Sustainability

CREATING A HAPPIER PLANET, ONE LICK AT A TIME

As a part of Unilever, we want to do more good for our society and planet, not just less harm.

We’re guided by the Unilever Compass, our Climate Transition Action Plan, our global ‘Future Foods’ strategy, and for ice cream specifically, we have global targets on the areas we can have the most impact - Cabinets, Cows, Communities & Crops, and Circularity.

CABINETS

When it comes to ice cream, one of our challenges is reducing greenhouse gas emissions from our freezers. These account for 10% of our value chain greenhouse gas footprint.
Many freezers contain hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerants. Although freezers are designed to keep refrigerants sealed inside, they can be harmful if released.
That’s why in 2004, Unilever scientists started pioneering the use of freezers with natural hydrocarbon refrigerants. These freezers are environmentally safe, and they demand less energy. Across Australia and New Zealand, 90% of our freezers now contain natural hydrocarbon refrigerants and we have an ambition to reach 100% by 2026.
Globally, we’re also trialling “Warming up” our ice cream freezers from the industry standard -18°C to -12°C. By warming up our freezers, our aim is to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions from our freezers by 20% to 30% per freezer. This would be a huge step towards achieving net zero emissions across our value chain by 2039. You can read more about this here.

COWS

Another focus for us is reducing emissions from the dairy sector. From looking at reducing cow burps with red seaweed to heating homes with manure, our global team is piloting new regenerative agriculture projects to lower emissions from Unilever's global dairy supply chain. You can read more about this here.

CIRCULARITY

Unilever has a bold ambition to help create a waste free world. We’re cutting plastic waste by using less plastic, better plastic or, where possible, no plastic at all. We are guided by our ambitious global packaging targets:Halve the amount of virgin plastic we use in our packaging.

Increase the recycled plastic in our packaging to 25%.
Help collect and process more plastic packaging than we sell.
Ensure all of our plastic packaging is designed to be fully reusable, recyclable or compostable.