There’s a hint of Marlon Brando about Paul Polman, chief executive of Unilever, which would make him on the surface an unlikely godfather for a subject like sustainability, even if it wasn’t for his position as the head of a global FMCG titan.
But Polman has taken another step towards cementing his position today, opening up the company and its executives to what it claims is an unparalleled online debate over how it goes about saving the planet.
A day after shifting its commitments on palm oil, Unilever’s 24-hour ‘Sustainable Living Lab’ has now reached its halfway point. The online forum has prompted posts from across the world on subjects ranging from the destruction of palm tree crops in Indonesia to a lack of joined up recycling facilities in the UK.
The debates are still raging here and well worth logging into (if you haven’t already). But are they likely to bring Unilever any close to its goals?
Some of the suggestions are verging on barmy. Example: forcing all companies to include sustainable messages in all their advertising – bicycles sailing merrily by in the background, characters in ads (ironically) remembering to turn their appliances off. They need a reality check. Don’t they?
Some suggestions are more pragmatic, however, and range in ambition. Some might even find themselves on Unilever’s agenda once it’s turned off the lights in its Living Lab.
Polman controversially claims that governments are too concerned with downturns and elections and bankers too concerned with making shedloads of cash to play prominent roles in sustainability, meaning businesses like his must lead the way.
He has come up with perhaps the loftiest goal of all, urging those logging on to abandon the idea of themselves as consumers and start seeing themselves as citizens – to leverage the digital world to generate ideas for more sustainable sourcing, production and distribution.
“We organise ourselves on Facebook, we communicate with ourselves on Twitter and we broadcast what we’re doing on You Tube. That has to be harnessed for good,” he told businesses at a sustainability event in London yesterday, with an audience ranging from Tesco to the WWF.
Somehow tomorrow’s Q1 Unilever results don’t seem quite so important – for a few hours, anyway.
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