Driven by Our Purpose & Vision: What Do We Mean by Sustainable Living?

Unilever
Strategy
Driven by our purpose & vision

We have a clear purpose – to make sustainable living commonplace – and a vision to grow
our business while decoupling our environmental footprint from our growth and increasing
our positive social impact.
What do we mean by sustainable living?

We want to help create a world where everyone can live well within the natural limits of the
planet. We’re putting sustainable living at the heart of everything we do including through
our brands and products, our standards of behaviour within and beyond Unilever, and our
partnerships which are driving transformational change across our value chain.
However volatile and uncertain the world becomes, Unilever’s purpose and vision will
remain because we believe that managing for the long term is the best way for us to grow.
Our blueprint for sustainable growth

The Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP) provides the detailed blueprint for how we will
achieve sustainable growth, while delivering our purpose and vision. It covers all aspects of
our business, incorporates all our brands and Divisions, and covers every country we work in.
It aims to create change across our value chain – from our operations, to our sourcing and the
way consumers use our products. And it is designed to drive profitable growth and fuel
innovation, in the right way, so that all our stakeholders benefit.
The Plan, launched in 2010, is built around three big goals and nine pillars. Our strategic
priorities were identified through a materiality analysis. To check these are still the right
priorities, we conduct a materiality analysis every two years. For each goal, we have detailed
targets and metrics. Find out more about our performance on the relevant pillars pages.
Improving health and Reducing environmental Enhancing livelihoods

well-being impact
Goal: By 2020 we will Goal: By 2030 our goal is to Goal: By 2020 we will
help more than a billion halve the environmental enhance the livelihoods
people take action to footprint of the making and use of millions of people as
improve their health and of our products as we grow our we grow our business.
well-being. business. Pillars:
Pillars: Pillars: Fairness in the workplace
Health & hygiene Greenhouse gases Opportunities for women
Improving nutrition Water use Inclusive business
Waste & packaging
Sustainable sourcing
We have long known that growth and sustainability are not in conflict – and we now have
evidence to prove this. Our four-point framework shows how the USLP drives value for our
business.
Transformational change beyond our business

We are aware that the biggest challenges facing the world cannot be addressed by one
company alone. We are changing ourselves as a business, but we also want to help transform
the system in which business is done. We’ll do this by acting as catalysts for change more
broadly – as conveners to facilitate progressive discussion and bring others together, and as
collaborators in partnerships to deliver positive business, social and environmental impact at
scale.
By being part of the solution to challenges, businesses have the opportunity to win the trust of
consumers while helping create societies and economies in which they can grow and succeed.
We aim to use our scale and influence to help bring about transformational change in four
areas where we can make the biggest difference and which represent the biggest market
opportunities for us:
 Climate change and forests

 Improving livelihoods and creating more opportunities for women
 Improving health and well-being
 Championing sustainable agriculture, focused on land use and food security
Our multi-stakeholder approach enables us to understand the challenges preventing society
and our ecosystems from thriving, and helps us find ways to begin addressing them. We
engage shareholders, governments, NGOs and civil society organisations, and shape the
business landscape through advocacy. By leveraging partnerships, blended (public/private)
finance, digital and new business models, we believe transformational change is possible.
Our Plan and the Sustainable Development

Goals
One way in which we are using partnerships to deliver change at scale is through the
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). They are fundamental to future economic and
business growth. The Business & Sustainable Development Commission, co-founded by
Unilever, concluded that successful delivery of the SDGs will create market opportunities of
at least $12 trillion a year.
We are working across many of the SDGs through the USLP. In doing so, we are unlocking
new markets and investing in brands with purpose and innovation. The interdependence and
mutuality of the goals ensures that progress against one, leads to progress against others. Find
out about our approach to SDGsand how we are taking action on the them, throughout
our Sustainable Living Report.
We’re still learning

We’ve had some great results from our Sustainable Living Plan. We know it contributes to
business growth as we see consumers choosing our brands with purpose – such as
Hellmann’s, Ben & Jerry’s, Dove and Omo.
We’ve also learnt a lot about what does and doesn’t work, and we’ll keep making changes to
get things right. One of our biggest challenges is our ability to influence change outside our
business, where we don’t have direct control.
For example, we’ve made good progress on reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from
our factories and reached our 2020 target by 2017. However, the GHG impact of our products
per consumer use has increased by 9% since 2010. We’ve updated our GHG strategy to
reflect what we’ve learnt. Similarly, although we have reduced water use by 2% through
innovations such as low rinse laundry products, this has been offset by the growth of products
in our portfolio with higher water use.
We are continually looking for new ideas and ways to influence our wider value chain. We
know that collaboration with others holds the key to tackling many sustainability challenges
and we will be focusing even more on this in the years ahead. Our transformational change
initiatives will help to bring about the systems change needed to address some of the most
complex social and environmental problems.
Purpose-driven people
To achieve real change, we need to create a movement for sustainable growth within
Unilever. We are always finding new ways to engage our people on sustainability and to
harness their passion to achieve our goals. One particular area of focus is helping our
employees find their own our purpose so that they can fulfil their potential.
‘Bringing Sustainability to Life’ is one of the six key business skills addressed in our learning
programmes with our employees. We integrate sustainability into existing training and create
bespoke courses to develop employees’ capabilities and understanding of how sustainability
applies to their role.
Our employee sustainability champions in key functions, Divisions and countries, help
engage employees on sustainability, support our leadership teams to identify local priorities
and review progress quarterly against our targets. During 2017, we ran a ‘Have Your Say’
survey – the biggest consultation of employees on the future of the business that Unilever has
ever conducted.
Purpose-driven leadership
Leadership will be critical in the delivery of Unilever’s purpose
and in our performance over the coming years. Our
leadership programmes will nurture the purpose-driven and
values-led leaders that Unilever, and our world, need today.
Tim Munden, Chief Learning Officer
As a values-led and purpose-driven organisation, we have been using our Unilever
Leadership Development Programme (ULDP) as the vehicle to help our executives to
discover their purpose, and to use this to guide them in their decisions and careers.
Our recently refreshed General Manager (GM) programme helps equip our GMs with the
mindset to develop innovative, sustainable and inclusive business models to achieve
responsible growth. GMs play a key role in creating the right conditions for delivering the
USLP as they have oversight of our markets and commercial operations.
In addition, we now link progress on sustainability to remuneration for a growing number of

management employees, up to and including our CEO and Unilever Leadership Executive.

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What is Unilever's vision and purpose?

What are the goals of Unilever's Sustainable Living Plan (USLP)?

Unilever

Driven by our purpose & vision

What do we mean by sustainable living?

Our blueprint for sustainable growth

Improving health and Reducing environmental Enhancing livelihoods

Transformational change beyond our business

 Climate change and forests

Our Plan and the Sustainable Development

We’re still learning

In addition, we now link progress on sustainability to remuneration for a growing number of

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