Unilever calls for policies to help cleaning products achieve net-zero  

Every year, 29 million tonnes of fossil-fuel based carbon are used to make household cleaning products. Unilever, one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies, is committed to achieving net zero emissions across its value chain by 2039. To do this, the feedstocks currently used to make detergents and other cleaning products need to be replaced. The company is primarily planning to do this using carbon from bio-based feedstocks, which consist of organic matter from living organisms like plants. But the report from Unilever and iCAST says that new policies are needed to help industry transform. 

Key recommendations

The report’s authors suggest that policymakers should work with various stakeholders, including consumers, researchers,  industry, NGOs, and the financial community, to create national strategies to support the use of sustainable bio-derived carbon feedstocks. 

They add that policies that are specific to technologies and sectors should be combined in a ‘portfolio-based approach’ and that carbon pricing needs to be adjusted to promote the transition away from fossil-fuel feedstocks that are used to make many cleaning products.

Other key findings of the report include:

• bio-feedstocks are likely offer the best opportunity for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from household formulations;

• carbon pricing needs to encourage bio-based surfactants over fossil fuel- based ones;

• technological advances in bio-feedstocks could deliver cost competitiveness, as demonstrated by other technologies, such as renewable power;

• policy interventions could make bio-carbon more competitive on the supply side and shift feedstock demand towards sustainable sources; and

• international coordination based on synergies with biomass production, carbon removal and job creation will be a key part in the industry’s pathway to net zero.

The report states that without such interventions, the household cleaning products sector is unlikely to transition from fossil fuels as it is a highly competitive market. 

Bio-based feedstocks are currently estimated to be between 1.2 and 4.2 times more expensive than fossil-based counterparts. As such, there is little to no incentive for any single company to voluntarily switch to a more expensive feedstock as this would put it at a competitive disadvantage. Therefore, the report states that the environmental costs of using fossil fuel-derived feedstocks need to be accounted for, and regulations encouraging bio-based feedstock use are needed. It also calls for policies to protect consumers from price increases.

Progress so far

Unilever has reduced the greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint of its home care products by around 40% per unit sold over the last decade. The ingredients Unilever purchases for its products (that is, the scope 3 emissions) now represent more than 80% of its GHG footprint. Therefore, Unilever needs its suppliers from the chemical sector to accelerate the reduction of their greenhouse gas footprint to achieve its climate targets. The company is working with iCAST to help navigate the transformation needed.

Unilever told Ocki that as the time needed for innovation, investment and delivery at scale in the chemical sector can be long, action needs to occur sooner rather than later.

The household products industry currently accounts for 7% of total greenhouse emissions. The carbon in the chemical formulations (known as surfactants) used in these products is currently largely derived from the petrochemical industry, using feedstocks produced from oil and gas. 

Surfactants used in detergents present specific challenges compared to other chemical compounds, like plastics, which also use carbon from the petrochemical industry. As cleaning products are designed to be disposed of down wastewater systems, there is little opportunity for recovery or recycling. Further, once washed down the drain, the carbon contained within them degrades into greenhouse gases leading to ‘hidden’ emissions released at the end of the products’ life. 

Unilever  calculates that detergents degrading after use represents around 20% of its total greenhouse gas emissions.

Hurdles for bio-based feedstocks

The report says that land use changes during the transition to bio-based feedstocks must be sustainably managed. Currently palm oil is the most widely-used vegetable oil replacement for fossil-derived carbon in formulations. At present, only 19% of palm oil is produced sustainably and the EU is phasing out the use of palm oil (and soyabean oil) in biodiesel due to concerns about deforestation.

Therefore, the report states, long-term planning approaches for the scale-up of sustainable palm oil production are required, in conjunction with work to diversify carbon sources. Unilever says that while renewable feedstocks provide a good opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it is important that land-use issues are addressed so that other sustainability issues can be managed. 

Unilever is also exploring alternative methods to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, including Flue2Chem in the UK and a synthetic soda ash pilot plant in India.

ShareAction, which campaigns on decarbonisation of the chemical sector, welcomes the emphasis the Unilever and iCAST report places on the need for household cleaning companies to move away from using fossil fuel feedstocks. But it states that biomass is not a silver-bullet alternative. It adds that large-scale production of biomass faces many sustainability challenges, including high land-use and biodiversity risks, and that competition among sectors for this scarce resource will be fierce. 

ShareAction says this is why the chemical sector needs to develop other solutions as well, such as chemicals from recycled materials and, eventually, from CO2 and renewable hydrogen. It recommends that household cleaning companies can play their part in spurring this shift by asking their suppliers to develop diverse, sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels in their transition to net zero.

Further reading

Unilever and iCAST Cleaning up cleaning: policy and stakeholder interventions to put household formulations
on a pathway to net zero report

Unilever’s net zero emissions pathway news story

Clean Future strategy

Soda ash project

Flue2Chem project

ShareAction chemicals campaign