Unilever, owner of brands including Dove, Ben & Jerry’s, Lipton and Omo, has announced ambitious new commitments to reduce its plastic waste and help create a circular economy for plastics.
Unilever plans to halve its use of virgin plastic, by reducing its absolute use of plastic packaging by more than 100,000 tonnes and accelerating its use of recycled plastic.
Unilever is already on track to achieve its existing commitments to ensure all of its plastic packaging is reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025, and to use at least 25 per cent recycled plastic in its packaging, also by 2025. Unilever’s commitment will require the business to help collect and process around 600,000 tonnes of plastic annually by 2025.
This will be delivered through investment and partnerships which improve waste management infrastructure in many of the countries in which Unilever operates.
Through Less Plastic Unilever has explored new ways of packaging and delivering products – including concentrates, such as its new Cif Eco-refill which eliminates 75 per cent of plastic, and new refill stations for shampoo and laundry detergent rolled out across shops, universities and mobile vending in South East Asia.
