you'll ever is one of the largest
commissioners of market research in the
world we do market research in over a
hundred and fifty countries we literally
speak to millions of people every year
and from across all this research I've
been noticing that something is
beginning to build so what's causing
this move amongst all the market
research
maybe it's the increased frequency of
climate-related disasters being piped
into our living rooms images of
hurricanes tornadoes droughts extreme
weather all over the world or maybe it's
the increase voices of concern from
people talking on social media about
companies being involved in child labor
or de forcing huge sways of the planet
destroying communities and habitats on
the way but whatever is causing is we
are beginning to get to the edge of
something and companies like ours and
others need to understand what's going
on and engage with it because what our
market research is picking up is people
are beginning to shift they're shifting
from the my world the my world I'm
focused about my children my family my
friends through the folks on the our
world where it's communities and schools
and villages to increasingly be careful
and concerned about the world so if you
ask people now about are they concerned
about how products are made or where
they're sourced increasingly the answer
is a resounding yes and they're not just
talking about it they're acting on it as
well
so to borrow a phrase from Boston
consultancy group responsible
consumption responsible consumption
sales in the US are now growing at 9%
per year and account for 15% of US
retail sales but it's not just developed
world phenomena I'm seeing this rumble
across the world so whether it be China
and India or whether it be Africa and
Brazil and Beyond
we're increasingly seeing people
engaging in this the photograph in the
middle is
where I was just a few months ago and I
was in India in fact in deepest rural
India and the lady in the picture is a
smallholder farmer and the village she
lived in was a humble village we didn't
have any running water in any of the
houses there was no sanitation so
everyone was openly defecating and they
had electricity for about two hours a
day but what was striking is virtually
every house had a mobile phone and
through that mobile phone they were very
much connected to the world and this
lady knew about what was going on in the
world and how things that were going on
in the world are going to impact prices
or crops not just in the market far away
but the one just down the road where she
sold her crops she did care about the
world and she increasingly knew about
the world now this is important because
if we're going to make sustainable
living commonplace we need to engage
scale we need companies to engage scale
we need governments to engage at scale
companies have interested in scale
demand to consumers because they see
there's an opportunity to get growth to
opportunity to help people get something
they're looking for and governments are
increasingly engaging in this because
they see on social media consumers and
people increasingly concerned about
sustainability and what's going to
happen in this world so for the first
time really we're seeing that voters and
consumers are coming together with one
voice one voice of change so one thing
is understanding it but what do
companies like a Unilever a Nike or an
Ikea or a Disney do about this well
we've been working as you know in this
area for a few years and I'd like to
share with you some lessons some lessons
we've learned really just trying to
inspire new ideas aspire new ideas from
any of you
or maybe confirm something you're doing
and encourage you to go further but
whether it be inspiration or motivation
or challenge and hopefully you'll get
something out of this which will take
the whole agenda forward so firstly
sustainability needs to be mainstreamed
across the business if it's going to
make an impact and make sustainable
living commonplace you can't have a
corporate social responsibility
department in one
corner of the company expect to do the
whole sustainability agenda it can't be
an add-on it has to be mainstreamed
across the business and to do that you
need a plan
you need to plan just like a business
plan you need a plan with objectives and
measures and key performance indicators
a plan was held at the top of the
business a plan which is reported
against internally and externally and
for us it wasn't until we started
thinking about this idea of
mainstreaming sustainability did we
start getting real traction so we had to
destroy things as well as build things
so we took apart the corporate social
responsibility Department we don't have
one any longer and instead we built the
Unilever sustainable living plan as a
core about how we were going to do this
across the business and we start with a
big mission we wanted to double our
business while reducing our
environmental footprint and increasing
our positive social impact in essence
what we wanted to do is run a decoupled
growth from the negative impact of
growth so let me explain that a little
bit more so normally when companies grow
as the volume goes up so does the
environmental impact as well and we
wanted to decouple those two lines so we
started like any other good company we
started our own operations we looked at
our factories we looked at offices our
distribution and how are we gonna make
that more sustainable but then we soon
realized that that wasn't enough we
weren't going to make sustainability a
real core agenda for this business
unless we looked at the whole footprint
across the value chain so from the
suppliers and the farms right they
through to consumers using our products
and disposing them and that whole
environmental footprint is what we're
going to measure for each and every one
of our products so when it comes to the
irrigation in crops Tomatoes tea or
whatever that water would be in the
footprint of the product that we are
creating or whether it be heating the
water for a washing machine the
greenhouse gases that came from heating
that water would be in the environmental
footprint of our product so across the
whole value chain we created a plan for
all countries and all brands
and we created a plan that was going to
be measured against some big goals so
for instance we wanted to help a billion
people improve their health and
well-being and we started this back in
2010 and three years into the plan
we're now at 303 million so we're on
track but still a lot to do or we also
wanted to say that we wanted to source
