MANILA, Philippines - Four years into its Sustainable Living Plan, Unilever reported positive impact of the strategy on its business in terms of growth, social responsibility, and driving whole system change through partnerships.
With the aim of making sustainable living commonplace, the company launched in November 2010 its Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP) that sets out to double the size of the company while halving its environmental impact and increasing its positive social impact.
“Unilever established clear measurement behind our sustainable living plan targets to objectively evaluate our impact to the consumers and communities where we operate. As we progressed year on year, we realized that our bands with social purpose are the brands that grew steadily,” said Rohit Jawa, Chairman and CEO of Unilever Philippines.
In 2014, Unilever focused on three key areas to amplify its efforts towards achieving its sustainable living ambition including brands with purpose, sustainable sourcing, and scaling through partnership.
Unilever strives to prove that a brand can be a ‘force of good.’ Surf, which has been running a consumer sachet recovery program for three years, has collected 45 tons worth of post-consumer sachet waste.
These were then converted to foot pavers and were donated to communities that were badly-hit by Typhoon Yolanda. The program not only reduced environmental footprint, but also helped Surf deliver good results in 2014.
Since 2007, Unilever has been sourcing in the majority from origin, rather than from traders. Here in the Philippines, five ingredients have already been declared sustainably sourced: tamarind, ube, mango, pineapple and coconut. These were sourced from 665 smallholder farmers.
Unilever worked with the Department of Education to raise the awareness on health and hygiene practices in schools educating close to seven million students on proper handwashing and hygiene practices.
The company is poised to lay the groundwork for five years of transformational accomplishments towards it 2020 ambition.
“We are future-proofing our operations by using our full value chain to create improved livelihoods in a way that also fuels our growth. The USLP is precisely our lens, our instrument to understand the future consumers, so we can continue to shape meaningful brands that provide direct benefits to them,” Jawa added.