Unilever pledges to halve virgin plastic use by 2025

European consumer goods giant Unilever intends to use more recycled plastic and reduce its absolute volume of plastic packaging by 100,000 t/yr, in order to halve its use of virgin plastic by 2025.

Unilever uses around 700,000 t/yr of virgin plastic in packaging for products including food, beverage, hygiene and domestic brands. The plan to halve this and reduce the total suggests it will need to incorporate around 250,000 t/yr of additional recycled plastic in its packaging during the next six years.

The pledge includes a consideration to contribute to availability of recycled plastic through investment in collection and recycling infrastructure, in addition to the firm's participation in schemes in which producers of packaging pay for collection.

Unilever has committed to "help collect and process" more plastic packaging than it sells — so, more than 600,000 t/yr — by 2025.

"Plastic has its place, but that place is not in the environment", said Unilever chief executive Alan Jope. "This demands a fundamental rethink in our approach to our packaging and products. It requires us to introduce new and innovative packaging materials and scale up new business models, like re-use and re-fill formats, at an unprecedented speed and intensity."

Its commitment to reduce virgin plastic for packaging by 350,000 t/yr is reasonably small in the context of the global plastic packaging market — industry association PlasticsEurope said that more than 20mn t of plastic packaging were produced in the EU alone in 2017. But, the commitment from one of the world's largest brand owners may signal the start of a change in attitudes that European packaging manufacturers say is necessary if use of recycled plastic is to be significantly increased.

When plastic processors were invited by the European Commission to pledge to raise their use of recyclates by 2025, they identified the need for market acceptance of different standards, particularly aesthetic qualities, associated with recycled plastics as a pre-condition to higher uptake.