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Unilever invites university students to head office to talk sustainability

Tue, 22 May 2012 14:25:00 GMT

A team of three first year Durham University students has been crowned champions of Unilever’s Sustainable Business Challenge.

A competition open to all current UK and Ireland university students in order to engage the next generation of business leaders in the subject of sustainable growth.

The competition was launched and hosted on Unilever’s graduate recruitment Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/unilevergraduatesuk), asking students to work in teams to come up with an idea in 200 words or a two minute long video suggesting how the company can achieve its well-known, ambitious Sustainable Living Plan targets.

The nine shortlisted teams from universities all around the country were invited to Unilever’s UK head office in Surrey to develop their ideas with a Unilever graduate employee and present them to UK board member Iain Potter, VP Marketing – Home and Personal Care, and Karl Donnan, Distribution Director.

Two runner-up teams won a year’s supply of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream but the winning Durham University trio walked away with a year’s supply of their favourite Unilever product plus £1,500 worth of travel vouchers after pitching the idea of inspiring consumer change. The concept, called naturallyresponsible, recommended adding a high-impact logo to relevant product packs which suggests how consumers can make sustainable choices when washing, cleaning or cooking with the product. The simple-yet-effective idea was perceived to be such a success that the team has been invited to work with Unilever’s Radox team to develop the idea further and potentially integrate it into the business.

Iain Potter, VP Marketing – Home and Personal Care and one of the judges, said, “The calibre of the students’ ideas was exceptionally high and it was a really valuable experience to welcome open-minded students with fresh ideas into our business to talk about sustainability. We acknowledge that many of our Sustainable Living Plan targets are very challenging and we’ll need innovation, inspiration and ambition to achieve them. The Durham University team realised that solutions don’t need to be complex and suggested a realistic yet impactful idea designed to inspire behaviour change which we are currently investigating for use within the business.”

Alex Deung, first year English Literature student from Durham University, said on behalf of the team, “There are a variety of reasons why we entered the Unilever Sustainable Business Challenge, one of which being the opportunity to channel our energies towards an end goal we passionately believe in: sustainability. We were attracted to the Challenge because it wasn’t any old undergraduate relations exercise - at its heart, it was about being open-minded to new ideas that might help to solve real problems. It is very exciting to think we could play a genuine part in Unilever’s journey as we continue to discuss and develop our idea alongside the brand team.

Alex continued, “The reality is that we risk jeopardising our own futures and the futures of others unless we take the initiative and change our ways. Organisations like Unilever are truly in it for the long run so it’s in their interest to play a part in bringing about change, and the global scale of a firm like Unilever means its impact really can be felt. Sustainability is a responsibility, and one that Unilever is taking seriously. The Sustainable Living Plan is much more than a list of targets: it’s a business plan in its own right.”

Unilever welcomes new face to UK & Ireland board

Wed, 16 May 2012 11:45:00 GMT

Unilever has appointed Tim Munden, a Unilever veteran of 18 years, as Vice President HR of the UK and Ireland business.

Tim joined Unilever as a graduate on the Unilever Future Leaders Programme after retiring from the Armed Forces for medical reasons. Since then, Tim has carved out a broad career around the globe, heading up the HR function for various divisions and departments including: Supply Chain (UK), Research & Development (UK), Home and Personal Care (Europe), Personal Care (global), Unilever Food Solutions (Americas) and business support and IT (global).

Having spent his entire FMCG career at Unilever, Tim joins Amanda Sourry, Chairman – UK and Ireland, James Bruce, VP – Finance and Jill Ross Country Leader for Ireland and VP Customer Development - as the fourth member of the board who started his Unilever career as a graduate. Now placed as the VP HR, Tim has two ambitions: to ensure Unilever is the best FMCG company in the country and that employees benefit from a highly attractive and competitive workplace.

Of joining the UK board, Tim said, “My goal is to make Unilever the unquestioned employer of choice in the FMCG and retail industry. Talent and leadership development are two of my main focuses so that our employees can enjoy long careers at Unilever, progressing with increasing challenges and levels of responsibilities to suit their ambitions, and benefiting from our ingrained ethos of agile working to make sure they can retain a healthy work-life balance. The fact that I have worked for Unilever for so many years is testimony to my genuine passion for the company and the employee experience it offers. I look forward to building on this even further in my new role.”

Tim joins the board hot on the news after Unilever was named the Graduate Employer of Choice in Marketing in The Times Graduate Recruitment Awards 2012 by final year students interested in pursuing a career within this sector. Unilever was also ranked within the Top 20 of the Times Top 100 Graduate Employers.

