Unilever’s David Jones speaks to PKN about the group’s sustainability drive in Australia and progress on reducing plastic in packaging for its wide ranging personal care, home care and food product portfolio.
Unilever is a long-standing member of the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (APCO) and, as such, has taken a keen interest in recent developments around the government’s announcement on intervening to regulate the packaging industry and mandate recycled content usage, among other new rules to be implemented.
PKN asked David Jones, head of R&D and Beauty& Wellbeing at Unilever ANZ, if he thought this is good news for the industry.
“As long as we have a well-designed plan bringing some clarity for everybody and tailored to the local Australia and New Zealand setup, I think it must be good news for the industry. I think we've all been looking for direction, for where things are heading in the future. Once we get this aligned it can help us all in decision-making moving forward.”
Jones said one of the key benefits would be expediting recycling infrastructure development. “Knowing there’s recycling capacity influences our decision-making around investing in NPD and our packaging choices,” he said. “This includes on designing packaging to incorporate recycled content.”
Jones explains that Unilever has adopted a Unilever ANZ has adopted a ‘less, better, no’ mantra for dealing with plastic usage in its packaging.
When it comes to the ‘Less Plastic’ pillar of the mantra – cutting down how much plastic Unilever uses in the first place – Jones says work is progressing: Lynx deodorant cans have been light weighted to use 59 tonnes less plastic and 41 tonnes less aluminium, each year; Dove bodywash 1.5L refill pouches use 70 per cent less plastic compared to the 1L Dove bottles; and Omo Dilute-At-Home bottles use 50 per cent less plastic compared to the 2L Omo bottles.
Recyclable and recycled content use falls under the Better Plastic pillar.
“Back in 2018 we started in earnest to look at how we increase our use of recycled plastic. Back then we used about five tons of PCR content in our packaging, we're up to close on 1300 tons of PCR as of last year. So that is a huge step up in the amount of recycled plastic that we use across all formats.”
Some examples Jones cites include Hellmann’s mayonnaise squeezie bottles made with 99 per cent recycled plastic, and new Magnum pints that include minimum 90 per cent recycled plastic (via mass balance). The bottles for Dove body wash include 70 per cent recycled plastic; Omo, Persil and Surf laundry liquid bottles are made with 50 per cent recycled plastic, and the same goes for TRESemmé shampoo and conditioner bottles. Vaseline packaging is made with 50 per cent recycled plastics and Rexona actuators (the spray component) made with 78 per cent recycled plastic.
“We need to have ongoing conversations with a wide range of companies in Australia to say how do we continue to make sure that availability of recycled material increases, and also maintain our confidence in the quality and technical properties of what is available,” he says.
Take for example a material like recycled HDPE milk bottles, Jones says. For some manufacturing sectors, like personal care and home care, which make products with high surfactant levels or high perfume levels, the recycled content material may not completely meet the sort of technical stress or crack resistance required from a plastic pack.
“So, the question is how we work across the industry to broaden some of the available grades of recycled plastic, while increasing the volumes available as well. If we don't need a food-grade, transparent recycled polymer, then can we look for other options, perhaps a greyer resin that’s not as clear but that through our specifying it, would increase market for a wider range of recycled plastics?”
Jones also points to the importance of collaborating with suppliers on developing packs with PCR content.
“In our journey to increase our usage of PCR, we've been redesigning our bottles in close collaboration with our packaging suppliers, doing simple things like removing tight curves – design choices that can prevent technical issues around stress cracking.
“If we start to shape the bottle knowing that we want to incorporate recycled content, and lean on our bottle manufacturer’s know-how, we’ll get the best result.
“We're always looking at how to change what materials we use to optimise the packaging performance and the sustainability imperative. In a multi-layer product for instance, it may be that we need to add virgin material into the mix with recycled content to deliver the technical properties we need.”
Jones also emphasises the importance of designing out plastic. “When it comes to the ‘no plastic’ part of our mantra, we need to be rethinking how we design products,” he says. He goes on to relate how, by replacing the plastic scoops in Omo laundry powders with a scoop made from bamboo fibre, Unilever saved 23 tonnes of plastic in 2022. In the same year, by removing the plastic scoop from Surf laundry powders altogether, it saved 22 tonnes of plastic.
When making changes like this it can impact the manufacturing operation, involving a long series of trials on the production line. Citing the switch to the fibre scoop as an example, Jones says, “As you can imagine, a plastic scoop running down a line versus a bamboo fibre scoop is very different, so we’ve had to make big changes to the packing lines to handle the different materials.”
Within the global Unilever, the ANZ R&D team aims to be a front runner. Jones says, “In terms of total percentage of our portfolio that we've switched across to recycled content, we’re certainly one of the leaders in the group, with around 44 per cent recycled content across our portfolio, chasing the group target of 50 per cent by 2025.”
Of course, as part of a multinational of Unilever’s stature, the team has access to an enviable depth of R&D knowledge across the group and draws on the group’s global guidelines based on best practice, that can be adopted to optimise packaging design for the local market.
To this end, Jones feels it’s imperative that Unilever has a voice at the table, via APCO, to share its understanding of what’s required to move packaging sustainability forward for Australia, but also its concerns over the challenges regarding recycling infrastructure and recycled content availability.
“For the industry, it’s important that all stakeholders in the value chain get involved. Participating is key, we have an opportunity to shape our industry’s future together.”