all our agricultural war materials
sustainably by 2020 so the tea the soy
the tomatoes all sourced sustainably by
2020 when we started we had but 14
percent saw sustainably now we have 48
percent source sustainably well let me
try to explain what that means with one
example tea so we're the largest tea
buyers in the world with brands like
Lipton and others so we've been working
with the rainforest alliance with small
holder farmers step by step to work out
how we can do things sustainably what I
mean by sustainably is whether it be
Sochi sustainably with the local
community or whether be environmentally
sustainable as far as we can keep
producing without degrading the land
over and over again and without taking
from the planet ah know that both of
those that's what we've called
sustainable and we've been building that
now I say over the last three years all
already on Team all the 50% and of
course the target with tea like
everything else is a hundred percent by
2020 and we will report against this so
we do have the plan we have over 50
time-based targets and we report every
year and you can see what we're doing we
report very publicly we report
internally we report externally and you
won't be surprised when we hit
objectives we celebrate them and we're
very proud of them but equally we're
transparent when we're missing as well
and that's part of the the focus of
where we're missing we'll ask you for
help from stakeholders and others how
can we close that gap how can we get
back on plan but was what we've realized
ourselves and other businesses and
indeed increasingly governments well the
cost of inaction is now more than the
cost of action so when people ask me
what is the business case for
sustainability I always answer I would
love to see the business case for the
alternate
the secondary is about experimenting and
learning but this is a new area it's a
new area for all of us but so often we
come at it with the same business
constructs the same business models so
we've been looking at different business
constructs different business models and
very much felt that what that was right
first five years ago is not gonna be
right for us now and into the future
so give you some examples we put
together some very different bedfellows
in most businesses the marketing
departments are over there in one corner
selling more stuff sustainability
departments over here trying to save the
planet and then over here you have the
comms team who had usually have
corporate social responsibility looking
for great stories and pictures for the
annual report etc and what we did is we
put those three together under a single
leadership with a simple goal to make
sustainable living commonplace now I
can't for a second suggest it was an
easy journey and the last five years
have been pretty bumpy when he stole off
the the marketers were incredibly
suspicious for the peoples and
sustainability that somehow they were
going to handcuff them and restrict what
they could do etc and similarly the
sustainability guys thought the
marketing guys were shallow and
short-term and weren't going to be able
to help at all in any way but increasing
when we put them together with this
single goal very clear focus we have
realized that actually the whole
sustainability agenda so social
environmental and indeed the financial
agenda of growth and profit can come
together in a very focused way and you
can make sustainability very much the
heart of your business model but it's
not just internally that I'm seeing sort
of new constructs I think what's really
quite exciting there's a lot going on in
the world externally as well and within
my 30 years of business I have never
seen this level of public and private
partnership coming together in a really
profound way really transformational
collaboration so want to use an example
to bring this alive and this this one
here around net zero deforestation 15
percent of the greenhouse gases in the
world is caused by deforestation and the
four commodities that are the principle
drivers of that there is soy there was
palm oil there is beef there's a timber
products the consumer goods form the
consumer goods forum is an association
of more than 600 companies big companies
from all around the world together their
revenues are three trillion dollars
three trillion dollars and back in 2010
they all made a commitment that they
would stop buying these four commodities
by 2020 if they didn't come from
sustainable sources now that sent a huge
market signal and since then banks have
got involved government's have got
involved NGOs that formed the tropical
forest Alliance and with topic fours
Alliance were like very goal to drive
this through to completion we now have
the potential to have the impact of
greenhouse gases due to deforestation
I think the incredible folks incredible
project what I've learned from it his
whole system change is possible with
transformational collaboration the third
of final what I'd like to share with you
is engaging its scale because at the end
of the day it all comes down to people
it all comes down to us and others
people at scale and when we talk about
this subject we so quickly look at the
supply part of social and environmental
sustainability we talk about
deforestation as I have just done now we
talk about sustainable farming we don't
talk enough about the demand side and I
said in the beginning the demand is
beginning to grow there's some really
interesting experiments going on right
now about how do we engage more people
how do we engage the next generation in
this whole area and one of the projects
we've done is a project called Unilever
project sunlight it's only a pilot phase
we've launched in five countries so far
we launched at the end of last year so
we haven't even been running for a year
yet but the fact that over a hundred
million videos and stories have been
shared in those five countries already
really show there's an appetite to start
engaging in all this and we've seen a
start of a movement not just here but
elsewhere of people wanting to share
stories share stories about food waste
or recycling they want to share what
they're doing as a family versus other
families
and we're beginning to realize that
we're moving from some marketing to
consumers to mattering to people because
you can't have a healthy business in an
unhealthy society so I said at the
beginning we're beginning to move to the
edge of something people are engaging
and they're starting to engage at scale
and has never been a better time to
build a brighter future and make
sustainable living commonplace