Unilever

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
The company provides evidence of linking performance criteria in senior executives’ remuneration policies to targets and objectives which cover nature, including biodiversity, and social issues.

Lobbying and advocacy
The company discloses a list of trade associations of which it is a member wherever it operates. It provides a clear and detailed framework for assessing alignment of its trade associations with its sustainability targets and discloses the advocacy activities it has undertaken. It could further consolidate all the information related to its advocacy efforts into a centralized documentation.

Stakeholder engagement
The company discloses the channels it uses to engage with its stakeholder groups. Moreover, its stakeholder engagement activities cover nature, including biodiversity, nutrition and social areas.

Sustainable development strategy
The company discloses its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability impacts as well as the outcome of this process, in relation to the Unilever Compass strategy. Furthermore, it has group-wide targets on key sustainability topics for the most material parts of its value chain and reports consistently against all its targets.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company reduces its scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas emissions, and it discloses targets to reduce 100% of its scope 1 and 2 emission by 2030, and scope 3 by 2039. Moreover, the scope 1 and 2 emissions targets are in alignment with a 1.5-degree trajectory. Furthermore, the company regularly reports on the progress against these targets.

Ecosystem conversion
The company has set explicit targets for achieving a deforestation-free supply chain in palm oil, paper and board, tea, soy, and cocoa by 2023. The company also discloses the proportion of high-risk commodities which are conversion-free and discloses some activities to achieve conversion-free supply chains.

Food loss and waste
Between 2021 and 2022, there was a quantitative decrease in the amount of FLW generated by the company. Additionally, it discloses its FLW reduction targets, aligned with SDG 12.3 goal (50% reduction by 2030), and reports progress against them. Furthermore, it demonstrates how it collaborates with value chain partners to prevent FLW from being generated.

Plastic use and packaging waste
The company demonstrates commitment to reduce plastic use and transition towards sustainable packaging. It has set targets to reduce 50% of its virgin plastic use by 2025 and reports progress against it. Additionally, it partakes in activities related to these topics and discloses quantitative evidence on the increased use of recycled plastic and decreased use of virgin plastic in packaging.

Protein diversification
The company discloses the ratio of alternative proteins to animal proteins in its portfolio. Furthermore, it has established sales-based objectives to boost the inclusion of alternative proteins throughout its product range, including a target to reach €1.5 billion of annual sales by 2025 from plant-based products in categories that traditionally use animal-derived ingredients. Furthermore, it also reports on its progress against these objectives.

Soil health and agrobiodiversity
The company has set a target to help protect and regenerate 1.5 million hectares of land, forests and oceans by 2030 through regenerative agriculture and protection and restoration programmes, and reports on its progress against it. Furthermore, it demonstrates activities to improve soil health through its Regenerative Agriculture Principles.

Water withdrawal
The company provides detailed reports on the amount of water it withdraws for its own operations in water-stressed areas. Additionally, the company actively collaborates with its suppliers to decrease water withdrawal.

Accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods
The company discloses various examples of programmes that aim to enhance access to nutritious products. Through its Shakti model it creates local micro-entrepreneur networks to reach rural areas in India, Colombia, Nigeria and Pakistan. In Egypt, its Project Zeinab empowers women to reach rural consumers by helping them establish their own grocery businesses. Additionally, it demonstrates how it aims to improve the affordability of nutritious foods for vulnerable groups through programmes such as Knorr Nutri Sarap in the Philippines and Royco Nutrimenu in Indonesia.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company describes how it is improving the nutritional quality of its portfolio. For example, it has achieved its target of providing over 200 billion servings containing at least one of the five key micronutrients: vitamin A, vitamin D, iodine, iron, and zinc, and currently 64% of its products meet WHO-aligned nutritional standards, against its target of 70% by 2022. Also, it aims to double the number of products sold that deliver positive nutrition according its Unilever Nutrition Standards by 2025, reaching 54% of its products. Additionally, it has assessed its portfolio using six government-endorsed nutrient profiling systems.

