Unilevers announcement that they will scale back on sustainability targets has gained negative attention from NGOs.
The FMCG giant's CEO, Hein Schumacher, stated that the company would be more focused on allocating resources to its biggest sustainability priorities rather than including more responsible packaging.
The Unilever sustainability agenda covers a wide range of issues. Still, Schumacher said that, from previous experience, the company needs to be more focused on resource allocation to make tangible progress on the significant, complex challenges it faces.
Unilever owns leading food brands such as Hellmann's, Knorr and Ben & Jerry's. Its goal to cut virgin plastics by 50 percent by 2025 has changed to have a 30 percent reduction by 2026 and a 40 percent reduction by 2028.
In addition to this, the company changed its target to foster a living wage for all of its direct suppliers from 2030 to 2026, now covering only 50 percent of these suppliers.
The updated ESG targets have drawn criticism across the packaging and food industry due to how they have gone back on previous promises.
Despite the backlash, Unilever has maintained that it will reach these goals and that it is important to set ambitious and credible sustainability goals.
To meet these new sustainability goals, Schumacher will use a similar business model that replicates Unilever's successful 2020 goal of achieving a deforestation-free supply chain for palm oil, paper and board, tea, soy, and cocoa.
Through this goal, Unilever supported smallholder farmers, helped improve cultivation practices, ensured traceability and transparency, and built processing facilities.
These steps led to Unilever achieving a 97.5 percent deforestation-free order volume by the end of 2023.
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