By 2025, the global consumer goods company
will eliminate more than 100,000 tonnes of plastic packaging and
collect and process more plastic packaging than it sells
Unilever, owner of brands including Dove, Ben & Jerry’s, and
Lipton, has announced ambitious new commitments to reduce its
plastic waste and help create a circular economy for plastics.
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the full release here:
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191007005553/en/
Unilever announced new commitments to
reduce its plastic waste and help create a circular economy for
plastics. (Photo: Unilever)
Unilever has confirmed that by 2025 it will:
- Halve its use of virgin plastic, by reducing its absolute use
of plastic packaging by more than 100,000 tonnes and accelerating
its use of recycled plastic.
- Help collect and process more plastic packaging than it
sells
This commitment makes Unilever the first major global consumer
goods company to commit to an absolute plastics reduction across
its portfolio.
Unilever is already on track to achieve its existing commitments
to ensure all of its plastic packaging is reusable, recyclable or
compostable by 2025, and to use at least 25% recycled plastic in
its packaging, also by 2025.
Alan Jope, Unilever CEO, said: “Plastic has its place,
but that place is not in the environment. We can only eliminate
plastic waste by acting fast and taking radical action at all
points in the plastic cycle.
“Our starting point has to be design, reducing the amount of
plastic we use, and then making sure that what we do use
increasingly comes from recycled sources. We are also committed to
ensuring all our plastic packaging is reusable, recyclable or
compostable.
“This demands a fundamental rethink in our approach to our
packaging and products. It requires us to introduce new and
innovative packaging materials and scale up new business models,
like re-use and re-fill formats, at an unprecedented speed and
intensity.”
Unilever’s commitment will require the business to help collect
and process around 600,000 tonnes of plastic annually by 2025. This
will be delivered through investment and partnerships that improve
waste management infrastructure in many of the countries in which
Unilever operates.
Jope added: “Our vision is a world in which everyone works
together to ensure that plastic stays in the economy and out of the
environment. Our plastic is our responsibility and so we are
committed to collecting back more than we sell, as part of our
drive towards a circular economy. This is a daunting but exciting
task which will help drive global demand for recycled plastic.”
Ellen MacArthur, Founder, Ellen MacArthur Foundation,
said: "Today’s announcement by Unilever is a significant step
in creating a circular economy for plastic. By eliminating
unnecessary packaging through innovations such as refill, reuse,
and concentrates, while increasing their use of recycled plastic,
Unilever is demonstrating how businesses can move away from virgin
plastics. We urge others to follow their lead, so collectively we
can eliminate the plastic we don’t need, innovate, so what we do
need is circulated, and ultimately build an economic system where
plastic packaging never becomes waste."
Since 2017, Unilever has been transforming its approach to
plastic packaging through its ‘Less, Better, No’ plastic
framework.
Through Less Plastic Unilever has explored new ways of packaging
and delivering products - including concentrates, such as its new
Cif Eco-refill which eliminates 75% of plastic, and new refill
stations for shampoo and laundry detergent rolled out across shops,
universities and mobile vending in South East Asia.
Better plastic has led to pioneering innovations such as the new
detectable pigment being used by Axe and TRESemmé , which makes
black plastic recyclable, as it can now be seen and sorted by
recycling plant scanners, and the Lipton ‘festival bottle’ which is
made of 100% recycled plastic and is collected using a deposit
scheme.
As part of No plastic, Unilever has brought to the market
innovations including shampoo bars, refillable toothpaste tablets,
cardboard deodorant sticks and bamboo toothbrushes. It has also
signed up to the Loop platform, which is exploring new ways of
delivering and collecting reusable products from consumers’
homes.
As part of today’s announcement, Unilever has posted a video on
its website addressing the issue of ocean plastic and committing to
play its part to ‘make the blue planet, blue again’.
(https://www.unilever.com/news/news-and-features/Feature-article/2019/plastics-announcement.html)
Notes to Editors
Unilever’s plastic packaging footprint today is around 700,000
tonnes annually (including recent acquisitions).
The company is today making two commitments:
1) Reduce our virgin plastic packaging by
50% by 2025, with one third (more than 100,000 tonnes) coming from
an absolute plastic reduction.
More than 100,000 tonnes will come from an absolute reduction as
the business invests in multiple use packs (reusable and/or
refillable), ‘no plastic’ solutions (alternative packaging
materials or naked products) and reduces the amount of plastic in
existing packs (concentration). Replacing non-recycled plastic
packaging with recycled plastics will account for the remaining
reduction. Unilever will measure the total tonnes of virgin plastic
packaging used each year vs the total tonnes of virgin plastic
packaging used in 2018. As a result of this commitment, Unilever is
committing to have a virgin plastic packaging footprint of no more
than 350,000 tonnes by 2025.
2) Help collect and process more plastic
packaging than we sell by 2025.
Unilever’s commitment will require the business to help collect
and process around 600,000 tonnes of plastic annually by 2025. This
is less than our current 700,000 tonnes plastic packaging footprint
because it reflects the 100,000 tonnes absolute reduction we have
committed to above.
Unilever will deliver this commitment by:
- Investing and partnering to improve waste management
infrastructure
- Purchasing and using recycled plastics in its packaging
- Participating in extended producer responsibility schemes where
Unilever directly pays for the collection of its packaging
Unilever will measure the total tonnes of plastic packaging it
has helped collect and process in a year vs. how much plastic
packaging it has used.
Over the last five years, Unilever has collaborated with many
partners to collect plastic packaging, including the United Nations
Development Programme, to help segregate, collect and recycle
packaging across India. In addition, it has helped to establish
almost 3,000 waste banks in Indonesia, offering more than 400,000
people the opportunity to recycle their waste. In Brazil, Unilever
has a long-running partnership with retailer Grupo Pão de Açúcar to
help collect waste through drop-off stations.
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191007005553/en/
Media: Catherine Reynolds MediaRelations.USA@unilever.com
(201) 894-7760
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