LVMH is estimated to produce approximately 132,000 metric tonnes (291 million pounds) of waste in 2026, from the vineyards, distilleries, workshops, warehouses, offices and shops the group runs.
How much waste does LVMH produce beyond their own gates? The packaging they send out around their products weighed 223,795 tonnes in 2025, more than they threw away themselves, and it becomes waste in a customer's bin.
LVMH promised zero fossil-based virgin plastic in customer packaging by 2026. They went into that year with 7,401 tonnes of it still in their bottles and boxes, and roughly 132,000 tonnes of waste of their own to clear.
How much waste LVMH throw away each year (2022-2026)
LVMH publish an audited waste tonnage every year, so most of the table below is their own reporting rather than an estimate.
| Year | Total waste (tonnes) | Change on prior year |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 132,000 | +3,000 (+2%) |
| 2025 | 129,005 | -28,775 (-18%) |
| 2024 | 157,780 | +32,685 (+26%) |
| 2023 | 125,095 | +6,763 (+6%) |
| 2022 | 118,332 | baseline |
Note: Only the 2026 row is estimated, at roughly 132,000 tonnes, by moving each business group's waste on its own growth so far this year. The 2023 and 2022 rows count LVMH's sites only, because the group did not measure waste from its shops until 2024.
The year the shops entered the count
The jump between 2023 and 2024 is mostly a change in what LVMH counted. Their 2023 annual report says it plainly under the waste table, that the data covers production sites, distribution centres and some offices, and that stores are not included.
From 2024 the shops are in. That first year they added 29,932 tonnes on their own, roughly a fifth of the group total, which is very close to the whole size of the increase.
The top of the table is therefore two series joined end to end. The like-for-like comparisons sit between 2024 and 2025, and between 2022 and 2023.
Why 2025 fell by almost a fifth
LVMH explain each of the four big movements in the footnotes to their own waste table, and only one of them is about throwing away less.
- Wines and Spirits fell 26%. LVMH put this down to a decline in business activity at Glenmorangie, their Scotch whisky distillery. Distilling leaves large volumes of spent grain and liquid residue behind, so a quieter year there moves the group total on its own.
- Store waste fell 42%. LVMH attribute this to improved reporting for Sephora stores, which is a change in how the rubbish was counted rather than in how much of it there was.
- Perfumes and Cosmetics fell 22%, which LVMH again describe as the result of improved reporting.
- Fashion and Leather Goods rose 20%, because more LVMH Métiers d'Art workshops were brought inside the reporting boundary.
Three of those four are changes in what got counted. LVMH do not restate the earlier years to match, so part of the fall from 157,780 to 129,005 tonnes is a real like-for-like drop and part of it is the measuring getting better.
Inside LVMH and its 75 Maisons
LVMH was formed in 1987 when Moët Hennessy merged with Louis Vuitton, and it has since become a holding company for 75 separate luxury businesses, which it calls Maisons.
Those Maisons are sorted into six business groups, and they are genuinely different industries. One of them presses grapes in Champagne and Cognac under French producer responsibility rules, another sews handbags, another runs 6,283 shops.
Five figures give the scale behind the tonnage.
- 80.8 billion euros of revenue in 2025, down 5% as reported and 1% once currency movements are stripped out.
- 211,552 employees worldwide, spread across 81 countries.
- 6,283 stores, of which 1,905 are in Asia, 1,255 in Europe outside France and 539 in France itself.
- 940 sites inside the environmental reporting, covering Maisons that account for 99.8% of group revenue.
- Six business groups, from Wines and Spirits through to hotels and newspapers under the heading Other activities.
