Our partnerships
Effective solutions require a partnership approach. Unilever is a founding member of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, which has more than 160 members, including packaging producers, users and retailers. We are also members of EUROPEN (the European Organization for Packaging and the Environment).
We work in partnership with retailers and NGOs to explore ways of improving recycling infrastructure. Since 1992, for example, we have supported the CEMPRE waste management and recycling initiative in Brazil, which works with the ‘waste picking’ community.
‘Waste picking’ – retrieving waste that can be sold for reuse or recycling – is common in the developing world. CEMPRE is a non-profit organisation that promotes recycling, raising awareness at government and NGO level and helping workers, usually the poor and disadvantaged, who are actually engaged in waste recovery. It advises local waste or rag pickers how to set up a co-operative and has published a ‘how-to’ kit. It publishes a regular newsletter and runs a hot-line on the current price of recyclables. CEMPRE support allows vulnerable freelance pickers to form organised co-operatives that are well placed to sort, store and resell materials, reducing waste to landfill and dumps and improving workers’ lives. The success of this partnership has led to the CEMPRE model being launched in other countries on different continents.
With businesses in many parts of the world, it is important we understand the way waste management systems function at a local level.
Brazil
In Brazil, our brands Omo, Rexona, Knorr and AdeS continue to work in partnership with retailer Pão de Açúcar to encourage the recycling and recovery of packaging waste. Pão de Açúcar gives customers colour-coded plastic bags when they shop at the store to help sort and bring back their waste for recycling. Since the project began in 2001, around 110 recycling station have been established in 24 Brazilian cities.
Thailand
Unilever is also working with TIMPSE in Thailand, a similar organisation to CEMPRE, to try to replicate the success of CEMPRE, and is investigating ways to roll out this kind of approach to other countries, together with other partners.
Mexico
Unilever has been working in Mexico with The Coca-Cola Company, Natura, Philips and Walmart on a project called Grupo Transforma. Through a travelling exhibition called La Neta del Planeta (The Truth of the Planet), the project aims to raise awareness of the need to protect the environment.
Grupo Transforma has also set up recycling centres at Walmart stores to encourage recycling among consumers.
The Consumer Goods Forum
As part of the sustainability programme of the Consumer Goods Forum, the CEOs of Unilever and Tesco have established a joint industry group to develop a ‘common business language’ and common metrics for packaging and sustainability. This will enable a more efficient dialogue with companies along the value chain on ways to reduce the environmental impact of packaging, while preserving its many important functions.
The Consumer Goods Forum brings together the CEOs and senior management of more than 400 retailers, manufacturers, service providers and other stakeholders across 70 countries. Working collaboratively with these companies allows us to encourage change across the industry.
The project began in 2009 and in 2010 Unilever conducted three pilot studies in the UK and China to test the metrics. The results of these pilots have contributed significantly to the outcome of the project. In 2011 the group will complete its work by publishing a framework and measurement system.