How we built sustainability into our manufacturing DNA

Our Pouso Alegre site in Southern Brazil employs more than 1,100 people and manufactures some of our leading food brands. It’s also Unilever’s first zero carbon operational site in the Americas. Environmental Co-ordinator Rodrigo Cano was one the key people behind a project at the site, called Ecologica Island. Using the principles of circular economy, the team built two 500 sq m greenhouses and used the factory’s plant-based waste to enrich their soil. Both greenhouses now grow vegetables and yield enough produce to supply the factory’s restaurants two days a week.

Unilever’s Dapada site in India manufactures soap and detergent for millions of consumers. The country’s monsoon season runs from May to September and accounts for 70% of its annual rainfall. It’s often followed by prolonged dry spells that quickly lead to water shortages. To ensure a more secure water supply for the factory, Akshay Rastogi, Factory Manager at Dapada, along with the team, built a rainwater harvesting pond on the site. It is surrounded by trees, which reduces water evaporation during dry spells.

The build means 75% of Dapada’s water consumption now comes from rainfall, which ensures traditional water supplies such as rivers and streams can be more fully used by the local community.

Flen in Sweden was our first site to achieve carbon neutral status. In 2011, it switched its energy use to 100% renewable electricity. “In 2010 our factory had a carbon footprint of 870 tonnes,” says Igor Papec, Factory Leader at Flen. “Today we have a zero carbon footprint. Our energy intake is completely green and comes from solar, wind or hydropower – energy sources with an extremely low-carbon footprint which provide us with a climate-smart solution.”

The site created a fossil-free energy contract with its energy supplier, ensuring that its power only came from renewable sources from the national grid. “We wanted to show people, the community and government that things can be done if you seriously put the effort in,” Igor says.

Knorr savouries and food seasonings are key ranges produced at our Mandalay site in Myanmar. Rice husks are a byproduct of their manufacturing and used to be sent to a third-party provider to be disposed of and burnt.

Mahesh Vishwanathan, Procurement Manager at Unilever, along with the wider team, started looking into the opportunity for using the rice husks as a biofuel to heat the factory and cut the factory’s waste. It proved an ideal material to fuel a biomass boiler and has provided a circular waste-to-value stream, giving the team additional advantages too. It has saved the money that used to pay for its disposal and, because it is no longer burnt, it has reduced the factory’s environmental impact too.

Our Agarapathana site, in Sri Lanka, is the base for our Ceytea instant tea factory. Reducing water use has seen the team do some groundbreaking work in a project called 100% RE_AQUA. The factory’s team worked to create three ways to source and use water efficiently.

First, they covered 90% of their factory roof with water collection systems to harvest rainfall. Secondly, they found ways to recondense the steam used in the factory’s machines to allow the water to be reused again; and finally they ensured water effluent from the plant is reused to clean plant filters or given to local gardeners to water and enrich their soil.

Our Kericho tea plantation in Kenya is home to seven factories located all around its 8,700 hectares. To date, 94% of the site’s electricity is created from a sustainable plantation of CO2-adsorbing eucalyptus trees. This is one of the most beneficial crops when it comes to regenerating green spaces and preserving diversity.

It is also a brilliant source of biomass – the wood from the eucalyptus plantation is used in in our boilers to generate thermal energy to dry tea in our factories. The site’s remaining electricity comes from a renewable source too. Kericho has a river which runs through the site, and this is put to good use to generate the additional 6% of power the site needs via hydroelectricity.

Today 73% of the waste produced by our Ceytea site in Agarapathana is used to create green energy. A byproduct of the tea process is called spent leaf tea. This previously went to landfill. In 2014, the factory commissioned a biomass boiler and today 60 tonnes of this waste is used to generate power for the factory. In the true spirit of a circular economy, the remaining 27% of spent leaf is turned into organic fertiliser which is used to replenish surrounding tea gardens.

Hefei in China is our largest manufacturing site in the world. It’s been declared a Lighthouse site by the World Economic Forum for its digital prowess. It has significant green credentials, too.

Thanks to its use of biomass, it is powered by green electricity and three of its five manufacturing sites are carbon neutral. “Unilever sites are not a lonely island, we are part of a community,” says Colette Xu, Sustainability Manager for North Asia at Unilever. “What we do for sustainability at our sites is also done to serve the surrounding community and enhance the lives of the people who work and live there.”