Unilever - Reducing Our Environmental Impact
2018-05-16
Part of our Vision is to grow our business whilst decoupling our environmental impact from our growth. We consider the reduction of our greenhouse gas (GHG), water and waste impact across our value chain from sourcing our raw materials to within our own manufacturing, operations and consumer use. We also aim to source our agricultural raw materials sustainably.
In 2015, we set ourselves the ambition of becoming carbon positive by 2030. By becoming carbon positive, it means we will eliminate fossil fuels from our operations and directly support the generation of more renewable energy than we consume.
In 2017, we committed to ensure that all our packaging material will be reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025.
We have been making steady progress towards these goals. At Unilever South Africa we are committed to reducing our environmental impact across all our operations.
WASTE:
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Since 2015, all our factories send zero non-hazardous waste to landfill
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We make use of post-consumer recylate (PCR) in our packaging material thus driving the demand for this material and positively influencing the recycling rate index of recyclable materials
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In addition to work done within our operations, we are also looking at how we can take responsibility for post-consumer waste. We partner with NGOs to improve the collection and recycling rates for post-consumer waste • Our current partnership with Wildlands has so far resulted in more than 9 million kgs of waste being collected and recycled and we have converted more than 40 000 kg of multi-layer waste into 1000 school desks for children
WATER:
Unilever has a low water impact regarding the manufacturing of our products but high-water dependency regarding the use of our products. Our biggest water use, around 85%, occurs when consumers use our products. Our analysis shows that most water is used for laundry, particularly washing clothes, and for showering, bathing and washing hair with our products.
Our strategic approach towards water in South Africa has three focus areas:
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Ensure that we reduce the amount of water used in our operations • Initiatives include water treatment plants with reverse osmosis capable of treating water for reuse on our manufacturing sites, rainwater harvesting systems, reuse of grey water on site and water optimization projects • Three of our eight factories have rainwater harvesting systems and full water treatment in place • These initiatives, amongst others, have resulted in a water saving of over 100 million litres in 2017 alone and more than 350 million litres since 2008
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Contribute to the overall sustainability of South Africa’s water future through the Unilever Centre for Environmental Water Quality (UCEWQ) • Almost 20 years ago, Unilever, in partnership with Rhodes University and the Water Research Commission (WRC) established the Unilever Centre for Environmental Water Quality (UCEWQ) • This institute has been at the forefront of water research and development and influencing the national policy on water. Their work has contributed towards training a new generation of graduate water professionals (7 PhD’s and 3 Masters Degrees)
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To be at the forefront of innovation and provide products to consumers that will enable them to use less water
GREEN HOUSE GASES:
Since 2015, we’ve been making progress in terms of investing in clean technologies, increasing our energy efficiency and in switching to renewable energy sources.
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In our South Africa operations, we have managed to reduce our carbon emissions by 75kg of CO2 per ton of production which results in more than 9 million kgs of carbon emissions avoided per year.
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Our partnership with Wildlands and the collection of waste results in more than 5 000 kgs of avoided carbon emissions.