Waste-free world

Today’s throwaway culture must end. We’re working to keep waste in the economy and out of the environment.

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, and we are also committed to Australia’s 2025 National Packaging Targets.

Our global 2025 packaging targets are to:

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 100% of our plastic packaging is designed to be fully reusable, recyclable or compostable.

Learn more about our global strategy and goals here and check out the progress we’ve made in Australia and New Zealand below.

How we’re tracking against Australia’s 2025 National Packaging Targets

Unilever's progress against National Packaging Targets

You can read our full 2024 APCO Action Plan here (PDF 482.33 KB).

“Refill” and “concentrate” innovations are another key part of our plan to halve our virgin plastic footprint.

Concentrated products help us give Australians and New Zealanders the same products but with less plastic. For example, our Omo Dilute at Home is a concentrated formulation which can be diluted at home in an existing Omo 2L bottle. The smaller, Dilute At Home bottles use 50% less plastic, 70% less water in production and still deliver the same great clean Omo is known for.

Refills are an emerging format and they come in all shapes and sizes. For example, our Dove Body Wash Refill Pouches can be used to top up existing Dove bottles you have at home. The pouch uses 70% less plastic than the standard 1L Dove bottle.

Smaller packaging formats like the Dilute At Home bottles and Refill Pouches also take up less space when we’re transporting them. The more we can fit into one truck, the less trucks there will be on the road which reduces the carbon emissions from our logistics. It’s a win-win-win!

Poster which says Help Clean Up Australia. 1 product = 10c to Clean Up Australia.

Cutting plastic waste requires transformational systems change, involving collaboration between manufacturers, government, other businesses and the people that use our products every day. Here are some of the ways we’re partnering for progress:

1. Unilever Australia is a foundation supporter of the National Plastics Recycling Scheme (NPRS) which has been established to:

Provide Australians with a convenient way to recycle their soft plastics at kerbside, which will increase soft plastic recycling rates and reduce the amount of soft plastic going to landfill.
Help Australia build much-needed advanced recycling infrastructure which can transform soft plastics back into food-grade packaging.
Reduce our reliance on virgin plastic by giving us access to food-grade packaging made from locally recycled plastic.

2. To encourage Australians to improve their recycling and choose products made with recycled plastic, we’ve partnered with Coles and Clean Up Australia since 2020 to run an annual national campaign. Each year, for the duration of the campaign, we donate 10c to Clean Up Australia for every bottle of our recycled range purchased at Coles. We have donated over $400,000 to Clean Up Australia which has been used to supply free Clean Up Kits and resources to schools, youth groups and communities across Australia.

3. Globally, Unilever is a member of the Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty, which was convened by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to bring together businesses from different sectors, NGOs and other organisations across the plastics value chain to support the development of an ambitious and effective treaty. The Business Coalition’s vision is a circular economy in which plastic never becomes waste or pollution, and the value of products and materials is retained in the economy. You can read more about this here.

Tackling food waste

People hate to see food wasted, especially when times are hard. And so do we.

As one of the world’s biggest food producers, it’s our ambition to protect and preserve food for everyone across our value chain – starting in our own operations.

We're tackling food waste, both in our supply chain, and by helping consumers reduce the amount of food they throw away. This doesn’t just make good business sense, it’s also good for environment and for society.

Learn more about our global strategy and goals here and check out the progress we’ve made in Australia and New Zealand below.

Calculated by Yume based on litres of water and kilograms of CO2 embedded in the 416,000 kilograms of food redistributed.

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Waste-free world

How we’re tracking against Australia’s 2025 National Packaging Targets

Tackling food waste