Global consumer goods company Unilever today announced plans to
decouple future growth from environmental impact.
At the London launch of Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan,
announced simultaneously in London, Rotterdam, New Delhi and New
York, CEO Paul Polman explained: “We have ambitious plans to grow
the company. But growth at any price is not viable. We have to
develop new ways of doing business which will ensure that our
growth does not come at the expense of the world’s diminishing
natural resources.”
He also announced plans to help over 1 billion people take
action to improve their health and wellbeing, mostly in developing
countries, over the next 10 years.
In New York, Unilever Americas President Dave Lewis joined by
Michael B. Polk, President Global Food, Personal Care and Home
products, echoed Mr. Polman’s comments, sharing how Unilever
intends to decouple growth from environmental impact and deliver
more social value through its brands. “Many would say making
consumption sustainable is impossible. Our view is that we have to
make it possible. We cannot choose between growth and
sustainability. We have to do both.”
The Sustainable Living Plan sets out over 50 social, economic
and environmental targets. It will see Unilever, whose global
brands include Dove, Omo, Knorr and Lipton, halve the greenhouse
gas emissions, water and waste used not just by the company in its
direct operations, but also by its suppliers and consumers.
Over two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions and half the water
used in Unilever products’ lifecycle come from consumer use, so
this is a major commitment on an unprecedented scale.
“People tell us they want to reduce their environmental impact
but find it hard to change their behavior and don’t know how they
can make a difference,” explained Paul Polman.
“By halving the total carbon, water and waste impact of our
products, primarily through innovation in the way we source, make
and package them, we can help people make a small difference every
time they use them. As our products are used 2 billion times a day
in nearly every country in the world, our consumers’ small actions
add up to make a big difference.”
Other key goals Unilever plans to achieve by or before 2020
include:
- sourcing 100% of its agricultural raw
materials sustainably including, by 2015, 100% sustainable palm
oil;
- changing the hygiene habits of 1
billion people in Asia, Africa and Latin America so that they wash
their hands with Lifebuoy soap at key times during the day -
helping to reduce diarrhoeal disease, the world’s second biggest
cause of infant mortality;
- making safe drinking water available to
half a billion people by extending sales of its low-cost in-home
water purifier, Pureit, from India to other countries;
- improving livelihoods in developing
countries by working with Oxfam, Rainforest Alliance and others to
link over 500,000 smallholder farmers and small-scale distributors
into its supply chain.
Commenting that Unilever wants to be sustainable ‘in every sense
of the word’, Paul Polman said:
“There are billions of people who want the improvements to their
health and wellbeing that everyday products like ours provide and
who want to live sustainably. Our aim is to help people in
developing countries improve their quality of life without a big
increase in their environmental impacts, and to help those in
developed markets maintain a good standard of living while reducing
theirs.”
Paul Polman sees no conflict between Unilever achieving its
sustainability goals and growing its business. “We are already
finding that tackling sustainability challenges provides new
opportunities for sustainable growth: it creates preference for our
brands, builds business with our retail customers, drives our
innovation, grows our markets and, in many cases, generates cost
savings.”
Polman emphasized that Unilever did not have all the answers and
that the company would need to work in partnership with customers,
suppliers, governments and NGOs if it was to achieve its goals.
Download the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan and view the
global launch webcast at: www.sustainable-living.unilever.com
Notes to Editors
About Unilever
Unilever works to create a better future every day. We help
people feel good, look good and get more out of life with brands
and services that are good for them and good for others.
Unilever is one of the world’s leading suppliers of fast moving
consumer goods with strong operations in more than 100 countries
and sales in 170. Unilever products are present in more than half
the households on the planet and are used over two billion times a
day.
Our portfolio includes some of the world’s best known and most
loved brands including eleven €1 billion brands, and global
leadership in many categories in which we operate. The portfolio
features iconic brands such as: Knorr, Hellmann’s, Lipton, Dove,
Vaseline, Persil, Cif, Marmite and Pot Noodle.
We have around 163,000 employees in approaching 100 countries,
and generated annual sales of €40 billion in 2009. For more
information about Unilever and its brands, please visit
www.unilever.com
Unilever is Food Industry Leader in the Dow Jones Sustainability
World Indexes for the 12th year running. We are included in the
FTSE4Good Index Series and attained a top environmental score of 5,
leading to inclusion in the FTSE4Good Environmental Leaders Europe
40 Index. We are also ranked 7th in the Global 100 Most Sustainable
Corporations in the World, a list compiled by Corporate Knights
Magazine. We achieved Platinum Plus standard in the UK’s Business
in the Community Corporate Responsibility
Index 2009, and were named Company of the
Year in 2010.
The Unilever Sustainability Journey
In the UK, William Lever opened a factory near Liverpool to
produce Sunlight, the world’s first packaged laundry soap. A few
years later he launched Lifebuoy, the world’s first health soap,
with the slogan ‘Lifebuoy saves lives’.
The values of our founders have stayed with the company and
become an integral part of who we are and how we do things. We
continue to see sustainability challenges as opportunities for
business growth.
In 1995, faced with the prospect of declining fish stocks, we
joined forces with WWF to create the Marine Stewardship Council,
the international certification body for sustainable fisheries.
The following year we started our Sustainable Agriculture
Initiative. Working with farmers and suppliers we developed a set
of sustainability indicators that over time became our Sustainable
Agriculture Code.
Today, 10% of our agricultural and forestry ingredients come
from sustainable sources.
In 2004 our ice-cream business worked with Greenpeace to develop
ice-cream freezers using natural refrigerants instead of HFCs. So
far we have converted nearly half a million cabinets to ones using
Hydro Carbon refrigerants.
We launched Small & Mighty concentrated laundry detergent in
Europe in 2007. This enables people to wash clothes at lower
temperatures, saving them money on household bills, reducing
packaging and cutting millions of kilograms of CO2.
2007 was also the year we became the first mainstream tea
company to commit to sustainably sourcing all the tea that goes
into our Lipton and PG Tips teabags by 2015. So far all our Lipton
Yellow Label and PG Tips teabags in Western Europe are 100%
Rainforest Alliance certified.
In 2008, we became the first large company to commit to buying
all our palm oil from sustainable sources by 2015. To date 30% of
our palm oil purchases are covered by sustainable GreenPalm
certificates.
And in February this year, Ben & Jerry’s, who launched the
world’s first Fairtrade vanilla ice-cream in 2006, announced that
every ingredient that can be Fairtrade certified, from nuts to
sugar and bananas to cocoa, will be certified by 2013.
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