Unilever products are used by more than 3.4 billion people every day, resulting in millions of tonnes of CO2 throughout its supply chain.
In recent years, it has pledged to both ambitious and realistic ESG goals, but all of its products manufactured have an environmental footprint.
Unilever CEO Hein Schumacher says the company has reached a new stage of action — instead of making future plans, it must start accelerating the delivery of these goals.
He says sustainability is “something the world needs and something stakeholders – from investors to consumers – expect. Once again, Unilever intends to be a frontrunner.
“We have learned from experience that we need to be more focused in our allocation of resources to make tangible progress on the big, complex challenges we face.”
Reducing use of virgin materials, particularly plastic, lowers both plastic pollution and CO2 emissions from transportation and production.
Unilever’s TRANSFORM initiative supports a range of companies in Africa and Asia testing and scaling new packaging technologies and a focus of this is refillable containers.
Refills create the potential for zero waste packaging across Unilever’s range of products.
There are various refillable packaging solutions available, all with benefits and drawbacks.
Higher tech solutions ensure product quality, but are costly and can be complicated to deploy.
Low tech solutions are easier to set up and scale, but are not always allowed by local regulations and leave products vulnerable to tampering.
While many consumers prefer more eco-friendly options, concerns about tampering could dissuade use of refill stations, particularly with food and health products.
Nearly 60% of Unilever’s greenhouse gas emissions come from ingredients and raw materials.
Working with partner Econic Technologies, the company is exploring how to capture CO2 and create usable carbon for use in both product packaging and ingredients.
Carbon capture not only removes CO2 from the atmosphere, but allows for the creation of new raw materials without fossil fuels.
Martin Crossman, Unilever Science & Technology Platform Leader, says: “With this programme, we’re not looking to force-fit CO2 into an existing petrochemical-based process and simply copy existing ingredients.
“We’re developing new-to-the-world chemistry, using CO2 differently to reach a different end material with different features”.
Packaging is often made from plastics as they’re versatile and stop products being damaged.
Almost all plastics are made from petrochemicals so options like paper or cardboard can be more sustainable.
Polyurethane products utilising Unilever’s new CO2 capture process are due on sale later this year.
It’s not just packaging – products themselves often contain petrochemical derived ingredients.
Surfactants break down oil, grease and other dirt, so they are used in all sorts of cleaning products from washing up liquid to laundry detergent.
These chemicals are typically made from fossil fuels, a non-renewable resource. This means it is vital to find sustainable alternatives that can be used widely.
When your washing machine finishes a cycle, the detergent released down the drain degrades and releases greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere.
These degraded products from cleaning products account for 20% of Unilever’s Home Care GHG footprint, so sustainable ingredients could be the key to a large reduction.
Rebecca Marmot, Chief Sustainability Officer at Unilever, says: “We are fully committed to achieving net zero, which means we need to continue to address our Scope 3 emissions.
“But in order to do this we need our supply chain to accelerate its shift to ingredients with renewable feedstocks”
Unilever had previous success in partnership with Evonik, harnessing a naturally occurring process to create Rhamnolipids, a biodegradable surfactant.
Rhamnolipids are produced naturally by some microorganisms but could not be produced to the scale required until recently.
Biotechnology developments can mirror the processes that happen in nature on a bigger scale, feeding bacteria refined sugar or food waste.
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