Where the waste sits across the six business groups
LVMH's waste does not follow their revenue. The table below sets each business group's 2025 revenue next to the waste it produced in the same year.
| Business group | Revenue | Waste |
|---|---|---|
| Wines and Spirits | EUR 5.4bn | 52,295 tonnes |
| Fashion and Leather Goods | EUR 37.8bn | 39,315 tonnes |
| Perfumes and Cosmetics | EUR 8.2bn | 14,090 tonnes |
| Other activities | EUR 0.7bn | 12,505 tonnes |
| Selective Retailing | EUR 18.3bn | 7,800 tonnes |
| Watches and Jewelry | EUR 10.5bn | 3,000 tonnes |
Note: Figures are for 2025 and come from LVMH's own Social and Environmental Responsibility Report, which reports waste by business group including stores. The six rows add up to the 129,005 tonne group total.
Champagne and cognac make most of it
Wines and Spirits brings in about 7% of LVMH's revenue and produces about 41% of their waste. It is the smallest of the five main business groups by sales and the biggest by rubbish.
The reason is that winemaking and distilling are agricultural. Pressing grapes leaves skins, pips and stalks. Distilling whisky and cognac leaves spent grain and pot ale. None of that is packaging or offcuts, it is plant matter, and it comes out by the tonne rather than by the gram.
That also explains why the group total is so sensitive to one distillery. LVMH put the 26% fall in Wines and Spirits, about 18,500 tonnes, down to a decline in business at Glenmorangie.
The shops throw away less than their sales suggest
Selective Retailing, which is mostly Sephora along with DFS and Le Bon Marché, is the opposite case. It earns about 23% of LVMH's revenue and accounts for about 6% of their waste.
Most of even that comes from the shops themselves rather than from warehouses, since Selective Retailing's production, logistics and administrative sites produced only 644 tonnes of the 7,800.
A shop is a low-waste building. What it hands over the counter leaves with the customer, and the wrapping goes into that customer's bin at home. That packaging still counts against LVMH, just under a different heading.
The packaging LVMH send out weighs more than the waste they throw away
Alongside their waste, LVMH report the weight of the packaging that goes out of the door around their products. In 2025 that came to 223,795 tonnes, down 15% on the 261,946 tonnes of 2024.
| Material | Weight | Recycled content |
|---|---|---|
| Glass | 162,805 tonnes | 52% |
| Paper and cardboard | 43,370 tonnes | 52% |
| Plastic | 9,167 tonnes | 17% |
| Textile | 3,322 tonnes | 51% |
| Metal | 3,304 tonnes | 5% |
| Wood | 1,621 tonnes | 1% |
| Other materials | 206 tonnes | not disclosed |
Note: Figures cover packaging that reaches customers in 2025 and come from LVMH's 2025 annual report. The recycled column is the share of each material made from recycled input rather than new.
Glass is nearly three quarters of the weight
Of the 223,795 tonnes, 162,805 tonnes is glass packaging, the bottles and jars that hold food and drink. Wines and Spirits accounts for 147,439 tonnes of that on its own.
A glass bottle weighs many times what a paper bag or a plastic wrap does, so a champagne house moves more tonnes of packaging per sale than a leather goods Maison ever will.
LVMH report that 52% of their glass is recycled cullet, crushed glass melted back into new containers, and the same share of their paper and cardboard.
Plastic is the one material where the recycled share is low. It is a small tonnage at 9,167, but only 17% of it comes from recycled input.
Why that packaging is LVMH's problem too
Under extended producer responsibility rules for packaging, the company that puts packaging on a market pays for collecting and recycling it, even though a customer is the one who bins it. So all 223,795 tonnes come back to LVMH as a cost and a reporting duty, country by country.
Those charges are usually weight-based fees, where the bill grows with the tonnage, and they are set separately for each material. A portfolio that is 73% glass by weight is an expensive one to declare.
That is the job our EPR reporting platform exists to do. A group selling in 81 countries has to split the same packaging data by material, by market and by scheme, and the arithmetic is identical whether you are LVMH or a single Maison.
What happens to the waste once it leaves
LVMH sort and weigh their waste by where it ends up, across every business group and both hazardous and non-hazardous streams.
| Where it goes | Share |
|---|---|
| Recycling | 58% |
| Reuse | 18% |
| Incineration with energy recovery | 14% |
| Landfill and others | 7% |
| Incineration without energy recovery | 3% |
Note: Shares are for 2025 and cover all activities and all types of waste. Reuse means the material is used again as it is, and incineration with energy recovery means it is burned to make heat or power.
