Unilever merges sustainability role after revising environmental goals

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Unilever is folding collectively its sustainability and exterior communications departments, months after scaling again its environmental targets as the corporate shifts its sustainability technique.

The maker of Dove cleaning soap and Cornetto ice lotions, which is in the course of a wide-ranging restructure and cost-cutting programme, will mix the 2 beforehand separate roles of chief sustainability officer and international head of communications and company affairs into one function, in keeping with an inner electronic mail to all workers seen by the Monetary Instances. 

Since chief government Hein Schumacher got down to flip round Unilever’s efficiency final yr, the corporate that was as soon as seen because the poster baby for moral and environmental points has taken a extra “life like” strategy to sustainability, with fewer targets.

“Given the rising extent to which the exterior coverage surroundings impacts our business and sustainability ambitions, I’ve determined to convey company affairs, exterior communications and sustainability collectively underneath one management function,” wrote chief government Hein Schumacher within the replace final week.

Chief sustainability officer Rebecca Marmot, who has a background in company affairs at Unilever, will tackle the duty for exterior affairs from Paul Matthews, international head of communications & company affairs, who has stepped down from the enterprise. The departments will even merge.

“Company affairs has to place the pursuits of the corporate first, and can due to this fact at all times spin accordingly,” mentioned Jonathon Porritt, who suggested Unilever on sustainability points for 28 years, till March this yr.

“Sustainability, as a perform, ought to at all times be as conscious of the pursuits of the world and its folks as of the corporate. No firm severe about sustainability ought to search to convey these two capabilities collectively,” he added.

Unilever declined to remark.

After 2015’s Paris Settlement, scores of corporations set formidable local weather targets and sustainability turned extra distinguished in company communications, with teams appointing chief sustainability officers with company affairs backgrounds to supervise the fast-growing perform.

Many client items teams have a devoted CSO function, together with Mars, PepsiCo and Procter & Gamble. Others mix the function with company affairs, similar to Reckitt and now Unilever, or with provide chains, similar to Diageo.

One marketing consultant conversant in the corporate mentioned that whereas it was not a foul concept to merge the 2 capabilities, the brand new function ought to be a part of the corporate’s government committee. “In the event that they don’t have a seat on the desk, then they don’t seem to be impacting, simply executing,” they mentioned.

In a recent interview with the FT, Schumacher mentioned Unilever was shifting its focus away from sustainability advocacy to “execution”, including that scaling again its ambitions was not an possibility given the rising environmental reporting necessities. 

The sustainability technique now could be “inform, not present,” he mentioned. “I feel it’s extra in tune with the fact,” he mentioned.

Unilever, which has for over a decade set an instance to its friends on sustainability points, has drawn criticism for its new agenda, which campaigners have warned units a foul precedent for different corporates tempted to again monitor on their ambitions.

The patron items big announced in April that it was introducing a extra “centered” technique after the chief government concluded a few of the targets set by his predecessors weren’t achievable. The modifications included extending deadlines and lowering the dimensions of environmental targets, similar to its use of virgin plastics and round packaging.

Schumacher advised the FT that the corporate’s spend on sustainability had elevated yr on yr.

“We haven’t taken any greenback out. It’s generally reported that it’s turn into much less essential as a result of we’re placing extra emphasis on revenue . . . our spend on sustainability yr on yr is up, not down,” he mentioned, declining to share numbers.

Unilever will not be alone in reassessing its inexperienced agenda. Corporations from Walmart to Shell have dropped or missed their emissions targets and different sustainability objectives. Simply this month, Coca-Cola drew hearth from environmentalists after watering down its reuse and recycling objectives.

At Unilever’s capital markets day final month, when Schumacher set out his motion plan for the subsequent 5 years, he additionally unveiled a brand new firm goal, “to brighten on a regular basis life for all”, to interchange the earlier tagline, “to make sustainable residing commonplace”, which was established by former chief government and company sustainability champion Paul Polman.

Schumacher mentioned that Polman “created consciousness like nobody else” however that the targets he set had been unachievable. “You already know what? He did the proper factor, as a result of he put the bar so excessive, even when we had been to fulfill 80 per cent of that focus on, we’d have by no means come to date if he hadn’t executed that,” he mentioned. 

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