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Twenty-four icons, creating a U shape, with each icon representing the company’s core values and the company’s mission statement to add vitality to life. Unilever is a British-Dutch multinational consumer goods company that produces food, beverages, cleaning agents, and personal care products. Its co-headquarters are located in London and Rotterdam. Unilever was founded by the Lever Brothers in 1929, first known for its production of margarine and soap. Today, Unilever has over 400 brands, including Knorr, Dove, Axe, and Lipton. In 2017, the Unilever Group was listed as the fourth largest fast-moving consumer goods company worldwide in terms of sales. In 2010, it launched its sustainable living plan to achieve sustainable growth, covering all aspects of business and value chain, and incorporating all brands and divisions, in every country where Unilever is located. Some of Unilever’s principal plans include; making 100 percent of its plastic packaging recyclable, reusable, and compostable by 2025; helping more people take action to improve their health and wellbeing by the end of 2020; reducing the environmental footprint of its products; sourcing 100 percent of its agricultural raw materials sustainably and linking more than half a million smallholder farmers and small-scale distributors to its supply chain. Companies that seek to drive a global movement of people, using their businesses as an initiative to work towards building a more sustainable world, are also known as B Corporations. Despite Unilever’s strong ambition towards becoming 100 percent sustainable in economic, social, and environmental fields, it could nevertheless potentially improve upon all three areas by ceasing extractions of unsustainable palm oil from its supply chains, putting an end to unsustainable farming, and vanilla extractions and lastly addressing company policies towards issues such as poverty and exploitation of agricultural workers.
Unilever strives towards positive change and sustainable growth through its business, brands, and partnerships. One of Unilever’s 2020 goals is to encourage more than one billion people to take action in order to improve their health and well-being. In 2004, Unilever launched a Dove Self-Esteem Project (DSEP) to educate young women about self-esteem through its educational programs. Since 2005, the DSEP campaign has helped more than 35 million young people to raise their self-esteem and realize their full potential. Another way that Unilever works toward contributing to the establishment of a healthier and stronger community is through its advancement of hygiene behavior. In Indonesia, Unilever provided training, cleaning equipment packages, and guidance on how to effectively clean mosques. This movement reached over to 50 000 community members around the mosques throughout the year, who joined the Mosque Cleaning activities. Moreover, Unilever also thrives towards creating a better educational system to ensure that children all over the world are granted full access to education. One of Unilever’s laundry brands, Persil, works in collaboration with UNICEF, helping 10 million children in Brazil, Vietnam, and India to gain a good quality education. Furthermore, Unilever claimed to make 100 percent of its plastic packaging recyclable, reusable, and compostable by 2025 through its ‘Zero waste to nature’ objective. CreaSolv technology, operating to recycle flexible plastic waste into raw materials, was started by Unilever in 2017. This approach enabled the recycling and utilization of rejected ice cream and wastewater treatment to transform into high protein and high-quality cattle feed. Unilever announced that since 2010, its total waste footprint per consumer use has been reduced by 31%. However, Unilever continues to progress even further by leading towards a circular economy for all its packaging materials and exploring different materials such as aluminum, paper, and glass. One example of sustainable packaging set off in 2019 is Loop, an innovative waste-free shopping, and delivery model. When products are shipped to consumers, they are then returned and refilled. This shift in approach makes the model ‘durable’ rather than ‘disposable.’ Signal also launched its refillable toothpaste tablets, which require less water than regular toothpaste but are still made to be used the same way. Lastly, Unilever reported that it would source its agricultural raw materials 100 percent sustainably by 2020. Moreover, it also claimed to source these raw materials from small-scale farmers. More specifically, in 2012, Unilever committed to working with at least 500,000 smallholder farmers in its supply network, so that they can improve their agricultural practices. Overall, it is distinct that Unilever attempts to satisfy the requirements to become a complete B Corporation, and although, several of Unilever’s brands have already achieved a B-Corp certification such as Ben & Jerry’s, as a whole company Unilever has not yet fully reached its potential of an accomplished B Corporation, and here is why.
Unilever is one of the largest buyers of vanilla in the world. It purchases 8% of all vanilla from Madagascar for ice cream production. However, in Madagascar, there is unsustainable farming and child labor. According to the International Labor Organization, child labor in vanilla production affects one-third of all children in Madagascar between the ages of 12 and 17. Nevertheless, Unilever denies any connection with those farmers and merely stated that child labor was unacceptable, but no extra support or policies on behalf of the company were provided. Controversially to its aim to empower 5 million women and improve the livelihoods of 800,000 smallholder farmers throughout the value chain by 2020, land-grabbing and the exploitation of women are ignored by Unilever. Furthermore, Unilever extracts oil from Wilmar International, an oilseed processing company, which was accused of illegal activities in the forest and land clearing in 2011. Nevertheless, Unilever still continues to purchase palm oil from Wilmar. According to the investigation conducted by Amnesty International, a non-governmental organization focused on human rights, women, who work on palm plantations owned by Wilmar, are being threatened and forced to work long hours with minimum wage earnings of up to US dollars 2.50 a day. Children between the ages of eight to fourteen must do hard physical work, carry heavy containers of palm fruit that can weigh from 12 to 25 kilograms, and often drop out of school to help their parents on the plantations. The working conditions are not safe either as workers sometimes suffer severe injuries from toxic chemicals still used in the plantations despite being banned in the EU and by Wilmar itself. Unilever affirmed that they source palm oil from Wilmar but did not respond to Amnesty International’s questions about which refineries they source from. WWF judged how much did companies make progress toward phasing out unsustainable palm oil from supply chains. Unilever scored 14.75 out of 22 in the WWF table. This indicates that more effort could still be made on behalf of Unilever to combat this ongoing issue.
It is now evident that Unilever strives towards improving the community’s health and well-being, promoting education opportunities, and working towards maintaining a circular economy for all its packaging materials. However, Unilever has still got many improvements to make in order to fulfill the requirements of a certified B Corporation. Unilever is yet to achieve some of its biggest goals, such as stopping unsustainable palm oil extractions, sourcing all energy renewably, providing a safer environment for all workers, ending discrimination towards women at workplaces, and addressing child labor issues. To resolve some of the issues such as child labor, Unilever must establish full visibility throughout its supply chain, which would help engage its suppliers closely and consequently deal with the issue more efficiently. Additionally, in order to halt unsustainable sourcing of palm oil, in the first place, Unilever must recognize the illegal activities induced by Wilmar, and then as a whole company, take action. It is essential that with the support of its stakeholders, they work together to make advancements towards initiating a greener and more sustainable economy. When Unilever starts working persistently towards creating a more sustainable world in all environmental, economic, and social areas, only then will it be ready to represent the ideals and actions of a true B Corporation.
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