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Case Study: Unilever

Unilever understands that its business and its brands have an impact on the environment at every stage of its lifecycle: from sourcing raw materials, manufacture, distribution and packaging to consumer use and disposal. Unilever aims to both grow its business and to reduce its environmental impact. In the UK & Ireland, it has reduced its environmental footprint by focusing on areas of its value chain where it is able to have the most infl uence and therefore, make the biggest impact. These areas are: sustainable sourcing, the supply chain and activities on manufacturing sites.

Successes over the last 18 months include: Globally, measured by volume, more than half of the raw materials bought by Unilever now come from sustainable agriculture and forestry sources.

Working with suppliers across the supply chain to help them meet the highest standards of best practise to address sustainability issues. This has led to taking over one million transport miles off the roads through improved distribution. Greater eco effi ciency in factory sites within the UK has helped the company reduce waste by 47%; reduce CO2 by 9.6%; reduce energy consumption by 8.6%; and reduce water usage by 3.9% collectively across all factory sites.

Unilever has also implemented an environmental performance model to improve sustainability at the company's new head offi ce which has led to an overall energy decrease of 20% at this site.

Silver Award Winner of 2010 Community Partnership Awards: Environment

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More Information

• Community Partnership Awards
• Winners 2010 - Community Partnership Awards

FDF has published a booklet Community Partnership Awards 2010 (pdf, 2Mb) featuring a range of company case studies from Community Partnership Award winners.