SASB Household & Personal Products

1. Download the Standard: Access the SASB Household & Personal Products standard for free at sasb.org. Review the full document to understand the disclosure topics and associated metrics specific to this industry.

1. Identify Material Topics: Use the SASB Materiality Map to confirm which of the standard's disclosure topics are most financially material to your specific business operations (e.g., packaging lifecycle management, product environmental footprint, ingredient safety).

1. Conduct an Internal Gap Analysis: Assess your current data collection and reporting capabilities against the quantitative and qualitative metrics required by the standard. Identify gaps in data availability or reporting processes.

1. Engage Cross-Functional Teams: Bring together sustainability, finance, legal, supply chain, and investor relations teams to assign ownership of each metric and establish data collection workflows.

1. Collect and Validate Data: Gather the required performance data across all applicable disclosure topics. Ensure data quality and consistency, and consider whether voluntary third-party assurance is appropriate for your organization.

1. Draft Disclosures: Incorporate SASB-aligned disclosures into your annual report, sustainability report, or SEC filings (e.g., 10-K). Use SASB's reporting templates and guidance documents to structure your disclosures correctly.

1. Publish and Communicate: Publish your disclosures and notify investors and ESG rating agencies. Consider registering your disclosure on the SASB Standards Application Database or communicating adoption through investor relations channels.

1. Monitor for Updates: Track SASB/IFRS Foundation updates to the standard and revise your disclosures accordingly in each annual reporting cycle.

The SASB Household & Personal Products standard identifies a set of disclosure topics and associated metrics that companies are expected to report on. These topics represent the ESG issues most likely to be financially material to companies in this sector.

Environmental Topics include: *Packaging Lifecycle Management* — companies disclose the total weight of packaging, percentage made from recycled or renewable materials, and strategies for reducing packaging impacts across the value chain. *Product Environmental Footprint* — metrics cover the percentage of products that have undergone a lifecycle assessment (LCA) and the revenue share from products with third-party environmental certifications.

Social & Product Safety Topics include: *Product Safety* — companies report on the number of recalls, the percentage of revenue from products containing substances of concern (e.g., parabens, phthalates), and efforts to reformulate products to reduce chemical risk. *Ingredient/Chemical Safety* — disclosure covers the percentage of products meeting voluntary chemical safety standards and the approach to managing ingredients flagged by regulatory or scientific bodies.

Supply Chain & Labor Topics include: *Supply Chain Management* — metrics address the percentage of supplier facilities audited to social and environmental standards, corrective action rates, and sourcing policies for key raw materials (e.g., palm oil, mica). *Labor Practices in the Supply Chain* — companies disclose policies and performance related to forced labor, child labor, and fair wages in their supply chains.

Activity Metrics provide context for all disclosures and typically include: number of units sold by product category, total revenue, and number of employees. These metrics allow investors to normalize performance data across companies of different sizes for meaningful comparison.

SASB standards have become one of the most widely referenced ESG disclosure frameworks globally, particularly among institutional investors in North America. As of the mid-2020s, thousands of companies across 77 industries reference SASB standards in their sustainability or financial reporting, with adoption concentrated among large-cap publicly traded companies in the U.S. and increasingly in Europe and Asia-Pacific. The Household & Personal Products standard is among the more actively used sector standards, given the high investor scrutiny of consumer goods companies on issues like packaging waste, chemical safety, and supply chain labor practices.

A pivotal development occurred in 2022 when the IFRS Foundation consolidated SASB's standard-setting activities under the newly formed International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB). The ISSB's inaugural standards (IFRS S1 and IFRS S2, released in 2023) explicitly incorporate SASB industry-specific metrics as the primary vehicle for industry-level disclosure, dramatically elevating SASB's global relevance and regulatory integration. This has positioned SASB standards as a de facto baseline for mandatory sustainability reporting in jurisdictions adopting IFRS sustainability standards, including the EU, UK, Canada, Australia, and Japan.

In the consumer goods sector, SASB competes primarily with GRI Standards (which are more stakeholder-oriented and broader in scope) and CDP questionnaires (which focus on climate, water, and forests). Many companies use SASB alongside GRI or CDP rather than choosing one exclusively. ESG rating agencies such as MSCI, Sustainalytics, and Bloomberg ESG use SASB-aligned metrics in their scoring models, making adoption increasingly important for companies seeking favorable ESG ratings. Demand for SASB-aligned disclosure is growing as regulatory pressure intensifies globally, though the framework's voluntary nature in most markets means adoption remains uneven among smaller companies.

The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) was founded in 2011 by Jean Rogers in San Francisco, with a mission to develop industry-specific sustainability accounting standards that help businesses disclose financially material ESG information to investors. Modeled loosely on the financial accounting standards-setting process (akin to FASB for financial reporting), SASB took a rigorous, evidence-based approach to identifying which ESG topics are most likely to affect the financial condition or operating performance of companies in each of 77 industries. The Household & Personal Products standard was developed as part of this broader effort, with provisional standards released around 2014 and codified standards finalized in 2018 following extensive industry and investor consultation.

A landmark moment came in 2022 when the IFRS Foundation — the body that oversees international financial reporting standards — acquired SASB's standard-setting activities and transferred them to the newly established International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB). This merger validated SASB's approach and embedded its industry-specific metrics into the global sustainability reporting architecture. The ISSB's IFRS S1 standard (General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability-related Financial Information), published in June 2023, explicitly references SASB standards as the primary source of industry-specific guidance, ensuring that SASB's Household & Personal Products metrics remain central to investor-grade ESG disclosure for the foreseeable future.