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1 Introduction
Unilever is a Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) company with over 400
brands, operations in nearly 100 countries and sales in nearly every country in the
world. Our products (foods, beverages, ice cream, home and personal care) are used
2 billion times a day in over half the households on the planet. Our strategy for sustainable growth sets out a vision for leveraging this global reach to improve health
and well-being, reduce environmental impacts and enhance livelihoods. Unilever
has long been a pioneer of sustainability, and throughout this journey, science has
been the foundation for the company’s sustainability strategy and initiatives. As
such, the focus of this chapter is not the business case for sustainability in Unilever
(which can be found in Bell ( 2013a , b ); Lingard ( 2012 )), but an illustration of how
science has helped inform and shape the company’s thinking on sustainability so far
and also how we will continue to use science to help us think about future
challenges.
To date, Unilever has relied on scientifi c methods based around Life Cycle
Assessment (LCA) to guide and inform our sustainability decision-making and such
approaches will continue to have an important role to play. However, LCA does not
address all relevant environmental impacts; nor does it deal with each impact category in an equally robust way. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop more
predictive approaches that take into account the limited availability of many
resources, the non-linearity of certain impacts and the absolute nature of sustainability as articulated in the planetary boundary concept.
2 The Journey So Far
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is the preferred tool for many organizations to help
them understand the impacts and performance of their products and services in a
rigorous and scientifi c manner (Baitz et al. 2013 ). The LCA methodology was codifi ed in the late 1980s/early 1990s through the work of SETAC and ISO. However,
LCA is not a static tool and it is continually being evolved and improved to refl ect
new science and to expand the robustness and scope of the environmental impact
assessment.
The fl exibility of the LCA concept is one of its strengths; in Unilever, we have
exploited this feature and in doing so helped inform and shape our environmental
strategy over the past 20 years (Fig. 15.1 ). In the mid-1990s, Unilever developed the
Overall Business Impact Assessment (OBIA) approach (Clift and Wright 2000 ) as
a means to scientifi cally identify our priority environmental impacts and to inform
the selection of key sustainability programs. Unlike traditional LCA which focuses
on single systems, usually products, the OBIA approach can be used to assess the
effects of all the individual products produced by a business for a given period of
time, typically 1 year. The potential environmental impacts of the business are
S. Sim et al.
1 Introduction
Unilever is a Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) company with over 400
brands, operations in nearly 100 countries and sales in nearly every country in the
world. Our products (foods, beverages, ice cream, home and personal care) are used
2 billion times a day in over half the households on the planet. Our strategy for sustainable growth sets out a vision for leveraging this global reach to improve health
and well-being, reduce environmental impacts and enhance livelihoods. Unilever
has long been a pioneer of sustainability, and throughout this journey, science has
been the foundation for the company’s sustainability strategy and initiatives. As
such, the focus of this chapter is not the business case for sustainability in Unilever
(which can be found in Bell ( 2013a , b ); Lingard ( 2012 )), but an illustration of how
science has helped inform and shape the company’s thinking on sustainability so far
and also how we will continue to use science to help us think about future
challenges.
To date, Unilever has relied on scientifi c methods based around Life Cycle
Assessment (LCA) to guide and inform our sustainability decision-making and such
approaches will continue to have an important role to play. However, LCA does not
address all relevant environmental impacts; nor does it deal with each impact category in an equally robust way. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop more
predictive approaches that take into account the limited availability of many
resources, the non-linearity of certain impacts and the absolute nature of sustainability as articulated in the planetary boundary concept.
2 The Journey So Far
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is the preferred tool for many organizations to help
them understand the impacts and performance of their products and services in a
rigorous and scientifi c manner (Baitz et al. 2013 ). The LCA methodology was codifi ed in the late 1980s/early 1990s through the work of SETAC and ISO. However,
LCA is not a static tool and it is continually being evolved and improved to refl ect
new science and to expand the robustness and scope of the environmental impact
assessment.
The fl exibility of the LCA concept is one of its strengths; in Unilever, we have
exploited this feature and in doing so helped inform and shape our environmental
strategy over the past 20 years (Fig. 15.1 ). In the mid-1990s, Unilever developed the
Overall Business Impact Assessment (OBIA) approach (Clift and Wright 2000 ) as
a means to scientifi cally identify our priority environmental impacts and to inform
the selection of key sustainability programs. Unlike traditional LCA which focuses
on single systems, usually products, the OBIA approach can be used to assess the
effects of all the individual products produced by a business for a given period of
time, typically 1 year. The potential environmental impacts of the business are
S. Sim et al.