Unilever works with councils to promote tea bag recycling

Mon, 14 May 2012 15:05:00 GMT

Unilever UK has announced a new partnership with Brentwood Borough Council, Chelmsford Council and WRAP (Waste and Resource Action Programme) to change consumer habits and encourage Essex residents to recycle their teabags.

A warming “cuppa” is the perfect thing to take the chill off the seemingly endless winter and, as a nation of tea lovers, in the UK alone we consume some 165 million cups of tea every day. As the vast majority of tea drinkers habitually pop their used wet teabags into the bin, Unilever UK has announced a new partnership with Brentwood Borough Council, Chelmsford Council and WRAP (Waste and Resource Action Programme) to change consumer habits and encourage Essex residents to recycle their teabags.

The campaign kicks off on 14 May with widespread advertising which will be visible on six sheet posters at bus shelters and in local newspapers, ensuring the positive message is prominent at home and while out and about. Adverts, featuring PG tips’ much-loved, iconic “Monkey”, advise tea drinkers that they can dispose of their used tea bags in their kerbside food waste collection and do their bit to reduce Essex’s waste to landfill.

According to WRAP, tea is by far the largest element of unavoidable food waste produced in the UK, above items such as fruit peels and onion skins, accounting for circa 370,000 tonnes of waste every year.

As the biggest tea company in the world, Unilever understands its responsibility to encourage recycling - Britons drink more than 20 million cups of PG tips a day. This campaign, which marks the first time that any of the parties have worked to promote tea bag recycling, supports Unilever’s commitment to reduce waste to landfill by 50 per cent within the next eight years, as detailed in the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan.

Paul Sherratt, Global Packaging and Sustainability Director – Beverages at Unilever said, “To achieve the ambitious time-bound goals we’ve set out in the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan, we need to collaborate with organisations such as WRAP and forward-thinking councils such as Brentwood and Chelmsford in order to encourage consumers to recycle wherever they can. Only through such partnerships can we really begin to tackle such challenges.

“Unilever’s tea bags are mainly made from organic material so we believe that putting them in with the rest of the household food waste will be a small habit change that everyone can adopt. The advertising campaign is about educating and advising residents to this simple change which we hope will have a great impact on the amount of tea bag waste going to landfill.”

Marcus Gover, Director of the Closed Loop Economy at WRAP said, “With 52% of local authorities now offering food waste collections, we encourage people to recycle as much of their food waste as possible. WRAP welcomes Unilever’s initiative with Chelmsford and Brentwood as it demonstrates a real commitment to take responsibility for the whole life of their product. We need to see more of this kind of initiative.”

Cllr Janette Potter, Chelmsford Council’s Cabinet Member for Waste Management and Recycling, said, “The Council is committed to reducing waste and putting infrastructure in place for sustainable living. This goal is shared by Unilever, and by working in partnership on this campaign we’re encouraging residents to think about the life-cycle of food products and the treatment and disposal of waste in a responsible way.”

Collaboration between Unilever and councils is not a new concept: in November 2011, Unilever established a partnership with Torbay Council in which it supported a new mixed plastics recycling initiative, enabling and encouraging Torbay’s 60,000 households to recycle used ice cream and spreads tubs and noodle pots.

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Unilever Sustainable Living Plan Progress Report

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:59:00 GMT

Unilever has published a report on the progress it is making globally and nationally towards meeting its Unilever Sustainable Living Plan targets.

Unilever has published a report on the progress it is making globally and nationally towards meeting its Unilever Sustainable Living Plan targets. The plan, published in November 2010, broke new ground by committing to take responsibility for the company’simpacts right across the value chain, from the sourcing of raw materials all the way through to the consumer’s use of its products to cook, clean and wash.

As part of the update, Unilever announced that by the end of 2012 it will reach its target of 100% certified sustainable palm oil covered by Green Palm Certificates, a full three years ahead of schedule. Whilst this is strong progress, the company recognises that the Green Palm Scheme is only a step along the road towards sustainable palm oil, not the end game. Although it will be even more difficult to achieve, Unilever has now set a new targetof purchasing all its palm oil from traceable sources by 2020. This means it will be able to track all of the certified oil it buys back to the plantation on which it was originally grown.

To help achieve this goal, it announced that it is in advanced stages of discussions with the Indonesian government on building a large $100 million dollar fractionation plant in Sumatra. This plant will not only cut back on transport and save money but it will make it easier to trace the sources of the palm oil used.

