Case Study - Unilever

Gold Award Winner of 2011 Community Partnership Awards: Environmental business

Unilever Sustainable Living Plan

Unilever's Sustainable Living Plan was launched in 2010 after looking at the environmental impact across the lifecycle of over 1600 products. This resulted in three objectives:

  1. to help more than one billion people globally take action to improve their health and wellbeing
  2. to enhance the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people in the supply chain
  3. to halve the environmental footprint of Unilever products.

Their plan approaches sustainability holistically, setting targets that require engagement and action by suppliers, retailers and consumers. Overall it is a ten year work programme with over 50 targets and linked to Unilever's business vision and strategy.

During 2010, Unilever made a number of achievements including helping 38,000 tea farmers achieve Rain Forest Alliance certifi cation and sourcing 30% of the company's palm oil via GreenPalm certifi cates.

Unilever is reducing its UK green house gases by delivering a 20% cut by 2015 through best practice in transportation and warehousing; reducing UK green house gases from clothes washing by product reformulation and innovation and savings on packaging and transport; using only recycled or sustainably sourced paper for 80% of all UK packaging.

Training has also been a key feature of the plan and Unilever has developed a sustainability training programme for managers - to date 1000 have attended the three-day course.

More Information

View all the winning Community Partnership Awards case studies (2011)