Unilever will spend $ 1.2 bn to rid cleaning products of fossil fuels

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 one billion euros ($ 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 longchain carbon compounds found in crude oil can be turned into chemicals capable of removing oil stains from your clothes.

Eliminating the use of fossil fuels to make those chemicals has been technically feasible for decades, but the cost has remained prohibitive. Unilever's is the first large investment in a sector that has finally begun looking to replace oil in its production process with ingredients derived from wood or microbial fermentation, or even recycled carbon from other industries.

"What Unilever is trying to do is very comprehensive," said Katy Armstrong, a researcher at the University of Sheffield who works on reusing carbon. "With great ambition, it is looking at the entire supply chain."

In June, the consumergoods giant set a target to cut all emissions from its operations and its suppliers by 2039. The company wants to reach this milestone with minimal use of carbon offsets, which are cheap to buy but don't always do what they promise. Because 30 per cent of the company's annual emissions come from suppliers, it can reach its goal only by requiring suppliers to cut the use of fossil fuels. About 65 per cent of Unilever's emissions come from customers using its product, and the company hasn't set a firm reduction target on those.

The work to remove fossil fuels from cleaning products began in 2018, says Ian Howell, who leads the team studying advanced materials for homecare goods. —