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We’re on a global mission to do good. To make our environmental footprint smaller, to better support our employees and partners, and to help local communities thrive.
When you scrub, brush, lick or slurp one of our products, you help do some good by supporting one of our many causes.
Then, imagine millions of people across the globe licking, slurping, brushing and scrubbing. That good adds up, making a pretty big impact! There’s still lots to do, but together, we can create a better world.
Every U Does Good.
Here’s some food for thought—the things we eat shouldn’t just be about tasting good, they should also be about doing good. So, we’re always working to ensure every one of our food brands tastes good, feels good and is a force for good.
From head to toe across our business, we’re striving to smash negative gender stereotypes, promote self-esteem, and make a world in which every woman and girl can create the kind of life she wishes to lead.
Forests, they’re awesome. They provide air, regulate our climate and act as a source of food, medicine and fuel for more than 1.6 billion of us. So, we’re on a mission to reach zero net deforestation by 2020.
We’ve always believed in ‘doing well by doing good’. That’s why we created the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP). It’s our way of ensuring that every time you scrub, brush, lick or slurp one of our products, you help support sustainable living. Discover more about our plan
‘Doing good’ is an idea that sits squarely at the heart of many of our brands — from Dove’s commitment to improving women’s self-esteem, to OMO helping kids enjoy more real play outdoors. We know that our scale gives us an opportunity to help create a better world, and through our assortment of brands, we aim to do just that. That’s why we’re constantly working to put sustainable living front and centre for each of our brands—that way we can best use this super group of purpose-led products to improve lives, societies and the world as a whole.
More than that though, our Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP) bakes the idea of ‘doing good’ into every element of our business. Through the USLP we’re setting out to decouple our growth from our environmental footprint, while increasing our positive social impact. But we can’t get there alone, and that’s where you come in! Simply by scrubbing, slurping, or sanitizing with your favourite products from our collection of brands, you’re helping support over 60 projects that are working to improve health and hygiene, reduce our environmental impact by half, and enhance the livelihoods of millions.
Since we first opened our doors over 100 years ago, we’ve always believed that responsible business is good business. It’s from this belief that the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP) has blossomed. The USLP is our long-term plan to create a better world while growing our business. It focuses on three core pillars where we can best use our scale to drive real change. And you’re a part of this long-term plan, too.
Simply by brushing, bathing and brewing with your favourite Unilever products, you’re supporting our plans to do some amazing things in the future. By 2020 we want to help more than a billion people take action to improve their health and wellbeing. By 2030 our goal is to halve the environmental footprint of the making and use of our products as we grow our business. By 2020 we’ll enhance the livelihoods of millions of people as we grow our business.
Find out more about how we’re improving health and hygiene, reducing our environmental impact, and enhancing livelihoods.
We believe that lots and lots of small acts of good add up to a big positive impact. By working hard to ensure that each and every element of our business plays its part, big or small, towards making a better world, we can confidently say that with every U, we’re trying to not only do good now, but will continue to do good far into the future.
There’s only so much we can do alone though. That’s why we work with relevant partners, NGOs, governments, other similar scale business, and most importantly, people who love using our products (shout out to you!), to ensure we can do as much good as possible.
It isn’t going to happen overnight, but by continuing to slurp, sip and scrub with your favourite products, you’re already taking action to help create a better world. But if you want to go beyond simply slurping, sipping and scrubbing your way to a better world, you can also work more directly with us through our Take Action initiative.
We’ve been supplying the world with products to sip, soak, scrub, brush, bathe, bake, clean, cook and create for over 100 years, and we’ve always done it with the idea of helping to create a better world. In fact, when our doors first opened back in 1930, they were opened with the idea to “make cleanliness commonplace; to lessen work for women; to foster health and contribute to personal attractiveness, that life may be more enjoyable and rewarding for the people who use our products”.
It was this urge to create a business that could not only be good, but also do good that brought together Dutch margarine company, Margarine Unie, with British soapmaker Lever Brothers to create Unilever. And we’re carrying that same sense of purpose into the 21st century. We’re committed to helping people look good, feel good and get more out of life – with our purpose as a business being to ‘make sustainable living commonplace’.
You can find out more about where we’ve come from, and where we’re going, in our history section.
Over the past decade we’ve been incredibly humbled by the recognition we’ve received from a wide variety of specialist agencies and organisations, including Oxfam and the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices, for our sustainability work. We’ve been recognized as global leaders in climate action, agricultural sourcing policies, waste management and sustainability practices. And we couldn’t have achieved these results without our partners or your continued support of our products.
We don’t want to rest on our laurels though—there’s a lot more work to do if we’re to create a better world for everyone. The journey’s ongoing, and it’s one we’re on together.
Find out more about our sustainability performance.