Clear and transparent labelling
The company discloses the percentage of products and markets for which it has provided nutrition information on key relevant nutrients and portion- or serving-based details. It uses a Front-of-Pack (FOP) icon which represents energy content either as a percentage contribution to the daily guideline amount or as an absolute quantity, which can be considered a good practice, although it could adopt an interpretive government-endorsed front-of-pack labeling system. Additionally, the company discloses that as of the end of 2022, 99.8% of its sales volume provides nutritional information in line with its labeling commitments.

Responsible marketing
The company has a responsible marketing policy tailored to children. In line with this policy, it has a commitment called “Responsibly Made for Kids” that outlines the responsible practices used in the communication, sales, and development of its ice creams designed for children. Furthermore, it discloses that it will not intentionally target any paid marketing communications to children aged under 16.

Workforce nutrition
The company describes its Wellbeing Framework which underpins its approach to support employees’ health and wellbeing. It has implemented workforce nutrition programs including nutrition-focused health checks, breastfeeding support (i.e. parental leave of at least 6 months), and healthy food offerings (i.e. efforts to improve nutritional quality of the food served in its cafeterias).

Child labour
The company requires suppliers to prohibit child labour. Also, it requires them to have in place effective age verification process, that includes proper documentation and record keeping systems in the workplace.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company has set a target to close living income gaps by 2030. It is assessing living income gaps for the smallholder farmers of its key crops of tea, palm, vanilla, cocoa and vegetables, using the definitions by the Global Living Wage Coalition and working with the IDH. Also, it demonstrates how it supports smallholders to bring their business up to the standards the company requires, and has programmes to help farmers towards a living income. Further, it aims to empower cocoa farmers, including women in cocoa households, in Côte d’Ivoire by providing them with tailored business plans, access to finance and income diversification opportunities.

Forced labour
The company has strict policies in place to prevent the payment of any recruitment fees or related costs in order to secure a job. Additionally, it respects the privacy of its workers by not retaining their personal documents and allowing them the freedom to move within its supply chain. The company also takes proactive measures to address any issues pertaining to the payment of recruitment fees, which is outlined in its comprehensive Action Plan. Moreover, it presents a case study focused on the reimbursement of recruitment fees within the packaging supply chain in Malaysia.

Health and safety of vulnerable groups
The company acknowledges the safety risks faced by women in seasonal labor and recognizes the importance of addressing them. As part of the Harvesting the Future project, the company collaborates with stakeholders to create acceptable working conditions for seasonal workers. Additionally, the company is committed to addressing the issue of violence against women in the tea states of Assam, which are part of its supply chain, and ensuring the provision of safe spaces for them.

Land rights
The company has a commitment to respect ownership and use of land and natural resources and related legitimate tenure rights. Moreover, it requires its business relationships to have a process to identify legitimate tenure rights holders paying particular attention to vulnerable or marginalised tenure rights holders, and to negotiate with them to provide adequate compensation.

Living wage
The company discloses that it is an accredited living wage employer since 2020 and has achieved the commitment to pay all its direct employees a living wage. Also, it aims pay living wage in its tier 1 supply chain by 2030 and uses data from Living Wage Benchmarks recognised by IDH to determine the living wage. Further, its Framework for Fair Compensation which relates to paying living wages applies to its business partners too.

Act ethically
The company discloses a public commitment to protect personal data. Also, it discloses a global tax strategy and the income tax paid in all its tax jurisdictions. It discloses that the audit committee has been given the responsibility by the Board to review its global tax strategy.

The company also has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption along with a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to raise concerns and complaints regarding those topics. Furthermore, it discloses its approach to lobbying and political engagement in a policy statement and specifies that it does not make political contributions.

Provide and promote decent work
The company has a publicly available policy statement in which it commits to respecting the health and safety of workers in its operation and supply chain. It also discloses how it monitors the health and safety performance of its business relationships.

Moreover, the company discloses that it has achieved paying all workers a living wage and describes how it determines a living wage for the regions where it operates as well as how it works to support the payment of a living wage by its suppliers. It publicly states that all overtime work must be consensual and paid at a premium rate.

Furthermore, it discloses the proportion of its total direct operations workforce for each employee category by age group and gender, and that it currently has 38.46% women on the board. Additionally, it commits to gender equality and women’s empowerment and discloses targets to have 40% women on the board, ULE and senior management, and to empower 5,000 women in cocoa farming communities by 2025.

