Unilever Will Spend $1 Billion to Rid Cleaning Products of Fossil Fuels by 2030
The investment is a big step toward reaching the consumer giant’s goal of zeroing out emissions from its operations and its suppliers by 2039.
Cif cleaning products sit for sale inside a supermarket in Lisbon.
Photographer: Mario Proenca/Bloomberg
When a company sets a goal to reach zero emissions within decades, it has to start cutting carbon on every possible front. For Unilever NV, that means spending €1 billion ($1.2 billion) to help its suppliers adopt technologies to eliminate the use of fossil fuels in the production of cleaning products by 2030.
You may not associate the black gunk of crude oil with the pleasant-smelling detergents that wash your clothes, but that’s the magic of chemistry. Through a series of chemical reactions, the long-chain carbon compounds found in crude oil can be turned into chemicals capable of removing oil stains from your clothes.