International. The company managed to get more than 600 of its locations, such as factories, warehouses, distribution centers and offices, distributed in 70 countries, to stop sending waste to landfills. Achieving a record in its sustainability strategy.
Precisely in January 2015, Unilever announced that more than 240 factories reached the goal of zero waste to landfills. Applying this model in other areas of the business, this year Unilever added 400 locations to its project, ensuring that more than 600 locations stop sending waste to landfills. This was made possible by their approach based on the 4Rs: reduce, reuse, recover and recycle. For Unilever, waste can be considered as resources with several alternative uses: from converting factory waste into building materials, to preparing compost from waste from employees' canteen.
The company aims to achieve the goal of zero waste throughout the value chain, by having as a priority the reduction of its waste and adopting circular models on an ongoing basis. In turn, it continues to work to steer all of its locations in the same direction, including any acquisitions or openings in the future. This is also a business case, given that waste disposal has saved €200 million and created hundreds of jobs.
On the other hand, seeking to work and encourage learning together with suppliers, partners and companies is the only way to get other companies and industries to adopt the goal of zero waste. Consequently, the company presented a new collaboration with 2degrees, the leading platform in the value chain, with the aim of providing advice to organizations and promoting the zero waste model. This new collaboration program will begin in mid-2016.
