Unilever and USAID form alliance on pollution and women’s rights in plastics value chain

27 Aug 2024 --- Unilever is joining forces with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and global consultancy group EY to form the Circle Alliance, a US$21 million initiative to support plastics industry entrepreneurs who work to reduce waste.

The alliance will support female waste pickers, who make up the majority of waste collectors working in the informal sector in the global south. It will initially focus on India, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines. Later, according to Unilever, it plans to expand to other markets by bringing in new organizations and additional funds.

The project builds on approaches developed by impact enterprise accelerator Transform, which is led by Unilever, UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and EY.

“Circle’s collaborative model of enterprise acceleration – delivered through a mix of grant funding and bespoke business support – will help scale both new and existing solutions for packaging circularity, whether that’s driving collection and recycling, or reuse–refill models,” says Rebecca Marmot, Unilever’s chief sustainability officer.

“Crucially, it will support many small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and entrepreneurs that offer impactful, market-based solutions but are currently too small to work at the scale we need.”

Women in the value chain

The investment in the Circle Alliance includes a cash contribution from Unilever’s Climate & Nature Fund, an investment platform through which the company has pledged to spend €1 billion (US$1.1 billion) by 2030.

The funding will be directed toward helping informal waste pickers, the majority of whom are women.At the launch during Capitol Hill Ocean Week in June, USAID Administrator Samantha Power announced: “The Circle Alliance brings together USAID’s experience in empowering women in plastic waste value chains and our long-standing relationships with national and local governments and, of course, with civil society.”

“Unilever has unrivaled knowledge of, and an unrivaled role in, plastic supply chains. EY brings experience in providing professional support to help businesses grow and thrive. This is an incredible foundation for the Circle Alliance.”

Gillian Hinde, EY Global Corporate Responsibility Leader, adds: “Responding to the urgent need for collective action to enable a circular economy for plastics across the global south, the CIRCLE Alliance represents a bold model of public-private collaboration.”

“Together, we aim to support impact entrepreneurs as they incubate innovation and scale market-based solutions to the issue of plastic pollution while generating jobs that respect waste workers’ human rights, especially women.”

Unilever’s plastic record

Unilever has been heavily criticized for its role in global plastic pollution, despite its public waste development programs. Last year, a Greenpeace report estimated that the company sells 1,700 single-use plastic sachets every second, amounting to over 50 billion a year. The sachets are often hard to recycle and sold in nations with little end-of-life infrastructure.

In February, protestors surrounded the company’s headquarters in London during its shareholder meeting, demanding a reduction in sachet production. However, Unilever has consistently defended its use of sachets, saying they are essential for product protection in hot climates and provide piecemeal quantity products to low-income economies.

“We’ve reduced our virgin plastic use by 18% against a 2019 baseline,” says Unilever in a statement on the Circle Alliance launch. “We’ve increased our use of recycled plastic to 22% of our global portfolio, and we’ve trialed a variety of reuse and refill models around the world.”

In April, Unilever changed a range of its sustainability targets, saying that its ambitions had become unrealistic. Its previous commitment to halve \use of virgin plastics by 2025 has been cut to one-third by 2026 — a difference of 100,000 tons of fresh plastic annually. The pledge to make 100% of plastic packaging reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025 was pushed to 2030 for rigids and 2035 for flexibles.

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