EUROPE – Environmental NGO Greenpeace in its report, has criticized the British multinational consumer goods company, Unilever for its failure to reduce its plastic footprint.
The report, titled ‘UNCOVERED: Unilever’s complicity in the plastics crisis and its power to solve it’, delves into the company’s role in addressing the plastic pollution crisis.
According to the report, the company is selling 1,700 polluting plastic sachets per second and projects that Unilever will sell 53 billion sachets in 2023.
Last year, the company produced an estimated 6.4 billion sachets for its brand Dove, constituting more than 10% of its total sachet sales.
Field investigations conducted by Greenpeace South East Asia and Greenpeace UK captured images of Dove’s sachet waste polluting water bodies in the Philippines and Indonesia.
Nina Schrank, Head of Plastics at Greenpeace UK, stated, “Unilever is exacerbating the plastic pollution crisis. Brands like Dove boast about their positive impact, but they are contributing a staggering amount of plastic waste that’s poisoning our planet.
“You can’t claim to be a ‘purposeful’ company while being accountable for such extensive pollution. Unilever needs to transform.”
Furthermore, Greenpeace’s research reveals that Unilever is expected to fall nearly a decade behind its target of using less than 50% virgin plastic.
The company is estimated to achieve this goal by 2034, a significant delay from its initial aim of 2025.
Unilever’s efforts to introduce refill and reuse solutions have been notably sluggish, with environmental organizations estimating that it may take the business beyond the year 3000 to ensure 100% of its products are reusable.
In response, Greenpeace has urged the company to eliminate single-use plastic from its operations and transition to a reusable format within the next decade.
The Ellen McArthur Foundation’s Global Commitment report in 2022 highlighted that only 0.1% of Unilever’s plastic packaging is reusable.
In another report, the Ellen McArthur Foundation has warned that companies enrolled in a global, UN-endorsed pledge to curtail plastic use are veering off track in meeting their set 2025 objectives.
Interestingly, despite this setback, firms committed to this initiative — representing roughly 20% of the world’s plastic packaging sector — have significantly outperformed non-signatory peers in grappling with plastic waste.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Global Commitment, launched in 2018 and supported by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), stands as one of the most extensive voluntary efforts to combat plastic pollution and waste, counting over 1,000 organizational supporters.
Every business and government signatory has pledged to establish precise targets across their value chains for 2025, aiming to enhance packaging recyclability, compostability, and reusability. Additionally, they commit to transparently reporting their progress annually.
Giant corporations like Unilever, Nestle, and Coca-Cola face a critical juncture where they must acknowledge that the reliance on recycling fails to sufficiently address the severe repercussions of their plastic dependence.
Sander Defruyt, the lead of the plastics initiative at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, noted that while the recent report illustrates progress made in the last five years, it remains insufficient. He stressed the urgency for both participating and non-participating companies to take more decisive action to meet immediate and long-term objectives in reducing plastic waste.
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