Only 7% goes to landfill, and that follows from what the waste is. Wines and Spirits keeps 92% of its non-hazardous waste out of disposal, largely because grape marc and spent grain go to industrial composting or animal feed rather than a hole in the ground.
The number moves a long way by business group. Watches and Jewelry sends 38% of its non-hazardous waste to landfill and others, the highest share in the group, on a small tonnage of 3,000.
Five promises LVMH have made about waste and packaging
LVMH run their environmental commitments under a programme called LIFE 360, with milestones falling in 2026 and 2030. Five of them touch waste and packaging directly.
| The promise | Due | Where it stood |
|---|---|---|
| Every production and logistics site to hold a certified environmental management system | 2026 | 85% of eligible site area, up from 74% |
| No fossil-based virgin plastic in customer packaging | 2026 | 7,401 tonnes still in use, down from 8,326 |
| All operational waste from production and logistics sites reused, recovered or recycled | 2030 | 76%, the baseline LVMH set in 2024 |
| 70% recycled material in the glass and plastic of customer packaging | 2030 | 49%, up from 41% |
| Operational waste from production and logistics sites down 10% | 2030 | No baseline, no baseline year and no method published |
Note: Positions are as at the end of 2025 and come from LVMH's 2025 annual report, which lists each objective with its target year, its baseline and the method used to measure it.
The 2026 plastic deadline arrives with the job unfinished
The plastic promise is one of the two falling due this year. LVMH committed to removing all virgin material, plastic made from new fossil resources rather than recycled ones, from customer packaging by 2026.
They cut it from 8,326 tonnes to 7,401 tonnes over the course of 2025, a reduction of 11%. Clearing the remaining 7,401 tonnes inside one year would require roughly nine times that rate.
The reduction target has no starting line
The one commitment that is about producing less waste rather than handling it better is the 10% cut by 2030. In the table where LVMH set out each objective, three cells for that row are printed as a dash, the baseline value, the baseline year and the method.
LVMH say so in the text as well, writing that work is in progress to calculate performance related to the reduction in waste at production and logistics sites. Without a baseline year and a starting tonnage, there is nothing yet to measure the 10% against.
Frequently asked questions about LVMH's waste
Below are the questions that come up most often about how much LVMH throw away and what happens to it.
How much waste does LVMH produce each year?
About 132,000 tonnes in 2026 on our estimate, after a reported 129,005 tonnes in 2025 and 157,780 tonnes in 2024. The figure covers every site LVMH operate plus their shops, hazardous and non-hazardous waste together.
What kind of waste does LVMH produce most of?
Agricultural and process waste from winemaking and distilling. Wines and Spirits produced 52,295 tonnes in 2025, about 41% of the group total, mostly grape skins, stalks, spent grain and pot ale rather than packaging.
Why did LVMH's waste fall so sharply in 2025?
Partly because Glenmorangie distilled less, and partly because the counting changed. LVMH attribute the 42% fall in store waste and the 22% fall in Perfumes and Cosmetics to improved reporting rather than to less being thrown away.
Does LVMH have a target to cut how much waste they produce?
Yes, a 10% reduction at production and logistics sites by 2030. LVMH have not yet published a baseline value, a baseline year or a method for it, and say the calculation is still being worked on.
How much of LVMH's waste is recycled?
58% is recycled and another 18% is reused, so roughly three quarters avoids disposal. Of the rest, 14% is burned for energy, 3% is burned without energy recovery and 7% goes to landfill and other routes.
How much packaging does LVMH put on the market?
223,795 tonnes in 2025, which is more than the 129,005 tonnes of waste they threw away themselves. Glass makes up 162,805 tonnes of it, the great majority of that being wine and spirits bottles.
Are LVMH's waste figures audited?
Yes. Deloitte reviewed the 2025 sustainability report with limited assurance under the EU reporting rules. LVMH also state that waste from sites and stores which do not report is estimated using coefficients.
