Unilever is ardently, openly and guilelessly committed to a raft of ambitious goals concerning sustainability and social responsibility.
“At Unilever, we aim to double the size of our business while reducing our environmental footprint and increasing our positive social impact,” begins the statement of commitment by The Unilever Foundation, which is, “a key action we are taking to help meet our ambitious goal of helping more than 1 billion people improve their health and well-being and, in turn, create a sustainable future - a core commitment of the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan.”
Unilever is well along the way to meeting the Unilever Foundation’s goal. Packaging is its greatest challenge. But let’s talk about its growth first, because that affects packaging too.
Unilever’s recent full-year results release is a statement of success.
In a year during which the world in general, and Europe in particular, struggled to keep budgets above the Plimsoll line, Unilever’s operating profit (£6.1bn or $AU11.6bn) was up 8% and net profit (£4.3bn or $AU8.2bn) was up 9%.
Global underlying sales rose 4.3%. The underlying sales growth in emerging markets reached 8.7%. The emerging markets business now accounts for 57% of the group’s sales. Even these markets suffered malaise during the third quarter. Slower economic growth in countries such as Indonesia and the devaluation of a handful of currencies including the Brazilian real and the Indian rupee made consumers spend less. But sales in emerging markets rose 8.4 % in the fourth quarter, up from a 5.9% rise in the third quarter.
Of course, it's not all due to a commitment to being, and being seen as, a ‘good company’. But Paul Polman, Unilever chief executive, knows that right now and even more in the future, good business is good for business. "We have increasing income disparity within the developed world. We have a political system that barely functions after the economic and financial crisis. So continuing the way we are going is simply not a solution and increasingly consumers are asking for a different way of doing business and building society for the long term together."
Unilever Australia & New Zealand is part of Unilever Global’s undertaking to, “Halve the waste associated with the disposal of our products by 2020”. It has three primary targets: To reduce packaging, to increase recycling and recovery rates, and to increase recycled content. Unilever’s waste impact per consumer has reduced by 7% since 2010.
How?
Since 2009 it has reduced like-for-like packaging by 1620 tonnes, taking the total tonnage to lower than 2007 levels, even with business volume growth. It has committed to further reductions in line with its Australian Packaging Covenant commitments.
Currently an estimated 70% of Unilever Australia & New Zealand’s paper and board packaging is made from recycled materials and 95% is recyclable. It currently does not use recycled plastic materials, but is investing in technology that will allow this in the future. A number of plastic materials are used in its packaging, 40% is recyclable and the percentage is gradually increasing.
There is a Unilever authority on nearly every international packaging summit’s panel. Paul Howells, Unilever vice president packaging - R&D, will join Procter & Gamble's senior packaging engineer, Gian de Belder; Christian Saclier, global head of industrial design at Nestle; and Dell director of worldwide procurement, Oliver Campbell, at the WTG European Packaging Summit, 27-28 January 2014 in Berlin, where the topics are:
- Sustainable innovation for customer satisfaction and business growth
- Unlocking creativity for packaging innovation and shelf appeal
- Liquid packaging innovation that disrupts
- Online retail packaging: How e-commerce will change the way products are packaged
- Big Company Idea: Small Company Resources - an Entrepreneur's Guid to Packaging innovation
And Unilever is forming useful collaborations because, “To achieve the ultimate goal of end-to-end recycling, we cannot work alone,” Unilever stated. “It is essential that all facets of the value chain – material suppliers, printers, end-users and recyclers – collaborate together to establish a clear and transparent recycling stream globally.”
In December, Unilever and Finnish label materials provider UPM Raflatac partnered to develop a lifecycle assessment (LCA) model including the label printing process. This LCA model allows Unilever companies to track their products from raw material through to consumer use and disposal, and to detect areas of major environmental impacts. It then helps companies to reduce those impacts. Label dispensing operations from Unilever’s own packaging unit will be included into the LCA model.
