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A-Z of Responsible Business

Responsible business underpins everything we do at Unilever. Our A-Z guide highlights how this commitment comes to life across our business.

It highlights key areas such as independent assurance, material issues, scope and boundaries of reporting, and sustainability performance data to ensure we consistently adhere to the highest sustainability reporting standards.

  • Animal Welfare

    Unilever’s overarching sustainability strategy is to focus on where we can achieve greatest impact: in climate, nature, plastics and livelihoods.

    High animal welfare remains important for our Foods business and we are proud of the significant progress we have made on cage-free eggs - reaching 100% in Europe and North America, and 68% globally by the end of 2024. In line with our strategy, we are now focusing our efforts on areas where we can make the most meaningful impact.

    Our priority going forward is to maintain 100% cage-free eggs in North America and Europe, which are our biggest markets. We will end our commitment to reach 100% cage free eggs globally but will continue to monitor the availability and affordability of cage-free eggs at a market level outside of North America and Europe.

    Our sourcing footprint for broiler chicken in North America and Europe is currently very limited, and the availability of chicken that meets the enhanced welfare standards remains a challenge. We will be unable to meet our commitment on broiler chicken in these regions. We will however continue to monitor market developments and will reassess our approach if compliant sourcing becomes more accessible.

  • Independent Assurance

    We published our first Sustainability Statement against the mandatory European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) in our 2024 Annual Report and Accounts. The ESRS mandates that all metrics must be subject to independent assurance. In 2024 KPMG LLP was appointed to conduct limited assurance of our Sustainability Statement, and their Independent Assurance Report can found here.

    This builds on a long history of robust, voluntary, sustainability reporting which has undergone limited assurance by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC). Historic assurance statements can be found in our Reporting Archive. Prior to 2024 metrics which were not independently assured underwent a robust validations process by our internal Metrics Team.

    All sustainability reporting in our Annual Report and Accounts has been approved by the Audit Committee, a subcommittee of the Board responsible for overseeing financial and non-financial disclosures in our Annual Report and Accounts. This includes reviewing the scope and results of and internal and external assurance activities.

  • Material Issues

    As required by the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) we published our double materiality assessment in our 2024 Sustainability Statement. The overview and outcome of this assessment can be found on page 226-229 of our Annual Report and Accounts.

    Prior to this we published our material sustainability issues on our website, a PDF of this page can be found in our Reporting Archive.

  • Scope and Boundaries of Reporting

    We published our first Sustainability Statement against the mandatory European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) in our 2024 Annual Report and Accounts. The scope and boundary for each metric can be found within the Sustainability Statement, our approach can be found on page 224.

  • Sustainability Performance Data

    We published our first Sustainability Statement against the mandatory European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) in our 2024 Annual Report and Accounts. All metrics, targets and data relating to our sustainability performance can now be found in our Sustainability Statement:

    Environmental disclosures:

    Social disclosures:

    Governance disclosures:

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