Lily's Kitchen lost half a mark under Controversial Technologies.

According to the organisation's website www.ert.eu, viewed by Ethical Consumer in November 2020, L'Oréal was a member of the European Round Table for Industry. This was regarded by Ethical Consumer as an international corporate lobby group which exerted undue corporate influence on policy-makers in favour of market solutions that were potentially detrimental to the environment and human rights.

The company therefore lost half a mark under Political Activities.

In October 2020 Ethical Consumer viewed the Nestlé profile on the Open Secrets website. It indicated that the company had donated a total of $136,704 to both the Democrat and Republican parties in the 2020 election cycle. The company had also spent $1,281,000 in 2019 on lobbying. In 2019, 3 out of 13 Nestle lobbyists had previously held government jobs. Nestlé lost a full mark under Political Activities.

In October 2020 Ethical Consumer viewed the International Dairy Foods Association's website. Nestle USA, Inc. was listed as a member. The organisation was considered by Ethical Consumer to be a corporate lobby group which applied political pressure for laws and regulations to favour the interests of businesses over protections for consumers, workers, social welfare and the environment.

The company therefore lost half a mark under Political Activities

In October 2020, Ethical Consumer found a document on the L'Oreal website dated 9th February 2018 and entitled "Publication of information relating to the remuneration of the Chairman and CEO of L'Oréal, in accordance with the AFEP-MEDEF code on corporate governance for listed companies"

This document stated that the company had agreed to pay CEO Jean-Paul Agon a fixed salary of 2,200,000 euros in 2018. Other bonuses and stock options would be in addition to this amount. Ethical Consumer deemed any annual compensation over £1million to be excessive. As a result the company lost half a mark under Anti-Social Finance.

In October 2020 Ethical Consumer downloaded the Nestlé 2019 Corporate Governance Report from the company’s website www.nestle.com. The compensation table stated that Paul Bulcke, the chairman, was paid a total compensation of 3 498 260 Swiss Francs (roughly £2941249) in 2019. Ethical Consumer considered any annual remuneration over £1,000,000 to be excessive. Nestlé lost half a mark under Anti-Social Finance.

In October 2020, Ethical Consumer searched the L'Oreal family tree on corporate information website Hoovers. The company had numerous subsidiaries in jurisdictions on Ethical Consumer's current list of tax havens.

For many of these Ethical Consumer was unable to verify whether the companies were serving the local population or not.

Two companies were described by Hoovers as "primarily engaged in the management of the funds of trusts and foundations organized for purposes other than religious, educational, charitable, or nonprofit research." These were considered high risk company types for the likely use of tax avoidance strategies. These were:
L'Oreal Investments B.V. (Netherlands)
Oomes B.V. (Netherlands)

An internet search using the search terms “L'Oréal tax policy statement country” found no country-by-country financial information or reporting (CBCR), nor clear public tax statement confirming that it was this company’s policy not to engage in tax avoidance activity or to use tax havens for tax avoidance purposes. A L’Oréal UK Tax Strategy dated December 2019 was found but did not appear to apply to the company's global operations, and did not refer to tax avoidance.

Due to the fact that L'Oreal did not have country-by-country reporting and two high risk subsidiaries in tax havens it received a worst Ethical Consumer rating for likely use of tax avoidance strategies and lost a whole mark under Tax Conduct.

In October 2020 Ethical Consumer viewed the corporate family tree for Nestlé S.A on the corporate database D&B Hoovers. The company had numerous subsidiaries based in jurisdictions which Ethical Consumer considered to be tax havens at the time of writing. Subsidiaries included several company types which were at high risk of being used for tax avoidance purposes. High risk company types included holding companies based in Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, Bermuda and the Bahamas.

These included:
DPA Manufacturing Holdings Ltd (Bermuda)
Centram Holdings Ltd (Bermuda)
Hsu Fu International Limited (Cayman Islands)
Nestlé's Holdings Ltd (Bahamas)
COMPAGNIE FINANCIERE DU HAUT-RHIN S.A. (Luxembourg)

As Nestlé was a Swiss company the high-risk companies registered in Switzerland were not taken into consideration.

A statement was found on the Nestle website that, "In compliance with the OECD ‘BEPS’ Actions, Nestlé prepares the Country-by-Country report (CbCR) for its entire group and provides it to the Swiss Tax authorities. Swiss Tax authorities share the Nestlé CbCR with countries that have signed agreements allowing for that exchange.
The Nestlé CbCR is therefore available to all the countries where tax authorities have agreed to the standards developed by the OECD."
"We do not use hybrid instruments and entities that result in tax avoidance, double deduction or double no taxation."
However, no public country-by-country reporting was found, nor clear public tax statement confirming that it was this company’s policy not to engage in any tax avoidance activity or to use tax havens for tax avoidance purposes, nor did the company provide a narrative explanation for what each group entity located in a tax haven is for, and how it is not being used for purposes of tax minimisation.

Nestlé therefore received Ethical Consumer's worst rating for likely tax avoidance and lost a whole mark under Tax Conduct.