Care for the planet: reducing waste

Zero waste to landfill
Our parent company, Unilever, is proud to be an eco-responsible company. One of our real achievements has been to have zero manufacturing waste going to landfill. To make it happen, we work with the three ‘R’s: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. During production, our factories make sure any waste is used as productively as possible — just as it should be. Any cardboard boxes transporting raw materials are sold to recycling companies to ensure they are reused, to reduce packaging waste. In our Hefei factory in China, uniforms for staff are made from recycled materials – using the plastic packaging waste from our shampoos and conditioners – and at our Cikarang factory in Indonesia, all the organic factory waste is used to fertilize the onsite fruit trees and orchids. We’re always thinking outside the box and striving to do better in terms of environmental protection.

Deodorant cans made with recycled aluminum
It’s not just through our plastic bottles that we’re finding ways to reduce waste: we’re now able to make cans that are 30% lighter than standard deodorant cans, thereby using less aluminum. This technology means we’re saving 480 tonnes of material every year. It also means less greenhouses gases are being produced — which is of course much better for the environment.

Our single use sachet recycling scheme
The impact of waste on environment is huge, so although we know our single use sachets give people around the world affordable personal care, we also know they often end up in landfill or as litter. Since we’re determined to reduce plastic waste, Unilever is trialing a new plastics recycling technology called CreaSolv® to recover and reuse plastic from waste sachets. By recovering the plastic polymer from the sachet, it can be reused to make new ones. Unilever also plans to set up sachet packaging waste collection schemes with local governments and communities to reduce waste and create economic growth opportunities. 

Helping you recycle
The next step in our waste management strategy is even closer to home: increasing the amount of waste recycling that happens in the household. We know life gets busy and want to make it as easy as possible for you to recycle plastic and our products.

We also want to support organizations around the world to increase the scale and accessibility of recycling. In the US we support the Closed Loop Fund, which works to ensure companies, customers, governments and recyclers all play a part in promoting a circular economy. They've reached 1.2 million households so far and diverted 100,000 tonnes of waste away from landfill, which we think is a big achievement.

In Europe, Unilever is working with organizations such as Ceflex to develop better services to collect, sort and reprocess recyclable packaging to reduce waste. In the UK, we partnered with Alupro and managed to significantly increase the number of local authorities who would accept cans for recycling from 67% to over 90% — a big increase — as well as campaigning to increase awareness for the people recycling their cans.