Unilever PLC

Unilever PLC
Quick Facts
Type	Public
sector	Consumer goods
Headquarters (Benelux Organization)	Rotterdam, Netherlands
Year of Origin	1930
Emissions (All Scopes)	61,2 Megatons of CO2 (2020)
Net Income	USD$6,375 billion (2020)
Key People	Alan Joppe (CEO) Graeme Pitkethly (CFO) Nils Andersen (Chairman) Youngme Moon (Vice-Chairmain/Senior Independent Director)
Subsidiaries	Unilever has over 400 brands worldwide

Unilever PLC, stylized as Unilever, is a British multinational consumer goods company. Their products sell in over 190 countries and are used by 2.5 billion people every day. They have over 400 brands of which 13 had a turnover of more than €1 billion in 2020. The company consists of three divisions; Beauty & Personal Care with a turnover of €21.1 billion; Foods & Refreshments with a turnover of €19.1 billion; and Home Care with a turnover of €10.5 billion. The company has 149.000 employees.

Company Structure

Board of Directors

Unilever Leadership Executive (ULE)

Name	Function	Remuneration x1000 EUR
Alan Jope	Chief Executive Officer	3447
Graeme Pitkethly	Chief Financial Officer	2961
Conny Braams	Chief Digital & Marketing Officer
Reginaldo Ecclissato	Chief Supply Chain Officer
Hanneke Faber	President, Foods & Refreshment
Sunny Jain	President, Beauty & Personal Care
Sanjiv Mehta	President, Unilever, South Asia and Chair and Managing Director, Hindustan Unilever
Nitin Paranjpe	Chief Operating Officer
Richard Slater	Chief Research & Development Officer
Ritva Sotamaa	Chief Legal Officer & Group Secretary
Peter ter Kulve	President, Home Care

Unilever Board

Name	Function	Remuneration x1000 EUR
Nils Andersen	Chair and Non-Executive Director	778
Andrea Jung	Vice_Chair and Senior Independent Director	135
Alan Jope	Chief Executive Officer
Graeme Pitkethly	Chief Financial Officer
Laura Cha	Non-Executive Director	134
Dr Judith Hartmann	Non-Executive Director	129
Adrian Hennah	Non-Executive Director
Susan Kilsby	Non-Executive Director	129
Ruby Lu	Non-Executive Director
Strive Masiyiwa	Non-Executive Director	138
Professor Youngme Moon	Non-Executive Director	168
John Rishton	Non-Executive Director	150
Feike Sijbesma	Non-Executive Director	138

Accountant

KPMG is Unilevers accountant since 2014.

Operations

Unilever has legally become an entirely British company. They own over 400 brands and are divided into three main divisions: Foods and Refreshments; Home Care; and Beauty & Personal Care. They were formed from a merger between Margarine Unie and Lever Brothers. They are listed on the London Stock Exchange and has a holding company named Unilever PLC and N.V. with an Anglo-Dutch structure. They did not receive the royal status. They also did not receive NOW support during Corona times.

Paris Agreement to Today

Unilever has pledged to be carbon positive by 2030. This is how organisations describe climate positive and carbon negative. It's mainly a marketing term. Unilever has collaborations through international alliances. They have been experimenting with different forms of internal carbon pricing schemes, this is the concept of applying a cost to each tonne of carbon emitted. They will not finance assets within their operations which are inconsistent with achieving a 100% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030. Scope 3 is not included in this measure. Unilever has pledged to halve their use of virgin plastic by 2025 and to design all their packaging to be fully reusable, recyclable or compostable.

Scandals and controversies

The Indian arm of Unilever (HUL) was forced to shut its thermometer factory in 2001 after authorities found the company was contaminating the environment by dumping tonnes of toxic waste . The same thermometer plant was already moved from New York to India in 1984 over environmental concerns. Although Unilever reached a financial settlement with a workers association of the defunk factory, the site was not decontaminated. In 2005 environmental activists launched a global campaign to force Unilever to clean the toxic waste. Unilever finally agreed to initiate pre-remediation work in 2009 and the cleansing of the site has yet to be completed .

