Water Footprint – Unilever Donna...
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Green Week 2012 Water Footprint – Unilever Donna Jefferies Safety & Environmental Assurance Centre, Unilever R&D.
Transcript of Water Footprint – Unilever Donna...
Green Week 2012Water Footprint – Unilever
Donna JefferiesSafety & Environmental Assurance Centre, Unilever R&D.
“160 million times a day, someone, somewhere will choose a Unilever brand”
Three Big Goals by 2020
SOURCE
100% OF
AGRICULTURAL RAW MATERIALS
SUSTAINABLY
HELP
1 BILLION PEOPLE
IMPROVETHEIR HEALTH & WELLBEING
HALVEENVIRONMENTAL
FOOTPRINT OFOUR PRODUCTS
Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan has three big goals by 2020
Unilever Water Metric
• Detailed product lifecycle analysis for environmental metrics• 1600 products, 14 countries, 70% of sales
Water per consumer use in water-scarce countries
water added to the product + water used by consumers in water-scarce countries (litres)
Water-scarce countries: China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, Turkey and USA
Water to produce ingredients +process water +
Water Footprint in Unilever
We have been applying both the methodologies of the Water Footprint Network and LCA
– frameworks comparable for blue water at accounting stage– complementary approaches depending upon objective
•Pilot studies on tea and margarine (WFN & LCA)•Quantis database & modelling tool•LCA analysis of laundry detergent (Quantis)•Using WFN WaterStat to estimate WF of agricultural materials
Green WF (litres)
Blue WF (litres)
Ingredients 264 3.9
Packaging 29 0.6
Overhead 0.9 0.7
Operational 0 0.01
Consumer stage
0 5.0
Green WF‘Rainwater’294 litres
Tea - Indonesia
Tea - Kenya
Tea - South India
Blending
Packaging
Distribution
Consumer - electricity
Consumer - w ater
Blue WF‘Irrigation’10 litres
Pilot studies on Unilever tea and margarine (not shown here) were amongst the first water footprints of consumer products
Quantis Water Database / Modelling Tool
• Update of LCA database Ecoinvent; potential to use for industrial processes e.g. plastic packaging
• Modelling tool allows application of leading edge models addressing impacts on quantity and quality of water across the life cycle
LCA
analysis of laundry detergent
Presented at S
ETA
C-E
urope, May
2012 -40%
-20% 0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Rosenbaum et al. USEtox human toxicity (emissions to water)
Rosenbaum et al. USEtox ecotoxicity (emissions to water)
Goedkoop et al. 2008ReCiPe freshwater eutrophication
Jolliet et al. Humbert et al. IMPACT 2002+ Acidification
Ridoutt and Pfister
Boulay et al.
Veolia
Smakhtin et al.
Pfister et al.
End-of-life
Use
Manufacturing
Suppliers
Estimating water used to produce Unilever’s raw materials
– Picture of tomatoes grown around world
Tomatoes
- Using WFN WaterStat database to estimate water to produce crop and livestock products (country and regional)- Challenges include lack of traceability of commodities, variability in sourcing.
Unilever’s ‘top 10’ agricultural materials
By 2020 we will source 100% of our agricultural raw materials sustainably.
Feasibility of WF applications
Identifying hotspotsInfluencing and informing supply chain choicesIdentifying risks in the SCProduct innovation
Detailed analysis at an SKU levelConsumer communication - water labels
