Unilever

Sustainable development strategy
Unilever’s Compass Strategy includes time-bound targets for all the company’s material issues, which cover the three benchmark dimensions of environment, nutrition and social inclusion. This builds on Unilever’s 2010-2020 Sustainable Living Plan, with the company regularly reporting its progress against targets, in addition to outlining a detailed materiality process through which it identifies and prioritises key sustainability issues.

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
Unilever’s board of directors has ultimate responsibility for the oversight and implementation of its sustainability strategy. Furthermore, the company’s remuneration policy contains key performance indicators which address topics across all three benchmark dimensions, demonstrating the company’s appreciation of its holistic responsibility to address food systems transformation.

Stakeholder engagement
Unilever undertakes significant stakeholder engagement activities, outlining the groups of stakeholders with which it engages and key issues raised as part of its materiality process. The company also discloses its main strategic as well as operational outcomes of its engagement process, which cover matters relevant to all of the benchmark’s dimensions of environment, nutrition and social inclusion.

Scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas emissions
Unilever discloses time-bound targets to reduce its scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 100% by 2030, alongside a group-wide target to achieve net-zero emissions by 2039. The company reports quantitative reductions for its scope 1, 2 and 3 GHG emissions in the period between 2010-2020, and further demonstrates leadership by aligning its targets with the Science Based Targets initiative’s 1.5-degree warming trajectory.

Protection of natural terrestrial habitats
Unilever has a time-bound target to achieve a deforestation-free supply chain by 2023, including for its high-risk commodities soya, palm oil and cocoa. The company demonstrates strong progress across all commodities; for instance, its soy supply chain where, by the end of 2020, over 90% of soybean oil originated in places with a low risk of deforestation, such as the United States, or from supply chains that are deforestation-free as verified by recognised industry standards with a segregated chain of custody.

Protein diversification
The company demonstrates a leading commitment to diversifying proteins in its product portfolio through a target to achieve EUR 1 billion in annual sales from plant-based meat and dairy alternatives between 2025-2027. Unilever could further strengthen its position by reporting regularly against this target or quantifying its plant-based sales target as a percentage of its overall product portfolio.

Availability of healthy foods
The company demonstrates leadership in its commitment to increasing the availability of healthy foods, disclosing time-bound targets as part of both its 2010-2020 Sustainable Living Plan and newly established Compass Strategy. Its latest targets commit the company to ensuring 70% of products meet its highest nutritional standard by 2022 and to doubling the sales of products that deliver positive nutrition by 2025. In addition, Unilever discloses supporting targets and quantitative data on its efforts to reduce sugar, salt and calories across various product lines.

Clear and transparent labelling
Unilever demonstrates transparency on the nutritional composition of its product portfolio, committing to regulations regarding back-of-pack labelling in addition to intuitive front-of-pack labelling. The company provides information regarding energy per portion, eight key nutrients and percentage of guideline daily amounts (GDA), reporting that this information was available on 99.7% of its products by the end of 2020.

Living wage
The company has a time-bound target to ensure that everyone who directly provides goods and services to the company earns at least a living wage or income by 2030. Unilever works with the Fair Wage Network to develop its understanding of living wages and has developed a Framework for Fair Compensation that sits alongside this. The company reports that it has already achieved its commitment to provide a living wage to its direct employees.

Health and safety of vulnerable groups
Unilever recognises the specific health and safety risks to vulnerable groups, citing examples of migrants working as transporters in its supply chain and female workers on its tea estates in Kenya. In addition to recognising and assessing these risks, the company also provides evidence of collaborative support activities to address and mitigate these risks.

Food loss and waste
The company has a time-bound target to halve food waste in its direct operations by 2025 from 2019 levels, as part of the World Resources Institute’s Champions 12.3 initiative. It also discloses goals to help tackle this issue in its value chain. However, the company has not yet reported against this target, with its next food waste report due to be published in September 2021, making it unclear whether any progress has been made in this area.

