There's still a long way to go to achieve their ambitious goals

Still in its infancy, Unilever’s ten year Sustainable Living Plan has achieved initial success yet will soon face long-term goals that may prove to be impossible to realise without substantial help from partnering companies.

An analytical report on the plan, published in the July-August edition of Ethical Corporation magazine, uncovers the keys to Unilever accomplishing its goals of reducing its environmental and social impact while simultaneously doubling growth.

With targets including making its entire agricultural sourcing 100 percent sustainable and making drinking water available to 500 million people by 2020, the company’s aspirations are “almost insanely ambitious,” admits Unilever advisor John Elkington in the report.

Through the plan thus far, Unilever has provided 20 million people with safe drinking water, runs all of its Netherland factories on renewable energy and use only sustainability certified cocoa in its ice cream products, states the report.  The company also offers more sustainable product offerings and provides all of the company’s branches with tools to evaluate sustainability progress.

But in spite of these early achievements, the report reveals that Unilever is now facing challenges in terms of meeting its biodiversity improvement goal and evaluating the water use of its factories, products and consumers.  Furthermore, consumer-based targets remain Unilever’s most difficult commitment because of marketing’s limited effect and one-on-one training’s expense.

The report shows that the key to the success of Unilever’s plan lies not only in speeding up their progress, but more importantly teaming up with outside companies to accomplish their goals.

“The ground breaking scale of Unilever’s commitments means it has big challenges ahead – challenges that will have to work with others outside the company to achieve,” says Mike Tuffrey, director at consultancy firm Corporate Citizenship and a long-term advisor to Unilever in the report.

In the end, collaborating with outside companies will accomplish not just Unilever’s specific targets but also the company’s overarching goal of increasing sustainability in all businesses, according to the report.

To read Ethical Corporation’s complete Unilever report, go to this link.

[End]

Ethical Corporation was established in 2001 and provides business intelligence for sustainability to more than 3,000 multinational companies every year. Ethical Corporation publishes the leading responsible business magazine, website, and research reports.

For more information on this article or Ethical Corporation contact:

Liam Dowd
Marketing Manager
Ethical Corporation: Business Intelligence for Sustainability
+44 (0)20 7375 7238