Unilever’s promised cuts to plastic are welcome... but it’s still not enough

Comments from CEO Alan Jope took some of the gloss off the announcement, while Greenpeace says the company has got the emphasis wrong, writes James Moore

The problem with plastic packaging is global, as this picture of Unilever products in India demonstrates (Getty)

Plastic fantastic?

Unilever, the consumer products giant with more brands than there are days in a year, has promised to halve its use of the stuff by 2025.

The popularity of products such as Comfort, Domestos, Persil, Radox, VO5 and others, all of which use it in their packaging, means the company throws off 700,000 tonnes of the stuff every year.

That’s an awful lot of non-biodegradable polluting junk, some of which inevitably ends up in landfill or, worse still, in our oceans.

As well as the 50 per cent reduction, and a promise of an absolute cut of 100,000 tonnes, there’s also a pledge to help collect and process more plastic packaging than the company sells by 2025, to share tech, and to use a lot more recycled and recyclable material.

Such promises will require Unilever to expend money, manpower and creativity on innovating. Not only has it pledged to do that, but it also says it’s willing to share what it comes up with if that will help clean up the planet.

As you might expect, the announcement of all this was accompanied by what you might call a full-court PR press. Unilever likes to be seen as an exemplar of a better sort of capitalism, a company that can do cuddles.

This took something of a knock after it fended off an unwanted takeover by America’s rapacious Kraft Foods by promising the City a fancy cost-cutting package that had unions up in arms.

It also nettled its investors with a proposal (subsequently withdrawn) to move its HQ from London to Rotterdam, which would have forced it out of the FTSE 100, and required tracker funds and some others to divest as a result.

Does this mean the hugs are back?

Up to a point. If you look past the PR blarney you’ll see that several companies have already made similar pledges. Unilever’s is more aggressive than, say, that of its rival Proctor & Gamble (Fairy Liquid, Lenor), which said it planned to halve plastic use by 2030, but the point remains.

Unilever’s move is also motivated by pragmatism as much as it is by a desire to do the right thing. Plastic is environmentally destructive. There are umpteen tonnes of stuff floating in our oceans. It’s damaging to our health too. That’s a message that’s getting home to consumers, and they’re calling for change, particularly younger consumers who hold the key to the company’s future and are inclined to vote with their wallets.

So Unilever is playing follower here as much as it is leading the debate.

Some of the comments CEO Alan Jope made to the BBC were also less than helpful. He said plastic was still “a terrific material” and jabbed at others, such as local authorities, which he said needed to harmonise recycling policies and make instructions clearer to consumers.

While he’s right about that, we’re supposed to be talking about Unilever here and what it can do. Poorly funded councils wouldn’t need to be pressured if it produced less of the stuff for them to recycle.

This is a point made by Greenpeace. It concedes that the move is a step in the right direction. But it is concerned about Unilever’s “continued emphasis on collection, alternative materials, and recycled content” when it says there is a need for a “systemic shift required to solve the growing plastic pollution problem”.

“We encourage Unilever to prioritise its efforts upstream by redesigning single-use plastic and packaging out of its business model, and being more specific about the investment it will be making in reusable and refillable alternatives.” Quite.

Unilever’s promise to innovate nonetheless shouldn’t be underestimated. It employs a lot of clever people and has financial clout. And it is looking at the problem globally.

Still, while this is indeed, as Greenpeace says, a welcome step, it’s two cheers with the potential for a third if that innovative effort can make a serious, and provable, dent in what is rapidly moving from “serious problem” to “global crisis”.