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Sustainable living brands leading Unilever growth

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Sustainable living brands are driving growth for Unilever as consumers reward brands that deliver social benefit as well as product performance and affordability.

Women cooking with Knorr products

Our sustainable living brands are growing 30% faster than the rest of our business and delivered nearly half our total growth in 2015, our latest figures show.

And as well as driving overall growth, sustainable living brands themselves grew even more rapidly than in 2014.

Sustainable purpose, sustainable products

To be called a sustainable living brand, a brand must have integrated sustainability into both its purpose and its products.

That means it has a purpose which provides a social benefit, while its product contributes to at least one of the goals of our Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP).

Knorr, Dove, Dirt is Good (our laundry brand), Lipton and Hellmann’s – our five biggest brands – are all sustainable living brands.

Sustainability is no longer a niche issue

At the same time that we announced the success of our sustainable living brands, we shared the results of some of our consumer research.

It showed that 54% of consumers want to buy more sustainably, and many already are. It also showed that consumers want it all – high-performing products, at the right price and with a purpose that they can connect with.

No trade-off between sustainability and growth

“Businesses will be rewarded by consumers who are seeking responsibility and meaning as well as high-quality products at the right price,” says Paul Polman, Unilever CEO.

“This data proves it again – there is no trade-off between sustainability and profitable growth.”

Call for collective action

The details of the success of our sustainable living brands were published in the summary of our annual update on progress against the targets of the USLP.

‘Mobilising Collective Action: Summary of Progress 2015’ (PDF 8.21 MB) showed we are on track to meet the majority of our targets and issued a call for collective action to tackle the biggest challenges facing the world, including poverty and climate change.

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