Inside the South Africa leg of Unilever’s globally recognised push for sustainability

25th November 2016

By: Donna Slater

Features Deputy Editor and Chief Photographer

  

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For the third consecutive year, consumer goods manufacturer Unilever has been rated as the Number 1 Top Employer in the manufacturing sector as well as the Number 1 Top Employer in the fast moving consumer goods sector in Africa by the Top Employers Institute.

The company also features as the current leader in sustainability, according to charity organisation Oxfam’s Behind the Brands scorecard.

The top employer accolades add to the many racked up by the company, with other major awards including the top position in business data company Dow Jones’ Sustainability Index of 2015.

These achievements speak volumes about the long-term foresight and sustainability vision of Unilever CEO Paul Polman, who visited South Africa in June. He stated during the visit that South African companies should do their part in furthering the global drive to increase sustainability and plan their businesses around long-term goals.

He said that, in light of climate change, high unemployment rates and rising inequality, companies could no longer be run primarily for shareholder returns, but should rather focus on building society as a whole.

Polman highlighted the importance of pursuing “transformative changes” instead of the industry norm of adopting a standardised corporate social responsibility programme. In this regard, he said the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP) is the blueprint used to leverage its products and supply chains to create jobs, decrease environmental impacts and improve health.

Unilever currently leads the Oxfam scorecard with 52 points out of 70, as at April. The scorecard features seven categories, each with a potential ten points to be awarded.

The closest contender, Swiss food and beverage company Nestlé, has a total of 48 points out of 70. According to the April statistics of the scorecard, Unilever is top-ranking in terms of Farmers, Workers and Climate.

In the Farmers category, the scorecard examines what contenders undertake to support the world’s food producers to become resilient and successful – specifically whether farmers are able to achieve a living income. Unilever scored 8/10.

The Workers category delves into the rights of farm workers and the role played by the contenders listed in the scorecard. This deals with issues around tackling low pay, poor and unsafe working conditions, and child exploitation. Unilever scored 8/10.

The Climate category determines what listed contenders are doing towards addressing key climate-change issues, such as reducing greenhouse-gas emissions through their supply chain and assisting farmers in adapting to a changing climate. Unilever scored 9/10.

Other categories in which the company scored well include Transparency, Water and Land, each with scores of 7/10. Unilever also scored 6/10 for its contribution to empowering women.

Unilever South Africa corporate affairs director Sibonile Dube tells Engineering News that the company’s leadership status in key sustainability categories stems from its USLP, which it launched in 2010.

The USLP is a global initiative of Unilever, with a number of market-specific initiatives to improve domestic sustainability and other initiatives to contribute towards international brand sustainability.

She says the USLP is the “blueprint for achieving our vision of growing our business, and increasing our positive social impact, while decoupling our environmental footprint”.

Through the USLP, Dube explains, Unilever aims to ensure it is providing its consumers with brands and products that are going to add value to their lives, while also ensuring sustainability and positive social impact for local communities and groups.

“In the entire process [of developing and implementing the USLP], we remain mindful of the natural abilities [namely limited available resources] of the planet,” she states.

The USLP was conceptualised and developed around the notion of people “treasuring what they measure, and measuring what they treasure”, says Dube, adding that this concept leads to corporate motivation to continually drive sustainability as it becomes a results-orientated process that can be evaluated throughout the implementation of the roll-out of the USLP.

“The USLP sets stretch targets, including how we source raw materials and how consumers use our brands. The scale of our ambition means that we are finding new ways to partner with others in business, government and society,” she says. For example, by 2020, Unilever has set a target to reach more than one-billion people, thereby taking action to improve their health and wellbeing.

Partnership Approach Best
One of the flagship initiatives of the USLP is the Lifebuoy Help a Child Reach 5 campaign, which is piggybacked on Unilever’s soap brand to teach people the benefits and necessity of washing their hands to prevent diseases spreading and maintain personal health.

To date, the Lifebuoy project has reached more than 337-million people internationally, including 11-million people in South Africa.

With each initiative launched by Unilever, cooperation from key stakeholders is first mapped out and respective authorisation is applied for through the various government departments. “Obviously, with such a plan, it is important to get local governments on board, owing to their being custodians in many areas that the plan deals with, such as access to the education and health sectors,” Dube notes.

As part of its commitment to improving people’s access to health and hygiene, Unilever South Africa implemented its Brighter Future Schools Programme in June, which aims to educate children, at an early age, about the importance of washing their hands, brushing their teeth and other aspects of good sanitation practices.

