Plastic is ubiquitous in today's society. A great amount of plastic is specifically flowing into the packaging industry. However, economical and technical limitations cause most plastic packaging to have a linear and unsustainable life, often characterized by a very short use phase.

Unilever is making progress towards its ambitious plastics goals, guided by the following framework:

- Less plastic: cutting down how much plastic the company uses in the first place through lighter designs, reuse and refill formats, and concentrated products which use less packaging.

- Better plastic: making sure the plastic Unilever uses is designed to be recycled and that its products use recycled plastic. 

- No plastic: using refill stations and formats to cut out new plastic completely and switching to alternative packaging materials such as paper, glass or aluminium.

Recycling systems can be confusing and they’re different around the world. Together with eCommerce giant, Alibaba, Unilever has created recycling machines that use artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically identify and sort plastics for recycling in China.

Unilever has more work to do to scale up its collection efforts. This includes direct investments, such as in the US where it has made a $15 million investment in the Closed Loop Partners’ Leadership Fund to help improve recycling. Partnerships in waste collection and processing, building capacity by buying recycled plastics, and supporting extended producer-responsibility schemes will also be critical to drive progress.

Unilver is developing technology-led solutions too. For instance in Indonesia, it is supporting urban communities to develop systems to collect and sell waste. A digital platform called ‘Google My Business’ enables consumers to find their nearest waste banks via Google Maps. In China it is using artificial intelligence to increase recycling rates (see case study below). And together with partners in the UK and US, Unilever is working to tackle the challenge of black plastic, which typically can’t be detected by waste sorting and recycling machines (see case study below).

Unilever also needs to consider the impact of the plastic system on people’s livelihoods, as plastic is frequently collected by waste collectors in the informal economy, often working under dirty and dangerous conditions and without earning adequate wages or receiving social benefits. These individuals and their communities are an integral part of the plastics solution, because without them the company will not be able to scale up its collection efforts to meet its goals for a waste-free world.

This issue is a priority for Unilever, and the company is developing a global framework on its approach and include human rights in its plastic value chain, especially for informal waste collectors who are involved in collection and processing in a number of developing markets. Unilever expecst to launch this in 2022 and will be working with its peers and expert NGOs to build a common approach across industry.

Thanks to this framework Unilever has already reduced its virgin plastic footprint since 2018 by around 16%, from 712,000 tonnes to 599,000 tonnes.

In just three years, it has increased the amount of post-consumer recycled plastic (PCR) to around 17% of its total plastic packaging portfolio.

Over the last decade it has already cut the weight of its packaging by a fifth through better and lighter designs.