Elsewhere Unilever’s performance against its sustainable living plan targets fall into three categories:

1.Areas where we are making genuinely goodprogress, such as:

·Sustainable sourcing– 24% of total agricultural raw materials are now being sourced sustainably, versus 14% in 2010.In the UK, our progress includes: all of our PG tips tea bags are now fully Rainforest Alliance Certified; our Ben & Jerry’s range is now 100% Fairtrade; we have made a commitment that by the end of 2013 all of our Magnum ice creams will use Rainforest Alliance Certified cocoa and Hellmann’s and Ben & Jerry’s use only cage free eggs.

·Nutrition– over 90% of Unilever’s leading spreads now contain less than one-third saturated fat.In the UKwe have been working with Government and other stakeholders to help to meet public health targets. We have signed up to 12 voluntary pledges as part of the Government’s Public Health Responsibility Deal, including reducing salt and calories. We recently reduced the saturated fat content in Flora Original and Light further so that they now contain at least 80% less saturated fat than butter. We also recently introduced Flora Cuisine as a healthier option for roasting, baking and frying which has 45% less saturated fat than olive oil and significantly less than vegetable oils. In addition, we offer healthier options of our most popular products such as Hellmann’s Light and Lighter than Light mayonnaise which have 58% and 87% less saturated fat respectively than original.

·Eco – efficiency- renewable energy now contributes 20% of Unilever’s total energy use. 100% of electricity purchased in Europe is now from renewable sources and in the UK, we have installed combined heat and power plants at our Gloucester ice cream, Port Sunlight homecare and Purfleet spreads factories. Collectively this has reduced CO2 from energy by over 30,000 tonnes a year (compared to 2010). In addition, our Burton Marmite factory has an anaerobic digester which uses the waste by-product of the manufacturing process to produce biogas. Also we have constructed a new effluent treatment plant at our Purfleet spreads factory which recovers 40% of waste water for reuse in cooling towers and irrigation. All of our UK sites are zero (non-hazardous) waste to landfill.

2.Areas where we have had to consider carefully how to reach our targets but are now ready to scale up. These include health and hygiene - Lifebuoy soap’s hand washing programme reached 48 million people by the end of 2011 – and waste.In the UK, we have made some good progress on waste including working in partnership with the Aluminium Packing Recycling Organisation (ALUPRO) and the British Aerosol Manufacturer’s Association (BAMA) to support a programme to increase the recycling rates of aerosols, encouraging more local councils to collect aerosols kerbside and increasing rates from 67% to 83%. However, we have more do, working in partnership with industry, Government and NGOs to help to increase recycling and recovery rates.

3.Areas where we are finding it difficult to make progress and will need to work with others to find solutions. This applies particularly to targets that require consumer behaviour change, such as encouraging people to eat foods with lower salt levels or reducing the use of heated water in showering and washing clothes.In the UK, we carried out our Sustainable Showering Study in 2011 which recorded accurate data, for the first time, on how people shower. The result is the first accurate picture of showering, based on actual behaviour rather than claimed behaviour, and we will now use this data to help our scientists to design effective programmes to encourage people to conserve energy and water when using brands like Radox.

Amanda Sourry, Unilever UK and Ireland Chairman, said: “The old view of growth at any cost is unacceptable; today the only responsible way to do business is through sustainable growth. It’s for this reason that the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan is not just a bolt-on strategy, it’s our blue-print for the future.”

“Today’s progress update shows that we’ve made some fantastic steps forward, particularly in the areas of sustainable sourcing, health and nutrition and reducing greenhouse gases. Just one year into the decade-long plan, we are proud of our achievements so far but there’s still much more to do.

“We have never professed to have all of the answers and some of our goals look no less challenging today than they did when we launched the plan in November 2010. However, we will continue to work with expert partners wherever appropriate in order to meet our goals and fulfil our ultimate ambition of becoming a truly sustainable business.”

For more information on the full first year progress report, please visit http://www.unilever.co.uk/sustainable-living/

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For further information about Unilever UK and Ireland, contact:

Katya Heath

UK& Ireland Media Relations Manager

T: 01372 945925 / M: 07785 450287

E:katya.heath@unilever.com

Notes to editors

About Unilever:Unilever is one of the world’s leading suppliers of fast moving consumer goods with operations in over 100 countries and sales in 190. Consumers buy 170 billion Unilever packs around the world every year, and our products are used over two billion times a day. We have more than 171,000 employees, and generated annual sales of €46.5 billion in 2011.

