Consumer goods giant Unilever – which sells Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Dove soap, and Knorr soup, among many other things – has vowed to halve the amount of new plastic it uses by 2025. It plans to do so by shifting to more recyclable and alternative materials, provide refillable options, cut its use of plastic packaging by over 100,000 tons, and accelerate its use of recycled plastic.
Unilever said in a statement:
There is a lot of plastic pollution in the environment. And the fact of the matter is — too much of it carries our name.
The company currently uses more than 700,000 tons of virgin plastic – meaning a lot of their packaging is created using raw materials instead of recycled materials. Over the next five years, this number will be cut in half.
Chief Executive Officer Alan Jope said:
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.
In addition to using less virgin plastic, Unilever has promised to help collect and process more plastic packaging than it sells. It will do so through investments and partnerships in developing waste management facilities in many of the markets that it operates. The target of collecting and processing has been set to about 600,000 tons of plastic annually by 2025.
Unilever products are used every day worldwide by 2.5 billion people in more than 190 countries! Many of those are ending up in the world’s oceans and it’s been calculated that plastic will outweigh fish by 2050 if things don’t change. The company’s actions are in recognition of this horrible reality.
It is also doing all this to meet consumer demand for less waste. Jope said in an interview with BBC News that Unilever’s decision was partly “an attempt to appeal to younger generations of consumers who care about the conduct of the companies and the brands that they’re buying. This is part of responding to society but also remaining relevant for years to come in the market,” he said.
Greenpeace’s Global Plastics Project Leader Graham Forbes said that although Unilever’s plan was the most ambitious corporate plan he had seen, it isn’t focusing on phasing out single-use plastics enough.
Forbes said:
While this is a step in the right direction…Unilever’s continued emphasis on collection, alternative materials, and recycled content will not result in the systemic shift required to solve the growing plastic pollution problem. We encourage Unilever to prioritize its efforts upstream by redesigning single-use plastic and packaging out of its business model.
A good example of this sort of system is Loop – a program that Unilever participates in along with Proctor & Gamble, Nestlé and other brands that sells products in refillable containers that are delivered straight to your doorstep.
The post Unilever Vows To Halve Virgin Plastic Use by 2025 appeared first on Intelligent Living.
