One Year Update

Reduce packaging and energy consumption by upsizing the barrels of our Antiperspirant and Deodorant brands.

Challenge

The challenge across all Unilever categories is to reduce packaging to the greatest extent possible while maintaining packaging integrity, incorporate recycled content into product packaging and to use materials that are highly recyclable through municipal recycling programs. The challenge was to identify the biggest opportunity to reduce packaging in our Antiperspirant and Deodorant category.

Strategy

For some brands and packaging formats there are opportunities to redesign a package to reduce material use.  Sometimes there are light weighting opportunities.  In the case of our Antiperspirant and Deodorants category, Unilever identified an opportunity to reduce the packaging per use of our AP and Deo brands by up-sizing the barrel size.  By upsizing the barrel, we are able to improve the packaging to product ratio by 30%.  Unilever has upsized the 45g/48g pack to 74g/76g across the Dove, Degree Men and Degree Women brands.  Not only are there environmental benefits as outlined below, but the consumer receives better value at a lower cost per use.

Results

Upsizing the antiperspirant and deodorant barrel size from 45g/48g to 74g/76g across the Dove, Degree Men and Degree Women brands results in a reduction in packaging of over 230 tonnes in Canada and improves the packaging to product ratio by 30%.  The new barrel also incorporates 30% recycled content.  Energy savings are also realized in the plastic molding process of 155,000 kwh, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 1.4 tonnes.  By taking the lead on this change in barrel size with our brands, Unilever has the opportunity to impact the packaging format across the entire category encouraging other manufacturers to adopt the larger barrel size.  If the entire category moved to the larger barrel size there exists the potential for a reduction in plastic of over 755 tonnes and energy savings of over 500,000 kwh in the manufacturing process.

In addition, Unilever has realized resource savings and North American supply chain efficiencies. This enables us to reinvest resources behind our customers to grow transaction size, reduce out of stocks and streamline our portfolio. We are proud that this initiative has led to clear wins for the customer, consumer and the environment.