It has been revealed that the most sustainable brands grew 46 percent faster than other brands under the Unilever umbrella and delivered 70 percent of its entire turnover growth.
All of Unilever's brands are striving for a reduction in their environmental footprint and increasing their positive social impact. Sustainable living brands are those that are fleagues ahead on the journey to achieving the company’s ambitious sustainability goals.
Unilever has increased its sustainable living brands from 18 to 26 in two years. Dove, Lipton, Dirt is Good, Rexona, Hellmann’s, Knorr, Vaseline, Sunlight, Sunsilk, Wall’s and its B-Corp certified brands such as Ben and Jerry’s are all sustainable living brands.
Over the last four years sustainable living brands have outperformed the average rate of growth at Unilever. In 2017 sustainable living brands grew 46 percent faster than the rest of the business and delivered 70 percent of Unilever’s turnover growth.Through the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP), the figures show that Unilever is now delivering more social and environmental benefits internationally. The USLP was launched in 2010, where it set out ambitious targets to decouple Unilever’s growth from its environmental impact, while increasing the company’s positive social impact. Presently, Unilever is on track to meet around 80 percent of its commitments including to improve health and well-being for 1 billion people, reducing environmental impact by 50 percent and enhancing livelihoods for its millions of employees, retailers and suppliers.
The company is now looking beyond the ULSP targets it originally set out, by carrying out its largest ever listening exercise on the future of sustainable business. Over 40,000 employees responded to the ‘Have Your Say’ project, setting out their views on the priorities that they would like Unilever to focus on and envisage what future success would look like. The results will be the framework for Unilever’s future agenda.
Paul Polman, Unilever CEO said: “Ever since we launched the USLP in 2010 we have reported openly on our progress. We have made great strides in meeting many of the ambitious targets we set ourselves and the fact that our sustainable living brands are continuing to deliver growth shows that this is a business model that works.
“We also want to be transparent about how much more there is still to do. This is critical because transparency is what gives our business its most important asset – trust. At a time when there is a crisis of trust in many institutions across the world, there has never been a more important time for business to play a leading role in restoring it.”
Highlights of Unilever Sustainable Living Plan include the following:
- By the end of 2017, 601 million people had been reached through Unilever’s programmes on hand washing, sanitation, oral health, self-esteem and safe drinking water. Lifebuoy soap alone has reached over 426 million people with their hand washing programme.
- By the end of 2017, 109 of Unilever’s manufacturing sites across 36 countries were using 100 percent renewable grid electricity, accounting for 65 percent of total grid electricity consumption.
- By the end of 2017, 56 percent of Unilever’s agricultural raw materials were sustainably-sourced. In February this year Unilever became the first company to publicly disclose the suppliers and mills the company sources palm oil from both directly and indirectly.
- In 2017 Unilever enabled around 716,000 smallholder farmers to access initiatives aiming to improve their agricultural practices or increase their incomes.