Unilever’s drive to reduce its environmental footprint and increase its positive social impact is making a growing and positive impact in terms of growth, cost efficiency and resilience for the business, the company has announced.
Brands which have led the way on sustainability - including Dove, Lifebuoy, Ben & Jerry’s and Comfort - are also leading Unilever’s growth, while reducing waste, water use in manufacturing, and CO2 from energy use, creating cost efficiencies.
“Sustainable living brands” - Unilever’s term for brands that contribute to one or more of its sustainability goals and have a sustainable living purpose - have grown at twice the rate of the rest of the business.
The findings were shared with sustainability specialists from NGOs, government, academia and business as Unilever published its latest report: Scaling for impact: Unilever Sustainable Living Plan Summary of Progress 2014 (pdf). The report concludes that the business is on track to meet most of the goals it set in its Unilever Sustainable Living Plan in 2010, and has started to decouple its environmental footprint from underlying sales growth.
While the consumer element of reducing its environmental impact remains heavily dependent on wider market shifts, Unilever has achieved its target of zero non-hazardous waste to landfill across its factory network, and has made significant reductions in the water used in manufacturing and the CO2 emissions from energy.
More than 55% of Unilever’s agricultural raw materials are now sustainably sourced, with the business more than half way to its target of 100% by 2020.
Unilever has also reached 397 million people so far in its ambition to help improve the health and wellbeing of over one billion people by 2020, and more than a million people through its “enhancing livelihoods” programmes, which include giving access to training, support, and skills to 800,000 smallholders and 238,000 women.
The full report: Unilever Sustainable Living Plan 2014: Scaling for Impact.
Unilever Sustainable Living Plan event plenary speeches video
See how Unilever aims to make a bigger difference through transformational change here.
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