化妆品巨头欧莱雅首席执行官展望未来

And this is where the magic takes place. These are the magicians making sure it happens. L'Oreal wants to make sure Mother Nature remains beautiful. The world's biggest beauty company has announced a sustainability strategy that includes reducing its carbon footprint by 60 percent through to the year 2020. Earlier, I spoke to L'Oreal's chief exec Jean-Paul Agon who was in Paris, and I asked him when it comes to these strategies, you have to do more than just lip service.

-the first few years, we redefined a lot about the L'Oreal Company. We redefined the mission which is to offer beauty to all women and men around the planet. We redefined our strategy which we called universalization. We redefined the objective which is to win over 1 billion new consumers. And now we think it's time also to redefine our commitment in terms of sustainability. And that's why we made this announcement today. A great commitment in terms of sustainability until 2020.

-If it hits the bottom line. Now I know there's an argument that says if you do sustainability right, it actually increases profitability over the long run. But in the short run, are you prepared for an increasing cost if that comes along?

- If it comes along, yes, but as you just said very truly we really believe that it's a (vicious) cycle. Because in fact sustainability improves your business because you know what we have to understand is that consumers and stakeholders all over the world are now expecting companies to behave sustainably. So for us, it is the only way to go.

- We must just finally and very briefly talk about economics and what you're seeing in the business. Europe is finally out of recession and growing again. The U.S. has its problems. As you look at your business, how are you going to manage these very challenging economic moments?

- In fact for us the beauty market is still growing. Of course the growth is different depending on the regions of the world. There is -- the market is almost flat in Western Europe, but L'Oreal's growing thanks to market share gains. The market is slightly growing 2, 3 percent in the U.S. and North America in general. And we are growing faster than that, thanks again to market share gains. And the market is still very dynamic in many places of the world you know -- in China, in India, in Brazil.