With more than 70% of its packaging already recyclable Unilever MENA is well on track towards achieving its goal of turning this figure to 100%
Unilever, owner of brands including Dove, Love Beauty & Planet (LBP), Seventh Generation, Lux and Omo, continues to make progress towards its ambitious commitments for a waste-free world, with more than 70% of its packaging in MENA now recyclable.
The achievement comes as part of Unilever’s global commitment to making its plastic packaging 100% recyclable by 2025, while also aiming for an absolute plastic reduction across its portfolio.
In line with Unilever’s global commitment, Unilever MENA has implemented new packaging on a range of products.
For example, its Lipton teabags are biodegradable, while the outer pack of the existing Lipton pack was made recyclable by the local MENA Refreshments R&D team, an innovation which received the USA Packaging Impressions Excellence Award.
Sanjiv Kakkar, Executive Vice-President at Unilever MENA, says: “A throwaway culture and business models continue to dominate our lives and damage our planet.
“Despite today’s challenging conditions, we remain committed to the implementation of a circular economy for packaging where it is reused, recycled, or composted.
“We aim to cut the amount of plastic we use, and rapidly transition to a circular economy to stop it from ever finding its way into the environment.”
Across MENA, Unilever is working to reduce its use of virgin plastic in its packaging.
Brands including Lux Handwash in the GCC and Egypt have transitioned to post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastic, while the packaging of newly introduced brands into MENA, such as LBP and Seventh Generation, are made of 100% recycled plastic.
To enable this transition, Unilever is developing local third-party capabilities for plastic collection and recycling, and has signed an agreement with the Emirati company Bee’ah to ensure local PCR development.
Unilever is also providing support for entrepreneurial efforts to develop new measures toward plastics and plastics collection.
The winning team of the Unilever Gulf Young Entrepreneur Awards 2018 was awarded funding to support its work on plastic collection from shorelines.
In 2019, Unilever engaged students from GEMs schools and the American University of Sharjah on treating plastic as a resource rather than a waste material.
Unilever is working with a wide range of partners across MENA to ensure the design and deployment of producer responsibility schemes in the region, that will help collect and process plastic packaging via collection and processing and through supporting the development of well-designed extended producer responsibility schemes in which Unilever will take responsibility for its packaging.
These partners include regulatory bodies, NGOs and competitors in the UAE, Egypt, and Jordan.
Despite the challenging environment created by the Covid-19 pandemic, Unilever’s commitments remain unchanged towards transforming its approach to plastic packing through its “Less Plastic. Better Plastic. No Plastic”’ internal framework, which outlines Unilever’s approach to how it will achieve its commitments and guides its innovation.
Last year, Unilever became the first major consumer goods company to commit to absolute plastic reduction across its portfolio.
The company vows by 2025 it will halve its use of virgin plastic by reducing its use of plastic packaging by more than 100,000 tonnes and accelerating its use of PCR.