“Fuel on the fire”: Unilever on track to produce 53 billion single-use sachets by year’s end, according to Greenpeace

29 Nov 2023 --- Unilever sells roughly 1,700 single-use plastic sachets every second, according to new findings by Greenpeace. The quantity is on course to reach 53 billion sachets by the end of this year, often sold in vulnerable nations where consumers rely on piecemeal products and waste management infrastructure is insufficient at best.

Greenpeace’s report, titled “Uncovered: Unilever’s role in the global plastics crisis and its power to solve it,” shows that sachets — small throwaway plastic packets of consumer products — have increasingly been marketed to countries in the Global South by large corporations like Unilever.  

These sachets are “near impossible to collect and recycle” and result in plastic pollution that devastates local neighborhoods and waterways where sachets are clogging drains and aggravating issues such as flooding.

An estimated 6.4 billion sachets were produced by Unilever brand Dove in 2022, making up over 10% of Unilever’s total sachets sales. A senior figure at Dove claimed, “we are passionately committed to being one of the brands making the biggest impact against plastic waste.” 

However, new field investigations by Greenpeace South East Asia and Greenpeace UK reveal “shocking” images of Dove’s sachet waste polluting beaches and waterways in the Philippines and Indonesia.

“Unilever really is pouring fuel on the fire of the plastic pollution crisis,” says Nina Schrank, head of plastics at Greenpeace UK. “Their brands like Dove are famous for telling the world they’re forces for good. But they’re pumping out a staggering amount of plastic waste. It’s poisoning our planet. You can’t claim to be a ‘purposeful’ company while bearing responsibility for such huge pollution. Unilever has to change.” 

Single-use sachets uncovered by the Greenpeace investigation.Falling promises 
The report also looks at Unilever’s slow progress toward meeting its own plastics targets and its failing efforts at switching from single-use plastic to reusable solutions. Greenpeace analysis reveals that Unilever will likely overshoot this target by nearly a decade to 2034 despite pledging to halve its use of virgin plastic by 2025. 

Unilever also claims to be exploring reuse options in markets worldwide. Still, the Greenpeace analysis suggests that at the current pace, it would take until beyond the year 3000 for 100% of Unilever products to go reusable. 

In a statement, a Unilever spokesperson says, “tackling plastic pollution remains a top priority, and we continue to make progress across our plastic goals, although we recognize we have much more work to do. In the past few years, we have rapidly increased our use of recycled plastic in our global portfolio to 21%.”  

“The Ellen MacArthur Foundation recently called out Unilever as one of the businesses making the most progress to reduce its virgin plastic packaging footprint.”

“We’re working on a range of solutions to reduce our use of plastic sachets, which are difficult to recycle and replace them with alternatives. This is a complex technical challenge, with no quick fixes, and we are fully committed to working with industry partners and other stakeholders to develop viable, scalable alternatives that reduce plastic waste,” they say. 

Phasing out sachets 
Last year, Unilever came under scrutiny in a Reuters investigation that claimed it was actively working to derail and circumvent legislation limiting the use of single-use plastic sachets in developing nations despite publicly decrying their harm to the environment. 

The multinational’s CEO Alan Jope previously conceded multilayered single-use sachets are impossible to recycle mechanically and declared, “we have to get rid of them.” Another Unilever official branded the packaging design “evil,” and the firm’s spokespeople promised that refill systems, product redesign and advanced recycling methods would see the end of sachet use altogether. 

However, Unilever also maintains that sachets cater to lower-income consumers and that small product doses increase control over consumption. However, critics like GAIA accuse companies like Unilever of imposing sachet culture on regions already practicing piecemeal purchasing with refillable packaging. 

Unilever also points to the powerful protection that multilayered sachets provide to products. 

For this reason, the company asserts that while sachets need to be eliminated, it is a “complex technical challenge with no quick fixes.” 

Following the latest report, Greenpeace is calling on Unilever to phase out single-use plastic from its operations (starting with sachets) and transition to reuse in the next ten years. 

Greenpeace is also calling on the company to advocate for this same ambition at the ongoing UN Global Plastics Treaty negotiations (the next of which is in Canada next year) and back a treaty that caps and phases down plastic production by at least 75% by 2040.

By Louis Gore-Langton