Water use
Unilever disclosed a time-bound target to reduce water withdrawals in its own operations to at or below 2008 levels by 2020, reporting a 49% reduction over the reporting period. The company has also set a new target to implement water stewardship programmes in 100 of its water-stressed locations by 2030 and discloses current proportions withdrawn from these locations. The company could further improve its performance by disclosing where and how it is identifying and prioritising water-stressed regions in its supply chain as well as its own operations.

Soil health and agrobiodiversity and fertiliser and pesticide use
Unilever demonstrates a longstanding commitment to promoting soil health and agrobiodiversity and optimising the use of fertilisers and pesticides through its 2017 Sustainable Agriculture Code and recently published Regenerative Agriculture Principles. Unilever reports that for its 12 priority crop groups that make up around two-thirds of the total volume of agricultural raw materials sourced by the company, 92% were sustainably sourced in 2020. However, it could further strengthen its commitment by introducing time-bound targets for the implementation of these principles among its global suppliers and regularly reporting progress against these targets.

Accessibility and affordability of healthy foods
The company discloses several commercial activities designed to increase the accessibility and affordability of healthy foods. These include the Shakti programme in India, through which Unilever has trained 131,000 women in low-income rural communities to act as sales agents in their local villages, and nationwide nutrition initiatives in the Philippines, South Africa and Italy through its Knorr consumer brand. The company could further strengthen its commitment to addressing this issue by devising a holistic, group-wide target, particularly in relation to vulnerable groups, and reporting progress against it.

Responsible marketing
The company discloses responsible marketing strategies and policies, including a specific policy for marketing to children, and supports these with various commercial activities. Unilever could improve its performance further by disclosing its marketing budgets and the proportion of these that are spent on promoting healthy food options.

Workforce nutrition
Unilever’s Lamplighter programme, which supports more than 76,000 employees across 75 countries, aims to protect employee health through initiatives focusing on diet and alcohol consumption, among others. However, the company does not disclose further information on workforce nutrition initiatives, including the foods it offers to employees across its operations.

Child and forced labour
The company indicates that it will not use child and forced labour and codifies the same expectation for its suppliers. It also outlines extensive monitoring processes for its supply chain, utilising both internal and third-party auditing systems, and identifies specific high-risk supply chains and geographies. However, the company lacks similar disclosure on how it monitors these issues within its operations.

Farmer productivity and resilience
Unilever offers a wide range of programmes that aim to improve farmer productivity and resilience, particularly among smallholders, and reports having trained 834,000 farmers on improved agriculture practices since 2010. The company focuses on several priority crops, including cocoa, palm oil, coconut and tea. However, while reporting on the impact of some of these programmes is extensive, such as the Malawi Tea initiative, the company could improve its performance by reporting holistically and in depth on the impact of all of its support activities.

Land rights
The company is committed to the principle of free, prior and informed consent and codifies a similar expectation for its suppliers within its responsible sourcing policy. In addition, the company has a grievance mechanism that is accessible to external stakeholders and provides case studies of where it has implemented its approach in Rwanda, Côte d’Ivoire and Indonesia. Unilever could improve its performance by disclosing further details on its remediation process.

Thanks to its publicly available policies and commitments across all key topics, Unilever demonstrates a benchmark-leading recognition of its responsibility regarding human rights. The company commits to respecting human rights and the ILO core labour rights, discloses the identification and assessment process for its salient human rights risks and the actions it takes to address them. It also has grievance mechanisms in place for its operations and supply chain.

Unilever demonstrates support for collective bargaining. It also meets living wage fundamentals by paying a living wage across its operations and setting a 2030 target for its suppliers to pay a living wage. The company recognises its responsibility in relation to health and safety, working hours, workforce diversity and gender equality but could strengthen its performance with more disclosure on these key topics.

By disclosing policies and information on personal data protection, tax, and bribery and corruption, Unilever demonstrates a holistic commitment to ethical business conduct.