10 years of the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan

Unilever launched the Sustainable Living Plan back in 2010. It sets out to decouple growth from environmental footprint, while increasing the company’s positive social impact.

The plan had three goals to achieve:

• Improving health and well-being for more than 1 billion.
• Reducing environmental impact by half.
• Enhancing livelihoods for millions.

Unilever believes that sustainability and development are not contradictive terms. On the 6th May, the company held a global virtual event to report the achievements of the past 10 years. These achievements include:

• Reaching 1.3 billion people through health and hygiene programmes.
• Reducing the total waste footprint per consumer use of the products by 32% and achieving zero waste to landfill across all Unilever factories.
• Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from their own manufacturing by 50% and achieving 100% renewable grid electricity across all sites.
• Reducing sugar across all sweetened tea-based beverages by 23%, and 56% of the foods portfolio now meets recognised High Nutrition Standards.
• Enabling 2.34 million women to access initiatives aiming to promote their safety, develop their skills or expand their opportunities, the company has moved towards a gender balanced workplace in which 51% of management roles are held by women.

As Alan Jope, CEO said: „This is definitely not the end. Our journey towards making sustainable living commonplace for the world’s 8 billion people very much still continues.” This is why Unilever has developed a new, fully integrated corporate strategy: the Unilever Compass.