Working to create a better future every day, we help people feel good, look good and get more out of life with brands and services that are good for them and good for others. Our portfolio includes some of the world’s best known and most loved brands including thirteen €1 billion brands, and global leadership in most categories in which we operate. The portfolio features iconic brands such as: Knorr, Hellmann’s, Lipton, Dove, Vaseline, Persil, Cif, Marmite and Pot Noodle.

Unilever has led the Food Producers sector in the Dow Jones Sustainability World Indexes for 13 consecutive years. We are included in the FTSE4Good Index Series and attained a top environmental score of 5, leading to inclusion in the FTSE4Good Environmental Leaders Europe 40 Index. In 2011 Unilever led the Climate Counts Company Scorecard and was named #1 in the list of Global Corporate Sustainability Leaders according to the latest survey findings from GlobeScan Inc. and SustainAbility Ltd.

Unilever Sustainable Living Plan

In November 2010 the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan was launched. Unilever publicly committed to a ten year journey towards sustainable growth, with around 60 specific targets embedding this new thinking into our business. What makes the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan different is that it applies right across the value chain. Unilever is taking responsibility not just for its own direct operations but for their suppliers, distributors and – crucially – for how consumers use brands like Dove, Knorr, Lipton, Lifebuoy and Pureit.

The plans sets out that by 2020 Unilever will:

§help more than one billion people improve their health and well-being;

§halve the environmental footprint of the making and use of our products;

§source 100% of our agricultural raw materials sustainably

For more information about Unilever and its brands, please visitwww.unilever.co.uk.

Graduate Employer of Choice Award in Marketing

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 16:45:00 GMT

Unilever has this week been voted by final year students in The Times Graduate Recruitment Awards 2012 as the Graduate Employer of Choice in Marketing, by students interested in pursuing a career within this sector.

The league table is based on the results of an unprompted survey of more than 17,000 students from the top 30 universities in the UK, all of whom are just about to graduate and are looking to start their first graduate job.

Unilever has long been a graduate employer of choice but the 2012 ranking shows increased interest in the business, particularly in the marketing function where Unilever is perceived to be the company which offers the best opportunities.As interest grows, so does the programme; the Unilever Future Leaders programme, the two year fast-track management programme which has this year swelled to almost 60 places across seven functions, including marketing.²

Tim Munden, VP – HR, Unilever UK & Ireland, said,”The Unilever Future Leaders Programme is an important engine of our talent pipeline. Almost a third of the UK and Ireland country leadership team – Amanda Sourry, UK and Ireland Chairman; James Bruce, VP – Finance and Jill Ross, Country Leader for Unilever Ireland – all started their working lives at Unilever straight after graduating and have since carved very successful career within the business. We believe our graduate programme offers an unrivalled opportunity for graduates looking for real responsibility from day one, and the representation of former graduates on our leadership team is proof of its success in finding our business leaders of the future.

“We are exceptionally proud to be named the Marketing Graduate Employer of Choice in The Times Graduate Recruitment Awards.”

In addition to its popular graduate programme, Unilever recruits approximately 50 students annually for its 12 month industrial placements and 12 week summer placements.

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Notes to Editors:

¹Unilever ranks 19^th in the 2012 Graduate Employers of Choice.

²The seven functions are: Marketing; Customer Development; Research & Development; Human Resources; Business & Technology Management; Financial Management and Supply Chain Management

For more information about the Unilever Future Leaders Programme, visit:www.unilever.co.uk/graduates

About Unilever:

Unilever is one of the world’s leading suppliers of fast moving consumer goods with operations in over 100 countries and sales in 190. Consumers buy 170 billion Unilever packs around the world every year, and our products are used over two billion times a day. We have more than 171,000 employees, and generated annual sales of €46.5 billion in 2011.

Working to create a better future every day, we help people to feel good, look good and get more out of life with brands and services that are good for them and good for others. Our portfolio includes some of the world’s best known and most loved brands including thirteen €1 billion brands, and global leadership in most categories in which we operate. The portfolio features iconic brands such as: Knorr, Hellmann’s, Lipton, Dove, Vaseline, Persil, Cif, Marmite, Flora, Wall’s, Lynx, Sure, Cif, Domestos and Pot Noodle.

Unilever’s ambition is to double the size of our business, whilst reducing our overall environmental impact (including sourcing, consumer use and disposal). We are also committed to doing what we can to improve health, nutrition and hygiene, with a target to help more than a billion people take action to improve their health and well-being, as well as sourcing all our agricultural raw materials sustainably by 2020. All of these goals are itemised in around 60 time-based commitments in our Unilever Sustainable Living Plan.

For more information about Unilever and its brands, please visitwww.unilever.co.uk.