In 2009 SOMO produced a report about more Unilevercontroversial practices. First about precarious and deteriorating working conditions for Pakistani Lipton Tea factory workers. Also about pressing issues at Unilever’s (Rainforest Alliance Certified) Tea Estates in Kenya

A 2019 audit of plastic waste by NGO GAIA revealed Unilever as the second worst pollutor in terms of collected plastic pollution in the Phillipines and she was number 7 in a global brand audit in 2018, which represented 239 cleanups spanning 42 countries. Despite the company claiming that it has reduced its overall waste footprint per consumer, Unilever's volume of single-use plastic and other packaging has remained the same since 2010 and so has her use of post-consumer recycled plastic . According to a 2020 report, Unilever’s pollution footprint amounts to 70,000 tonnes per year – covering more than 11 football pitches a day. Especially in developing countries, where waste often isn't properly managed but ends up being burned or dumped, packaging waste causes serious harm to the environment and people's health .

Sachets with laminates - such as Unilevers' shampoo sachets - are particularly harmful . These small sachets consist of three layers of different types of plastic which makes them difficult to recycle and therefore uninteresting to collectors. This type of disposable packaging was initially meant to make products accessible to country’s poorest inhabitants but the sachets have made their way into middle class bathrooms as well. Market analyst Euromonitor claims that in Asia over 70 per cent of all shampoo is now sold in sachets and Unilever’s Indian subsidiary alone sells some 27 billion sachets each year .

To meet their pledge about collecting more plastic than selling (achieving so-called "plastic neutrality") multinationals such as Unilever have started excavating landfills in developing countries, selling their invaluable contents to the cement industry for incineration as an alternative fuel. According to the Plastic Soup Foundation this is not a good development as it does not decrease multinationals' own production of plastic and does not motivate full recycling of the waste in these landfills, especially if the cement industry is made to be dependent on it.

Unilever was an early adopter of sustainability at a time when a uniform definition of the concept was lacking. That enabled the company to set the rules of the game before the authorities could. In 2010 Unilever launched the Sustainable Living Plan and Sustainable Agricultural Code. Using their own guidelines, Unilever has increased their portofolio of self-proclaimed 'sustainable products'. In practice however, there may not be a discernable difference between the way that - for example - Unilevers' crops are grown compared to those grown in the usual way in any Western European field .

Current Policies and Emissions

GHG emissions by activity

Name	2020
Scope 1 (tonnes CO2e)	606771
Scope 2 (tonnes CO2e)	171906
Total Scope 1 and 2 (tonnes CO2e)	778677
Total Scope 3 (tonnes CO2e)	60388592

As is shown above the GHG emissions from Scope 3 are extremely high. Therefore it is questionable that Unilever is mainly targeting the emissions that are from Scope 1 and 2. Especially considering the fact that ingredients and packaging contribute with 14239918 tonnes of CO2e. In their Annual Report they mention that they have reduced Scope 1 and 2 emissions from energy and refrigerant use by 60% since 2015 and they want to reduce Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 100% from their operations by 2030. The biggest problem however seems to be the emissions resulting from Scope 3. Still it appears as if the company has no concrete plans to reduce these emissions stemming from Scope 3.

Climate Plans

Unilevers climate plans include achieving net zero by 2039 across Scope 1, 2 and 3 emission. They plan on spending 1 billion EUR on climate and nature fund.The largest part of their emissions stems from their Scope 3 footprint. The measures they plan on taking are using 100% renewable grid electricity, which they achieved in January 2020. They also plan to transition to 100% renewable heat by 2030, halve the food waste in their operations by 2025, and align capital expenditure with their 1,5 degrees pathway.

Conclusion

Unilever has admirable ambitions and some concrete plans. As it turns out however most of their emissions stem from their Scope 3 whereas most of their measures and plans are targeting Scope 1 and 2 emissions. For Unilever to achieve actual net zero and follow the 1,5 degrees pathway they must take their Scope 3 into more thorough consideration and revise their actions to achieve their goals.