Initiative is part of a €1bn ‘Clean Future’ investment
Unilever recently announced it will replace 100% of the carbon derived from fossil fuels in its cleaning and laundry product formulations with renewable or recycled carbon, the company disclosed in a press communiqué.
This new ambition is a core component of Unilever’s ‘Clean Future’, a ground-breaking innovation programme designed by the company’s Home Care division to fundamentally change the way that cleaning and laundry products are created, manufactured, and packaged.
Clean Future is unique in its intent to embed the circular economy principles into both packaging and product formulations at the scale of global brands to reduce their carbon footprint.
Most cleaning and laundry products available today contain chemicals made from fossil fuel feedstocks, a non-renewable source of carbon. Unilever’s move to renewable or recycled sources of carbon for these chemicals is a deliberate shift away from the fossil fuel economy.
“As an industry, we must break our dependence on fossil fuels, including as a raw material for our products. We must stop pumping carbon from under the ground when there is ample carbon on and above the ground if we can learn to utilize it at scale,” affirmed Ageel Angawi, Vice-President Home Care Unilever MENA.
Unilever is ring-fencing €1bn (US$ 1.18bn) for Clean Future to finance biotechnology research, CO2 and waste utilization, and low carbon chemistry – which will drive the transition away from fossil fuel derived chemicals.
