In October 2020 Ethical Consumer viewed Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan, and the Sustainable Living Plan pages on the Unilever website.
The summary showed a clear understanding of the company’s environmental impacts. It discussed a number of specific environmental impacts: Reducing greenhouse gas emission, including through transportation, manufacturing, product design and office use; water; waste, including recycling, plastic and toxic waste; and responsible sourcing including palm oil, soy and paper.
The summary provided data related to a number of dated and quantifiable targets outlined on the sustainable living pages, including:
- Halving the greenhouse gas impact of products across the lifecycle by 2030, with a baseline of 2010.
- Reducing scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 100% from its own operations by 2030 (as part of the ambition to become carbon positive in manufacturing).
- Halving the amount of virgin plastic used in products by 2025, from a baseline year of 2019.
It stated on the company website that the 'Unilever Sustainable Living Plan' was internally validated, and "aligned with the external independent assurance of selected USLP targets by PwC", demonstrating that it was verified by an external body.
As the company had updated its environmental information within the past two years, showed a reasonable understanding of its main impacts, had multiple dated and quantified future targets, and was independently verified, it lost no marks and received Ethical Consumer’s best rating for its Environmental Reporting.
Reference:
unilever.com (8 October 2020)