Reduce, reuse, recycle

Our approach

Innovative packaging design can minimise the environmental impact of packaging itself. But it can also enhance a product’s lifecycle impacts. For example, effective packaging avoids product leakage or spoilage and consequent waste. Sometimes the best solutions are not the obvious ones, which is why we believe it is important to consider packaging options from a whole lifecycle perspective.

We have long been reducing the amount of packaging in our products through leading-edge design technology. In packaging design, we select the appropriate packaging materials to meet the functional requirements of the product. We then optimise the design in terms of sustainability. This process is applied at each stage of development, taking into consideration the needs of the consumer, product presentation and transportation.

Raising awareness among our designers helps us drive change. During 2008, we developed sustainable packaging guidelines and introduced training for our packaging teams so that we can further embed sustainability thinking into the design stage of our product development. Since 2008 we have been running bi-annual sustainability foundation courses in various countries around the world, reaching out to both marketers and R&D personnel and ensuring a growing understanding of sustainability and the principles of sustainable design.

Achieving our target: reduce

By 2020 we will reduce the weight of packaging that we use by a third through:

• lightweighting materials
• optimising structural and material designs
• developing concentrated versions of our products
• eliminating unnecessary packaging.

In many cases, this is a commitment we will meet by altering packaging by tiny fractions at a time. It may take significant investment to reduce the weight of a material by just one gram through reducing its density or increasing its strength through new technologies – but that weight saving will be multiplied by the millions of times a product is sold.

In Chile, for example, we reduced the weight of Knorr Puré de Papas pouches by 13% by switching to a thinner laminate. The result was a saving of five tonnes of laminate a year.

In 2010, we launched a project to develop a new packaging design for our Dove brand hair care products. This focused on driving down packaging weight and optimising the shape of the bottle, allowing more bottles to fit on a pallet. We have also reduced the complexity of the packaging materials across the different Dove products we sell around the world by reducing the number of: designs for closure from 12 to five; colour pigments from 57 to 15; and total packaging structures from 60 to 39.

On average, this project has resulted in an overall 10% packaging weight reduction. In some formats, for example the 473ml and 750ml bottles, we have achieved savings as high as 19%. As a result we have an ongoing saving of 1 250 tonnes of resin per year versus the previous format.

Other brands have also achieved savings through packaging that uses materials more efficiently. Our redesigned Suave shampoo bottle saved the equivalent of more than 100 million plastic bottles over four years, while our upside-down deodorant pack for Rexona, Sure and Dove uses up to 18% less plastic in each pack.

We estimate that improvements in design will help us find more than a third of the weight savings we are seeking in our Sustainable Living Plan target – along with eliminating unnecessary packaging altogether.

Achieving our target: reuse

Our Sustainable Living Plan commits us to provide consumers with refills in our home and personal care portfolio to make it possible to reuse the primary pack.

Making reusable packaging has two elements:

• design – ensuring that both our primary packaging and our refill pouches are robust, economic and simple to use
• education – so that consumers understand its benefits.

We have already had some successes. In China, our Hazeline shampoo refill pouch generates only a third of the waste of a normal pump bottle. Consumers are reusing their shampoo bottles, and sharing in the cost savings: a success recognised by the Walmart Gold Award for Sustainable Packaging in 2009.

In South Africa in 2010 we launched refill pouches for Sunlight dishwashing liquid, to refill the 750ml Sunlight bottle. The total pack weight reduced from 46.2 g to 12.5 g. Unrecycled pack materials were reduced from 24 g to 12.5 g, which resulted in 48% less unrecycled waste, and 34 tonnes less plastic waste put into the environment per year. It also generated an annual saving versus the previous packaging format of approximately €400 000.

The take-up rate of refills varies across regions. We still have work to do to make consumers aware of the benefits of refills. We are also working to ensure that the pouches we use for refills, which are already lighter than the solid packaging they replace, have the smallest possible environmental impact. However, reduction is not enough; we are looking for solutions to recycle or recover as well.

Achieving our target: recycle & recover

We believe we can cut waste across our business through recycling, both directly, by using recycled materials ourselves and indirectly, by making our packaging as recyclable as possible.

