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    Unilever to invest €1 billion for cutting fossil fuels from cleaning products

    Synopsis

    The company has been supporting industry-leading projects world over to change how the chemicals in Unilever’s cleaning and laundry products are made. For instance, in Tuticorin in Southern India, Unilever is sourcing soda ash - an ingredient in laundry powders - made using a pioneering CO2 capture technology.

    UnileverReuters
    Unilever is ring-fencing Euro 1 billion for Clean Future to finance biotechnology research, CO2 and waste utilisation, and low carbon chemistry.
    Mumbai: Unilever has announced it will eliminate fossil fuels in cleaning products by 2030 as part of its €1 billion clean future investment. The company has been supporting industry-leading projects world over to change how the chemicals in Unilever’s cleaning and laundry products are made.

    For instance, in Tuticorin in Southern India, Unilever is sourcing soda ash - an ingredient in laundry powders - made using a pioneering CO2 capture technology. The soda ash is made with the CO2 emissions from the energy used in the production process. Both technologies are hoped to be scaled significantly under the programme, it said in a statement.

    “Clean Future is our vision to radically overhaul our business. As an industry, we must break our dependence on fossil fuels, including as a raw material for our products. We must stop pumping carbon from under the ground when there is ample carbon on and above the ground if we can learn to utilise it at scale," said Peter ter Kulve, Unilever’s President of Home Care.

    Most cleaning and laundry products contain chemicals made from fossil fuel feedstocks, a non-renewable source of carbon. Unilever’s move to renewable or recycled sources of carbon for these chemicals is a shift away from the fossil fuel economy, helping the maker of Rin and Surf in its pledge of net zero emissions from its products by 2039.

    The company said water conservation and plastic reduction have been core elements of its sustainability plan in India, that has inspiring several innovations, including water saving formulations for Rin laundry powders and bars that reduces water needed for rinsing in every consumer use. Also, packaging design and material innovations have helped step up the recyclable content in its packaging.


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