This initiative required consultation and cooperation between the private sector (Unilever), the public sector (the Department of Basic Education) and the nongovernmental sector (Unicef) to form a partnership that addressed children at primary school level.

Dube says, through the Unilever sanitation brands of Domestos, Lifebuoy and Pepsodent, as well as the food brand Rama, it is able to deliver a “full package programme” to improve children’s health and nutrition.

“This initiative will enable us to reach thousands of children in South African schools, whereby we plan to transform their behaviour. The simple practice of washing hands can go a long way in helping prevent premature deaths of children, because the absence of washing hands creates a greater risk of contracting diseases such as cholera and diarrhoea,” she says.

In Africa, for example, Dube notes that many children under the age of five are prone to becoming critically ill as a result of contracting diseases, owing to a lack of hand washing facilities and suitable sanitation facilities and infrastructure.

Although the Brighter Future Schools Programme is currently under way, Unilever South Africa’s plan is to accelerate the reach of the initiative in 2017 to a larger number of children.

She notes that a major advantage of aiming a hygiene and sanitation initiative at children is their natural inclination to take their knowledge home and share it with family and community members, thereby enabling Unilever to reach an even larger portion of the underprivileged population.


Meanwhile, the fact that the advantages of developing initiatives with positive social impact through specific bands and products to enhance the livelihoods of communities have been well publicised, along with the continued commercial success of those brands, have proven to Unilever that consumers are well aware of the social impact their purchasing of such products has on “bottom-of-the-pyramid” populations.

“What we realised in our 2015 reporting is that our brands with a social mission account for 50% (or more) of our growth globally. Some of these brands are individually realising double-digit growth,” states Dube.

Therefore, she says there is also definitely a business case associated with a large-scale sustainability programme such as the USLP. “Today’s consumers are more socially aware. We have found that consumers are more receptive to brands or products that actually have a social mission attached to them,” says Dube, adding that, in particular, the Lifebuoy brand continues to be well received by consumers in South Africa. “We have done a lot of work through Lifebuoy in schools and communities; this is visible to our consumers. We realise that, from a business point of view, there is a definite marriage between products and consumers realising their input into the social investment space.”

Empowering the Unempowered
One of the pillars of the USLP is enhancing livelihoods through various forms of empowerment.

Dube states that, as a company, Unilever cannot employ every unemployed person; however, through its value chain, she says the company can have an impact by ensuring people can contribute to their families and have access to an income.

Unilever South Africa has developed its Ola Vendors programme, which is supported through the Ola ice cream brand, thereby developing entrepreneurs.

She states that, although the Ola vendors are not direct employees of Unilever, the company assists them with start-up processes like buying uniforms, stock (ice creams) and equipment (bicycle, cooler and umbrella).

Unilever South Africa aims to create 3 500 jobs in South Africa through its Ola Vendors programme before the end of the year. By the end of 2015, 2 500 jobs had been created through this project.

Environmentally Aware
Environmental impact is a major issue in the ever-developing global processes of Unilever, with the company placing ever-increasing emphasis on reducing carbon emissions and sustainably sourcing raw materials, as well as reducing water use and recycling water.

Unilever’s flagship environment-friendly factory, the Indonsa dry-food facility, in KwaZulu-Natal, was certified as water neutral in 2012, through having installed rainwater harvesting infrastructure with a capacity to collect and store 22 000 m3 of water.

Globally, Dube says Unilever has set a target of becoming carbon neutral by 2030. “This is going to require a lot of commitment and technology being adapted within our factories,” she notes, adding, however, that waste and packaging management initiatives are currently being undertaken by the company in an effort to increase sustainability through reuse.

Unilever has achieved zero nonhazardous waste-to-landfill across its global network of 242 factories in 67 countries. The company has now become a zero-waste-to-landfill company in Europe. “This means that, in addition to our manufacturing facilities, no waste from our owned or fully operated premises, logistic operations, distribution centres or offices goes to landfill,” Dube says.

Further, Unilever is continuously working on reaching its global target to source its raw materials in a sustainable manner. “Wherever we are sourcing the raw materials from, we are ensuring that certain environmental- preservation processes are taking place. We have made significant progress towards our target of sourcing 100% of our agricultural raw material sustainably by 2020. In 2015, we achieved the interim milestone of 50% which we had set for ourselves in 2010 when we launched the USLP,” says Dube, explaining that this sustainability obligation on suppliers to Unilever will ensure far-reaching sustainability deep into the supply chain.

She says it is the goal of Unilever to develop its international operations in line with the natural limits of the planet and its limited resources. “When our suppliers start undertaking sustainability programmes, it will have a ripple effect throughout the value chain and hopefully serve to transform the industry.”

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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