Recycling rates, practices and facilities differ around the world, as do the policies of municipalities and governments. In countries such as Brazil, waste can be seen as an opportunity for economic activity, with many informal but highly organised networks collecting waste for recycling. In mainland Europe, a significant amount of waste is incinerated, with systems to harness energy from the process. We have simplified the number and combinations of materials we use to make our packaging easier to process and recycle.

Our Sustainable Living Plan commits us to working in partnership with industry, governments and NGOs. We aim to increase recycling and recovery rates on average by 5% by 2015, and by 15% by 2020 in our top 14 countries. For some countries, such as China, Russia and South Africa, this means doubling or even tripling existing recycling rates.

We will make it easier for consumers to recycle our packaging by using materials that best fit the end-of-life treatment facilities available in their countries. More and more consumers are being drawn to the benefits of recycling – less litter, less waste sent to disposal, less use of virgin materials and potential savings in greenhouse gas emissions.

But achieving increases in recycling rates is not simple. It is technically possible to recycle almost all packaging materials but to be viable, recycling must be economically attractive, and above all must happen within a workable infrastructure.

How are we encouraging recycling?

The biggest challenge in recycling post-consumer waste is in recovery – getting used packaging from the consumer to recycling centres. This can be particularly difficult for aerosols because consumers often believe aerosols cannot be recycled.

We are the world's leading deodorants manufacturer. In the UK, our deodorants business has entered into a joint initiative with the UK’s aluminium sector to boost the collection and recycling of aerosols by local government. About 67% of local authorities already accept aerosols for recycling. The advertising and consumer buy-in to this initiative has helped to encourage more to get involved. By the beginning of 2011, 41 authorities had signed up and by October 2011 the number of local authorities participating had risen to 83%.

The initiative seeks to educate consumers and stimulate recycling where the infrastructure is already well developed. It is being run in conjunction with the Aluminium Packaging Recycling Organisation (Alupro), the British Aerosol Manufacturers’ Association (BAMA) and manufacturers of aluminium foil trays, which are also being collected. Our contribution to the UK aerosol industry has been recognised by an Environmental Sustainability Award from BAMA.

In Brazil, Unilever has set up 110 recycling stations at retailer Pão de Açúcar’s stores. All items collected are donated to 33 co-operatives, who test and sell them, generating income for more than 550 people. Since 2001, more than 39 000 tons of materials and 470 000 litres of cooking oil have been collected. In July 2010 a pilot project for aerosol recycling was started with one of these co-operatives. It has been very successful and is now being introduced to other co-operative groups. In just three months, almost one tonne of aerosol cans were collected, with just over one tonne in the following four months. The pilot is currently being rolled out to the other partners and a communication campaign to increase consumer awareness of the recyclability of aerosols has started.

A new initiative with customers is Hindustan Unilever's Go Recycle campaign with Bharti Walmart India. Go Recycle is the first of its kind in India and aims to reduce packaging waste and inspire consumers to acquire long-lasting recycling habits. Consumers are encouraged to return the plastic pouches and bottles used in a range of products to Bharti stores. In return, they receive discount coupons for our brands such as Surf, Kissan, Dove and Close Up. The initiative will run in 31 Bharti stores in the Delhi region during 2011. We have collaborated in pioneering some technical solutions. For example, in Vinhedo, South Brazil, Unilever has worked with recycling companies to find new uses for the waste plastic and metal produced by toothpaste tube manufacturing. The recycling companies process the waste material, which is then used to make floor tiles, roofing sheets, tables and chairs.

Eliminating the use of PVC

Our goal is to eliminate PVC from all packaging by 2012, where technical solutions exist.

Achieving our goal depends on new technology becoming available, as there are still some uses where no suitable alternatives exist. One example is the use of PVC as a seal in food product lids to prevent contamination, where we are working with suppliers to identify and implement novel technology solutions.

Where viable alternatives do exist, we have committed to replacing all PVC by the end of 2010 and began phasing out the use of plastics in new product formats in 2009. By the end of 2010, we were well on our way to achieving our target. We have already converted all our rigid containers made out of PVC. We are running down our stocks of 'shrink sleeves' and moving to other materials, and we are in the final stages of testing alternatives to PVdC-coated films and boards.