Global reach
In the SustainAbility consultancy's 2006 Global Reporters survey, published in November, Unilever scored sixth place with a mark of 67%. The result put us just 13 points behind the survey's leader, BT.
Entitled Tomorrow's Value, the poll is an international benchmark of 100 corporate sustainability reports, published every two years in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme and financial market intelligence provider, Standard & Poor's.
Company reports are assessed against a range of criteria including governance and strategy, management, presentation and performance, accessibility and assurance.
Our world faces major sustainability challenges, particularly from poor nutrition and hygiene and natural resource depletion.
These challenges are close to the heart of our mission to meet people's needs for health, nutrition and hygiene and provide us with the opportunity to grow our markets, drive innovation and build our reputation.
Partnerships
To achieve the best results we have established partnerships with a range of organisations all over the globe – including UNICEF, the World Heart Federation and the FDI World Dental Federation. These partnerships enable us to address complex issues more effectively to make a real difference to people's lives.
We've forged a relationship with the FDI World Dental Federation to encourage oral health, and our toothpaste brands have sponsored educational schemes across rural Asia and Africa as part of the joint campaign.
Working with UNICEF and the Ghana Health Service, in 2002 we launched a new product – Annapurna iodised salt – in a bid to meet the needs of millions of people there suffering from debilitating iodine deficiency.
The cooking salt with added iodine already on sale in the country was prohibitively expensive, so to achieve Annapurna’s minimal price we outsourced production locally, creating new jobs in production and distribution. Within two years Annapurna helped almost double the use of iodised salt to reach half of Ghana’s population.