Respect human rights
The company has a publicly available policy statement committing it to respect human rights and ILO core labour rights, and it expects the same from its suppliers.  It describes the process for identifying its human rights risks and impacts in specific locations or activities covering its own operations and supply chain. Also, it discloses how it has assessed its salient human rights risks and discloses these. Additionally, it has a global system to take action to prevent, mitigate or remediate salient human rights issues, including a description of how it applies to its supply chain.

Moreover, the company discloses categories of stakeholders whose human rights have been or may be affected by its activities and demonstrates how it engages with them. Furthermore, it indicates that it has a human rights grievance mechanism accessible to all workers and all external stakeholders who may be adversely impacted by the company.

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
While the company states that the board of directors has expertise in ESG, it has an opportunity to disclose whether its highest governance body has expertise or access to expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics including nutrition, climate, water, soil health, social inclusion, ecosystem conversion and biodiversity.

Lobbying and advocacy
The company has an opportunity to report (potential) misalignments between the lobbying activities of its trade associations and its sustainability targets.

Stakeholder engagement
The company discloses the issues raised by its employees from the annual survey. However, it could disclose the topics raised by other stakeholder groups during its engagement activities, beyond materiality assessment.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company discloses that its full value chain target is consistent with a 2°C temperature increase, however, there is no evidence found that the company’s scope 3 targets are aligned with 1.5°C trajectory.

Fertiliser and pesticide use
The company has an opportunity to disclose targets to optimise the use of fertilisers and minimise the use of pesticides in its production and/or sourcing practices, and report progress against the targets.

Water withdrawal
While the company states that it used less water in its manufacturing sites from 2021 to 2022, it is not clear whether there is a reduction in water withdrawal across its own operations. The company discloses its target to implement water stewardship programmes in 100 locations in water-stressed areas by 2030 and reports progress against the same. However, no evidence found that the company has a target to reduce water withdrawal across all its own operations and reports progress against the target.

Accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods
The company has an opportunity to set targets to improve the accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods, particularly for vulnerable groups, through its commercial activities.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company has announced its plans to improve the nutritional profile of its Nutrition and Ice Cream products, with a goal of having 85% of its servings meet the new Unilever Science-based Nutrition Criteria (USNC) by 2028. These criteria have been developed to establish thresholds for calories, sugar, salt, and saturated fat across all product groups. They have been modelled against dietary surveys conducted in five key markets, namely the UK, US, France, Brazil, and China. To further enhance transparency, the company could consider disclosing how its nutrition standards align with government-endorsed or externally validated nutrient profiling systems.

Clear and transparent labelling
While the company discloses that 99.8% of its sales volume provides nutritional information, it has an opportunity to disclose the percentage of products for which its front-of-pack labelling schemes have been rolled out.

Workforce nutrition
The company discloses that it provides nutrition education program and creates nutritious crops gardens for communities around its manufacturing sites and depots in India. However, there is an opportunity for the company to implement workforce nutrition programmes for its supply chain workers. Moreover, the company could further disclose quantitative evidence on its healthy food offerings at workplace program.

Child labour
The company has the chance to provide examples of remediation programs when instances of child labor are discovered within its operations. It discloses its efforts in developing impact programs alongside suppliers to ensure that cocoa is sourced from cooperatives that have established monitoring and remediation systems for addressing child labour cases. Additionally, the company reveals its support in assisting suppliers with obtaining birth certificates and backing community-based initiatives, like child protection committees. However, it could indicate further details of how it collaborates with its supply chain to eliminate child labour.

Forced labour
The company has a policy of not paying recruitment fees but it has the opportunity to prohibit the retention of workers’ personal documents or restrict their freedom of movement for its operations. Moreover, it discloses its findings on forced labour within the supply chain but could provide an analysis of trends to demonstrate progress in eliminating forced labour from its supply chain.

Act ethically
The company states that it has a process for identifying bribery and corruption but could disclose details of this process. It also has an opportunity to include anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contracts with business relationships.

Furthermore, the company could disclose its expenditures on lobbying activities and a requirement for its third-party lobbyists to comply with its lobbying and political engagement policy.

Provide and promote decent work
The company has an opportunity to disclose the ratio of the basic salary and remuneration of women to men in its total direct operations workforce for each employee category, by significant locations of operation.