From Ecopedia

Overview

Established in 1930, Unilever is a multinational dual-listed corporation made up of Unilever NV headquartered in Rotterdam, Netherlands and Unilever PLC based in London. The company is a leader in the production of various goods including food products, personal care products, and home products that are commonly found in markets around the world. ^[1] Some of their food products include major brands such as Lipton, Bertolli, and Slim-fast among others, while a few of their personal and home products include major brands such as Dove, Axe, Vaseline, Ponds, Surf, and Radiant.

With hundreds of global manufacturing facilities, the Unilever corporation contributes vast amounts of carbon dioxide gas to the atmosphere from it's production facilities. However, the company has acknowledged this fact and is taking strides to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases.

Environmental Impact

Unilever has been subject to severe criticism from environmental organizations such as Greenpeace for contributing to the globally-harming deforestation and animal-testing among other damaging actions. Greenpeace alleged Unilever for trading palm oil from unsustainable sources that include Indonesia’s rainforests, which are getting damaged while trading.^[2]

Environmental Measures

To counter the ever-growing environmental criticism, Unilever started taking initiatives to promote sustainability in production, packaging and distribution areas.

Unilever managed to attain several environmental achievements in offering products that are in line with globally accepted eco-friendly guidelines:

• 15% of Unilever’s palm oil and tea purchases are from sustainable sources
• 44% of Unilever products comply with internal guidelines for saturated as well as trans fat, salt and sugar
• Between 1995 to 2009, Unilever managed to achieve 41% reduction in global warming-causing Carbon dioxide (CO2) gas from the factory production of energy/ton
• Between 1995-2009, 65% reduction in water consumption per tonne of factory production.^[3]

Commitment to Lower Carbon Footprint

Unilever is uncompromisingly striving to lower the company’s carbon footprint by promoting sustainable agricultural sourcing, which lowers the emissions of carbon. They are also adopting energy efficient renewable technologies to lower greenhouse gas emissions. In order to minimize the use of resources as well as the amount of waste created, Unilever followed eco-efficiency in product manufacturing and set a target to achieve 25% reduction in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2012.^[4]

Simple Solutions

In order to enhance environmental savings, Unilever started initiating ‘Simple solutions’ that aim at making best environmental practices as a standard practice in all the company’s 264 production facilities.

For achieving the set goal, Unilever established Safety & Environmental Assurance Centre (SEAC) as well as the Engineering Excellence Team to develop easy, step-by-step implementation guide for the factory practices across the regions. Subsequently, Safety, Health and Environment (SHE) directors implemented the ‘Simple Solutions’.

Some of the ‘Simple Solutions’ advocated by the Unilever include:

• Keeping all machines in an energy-saving mode, when not in use
• Offering superior pipe insulation for minimizing energy loss
• Detecting steam and air compressor leaks
• Fixing any dripping taps or leaky hose pipes
• Making best use of technologies that make use of renewable energies such as solar power, wind or biomass.^[5]

References

1. ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unilever
2. ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unilever
3. ↑ http://www.unilever.com/sustainability/?WT.GNAV=Sustainability
4. ↑ http://www.unilever.com/sustainability/environment/agriculture/index.aspx
5. ↑ http://www.unilever.com/sustainability/environment/packaging/index.aspx