In 2010 Volvo launched a green living experiment, called One Tonne Life, to see if one family could learn to live more sustainably. That experiment, which involved other Swedish brands (Siemens, A-hus, Vattenfall, ICA), saw the Lindell family adopt a low-impact lifestyle that reduced their carbon dioxide emissions from 7.3 tonnes per year, the Swedish average for a family, to 1.5 tonnes — just shy of the one tonne goal of the project.
Now Unilever is running a UK-wide consumer challenge with 12 families to see if they can lead more sustainable lifestyles and save money on household bills. The goal is to address food waste, according to the press release for Unilever’s Sustain Ability Challenge.
Developed in partnership with The Futures Company, the challenge aims to bust the myth that it costs more to live in an environmentally-friendly fashion. The Futures Company's recent survey of 1,975 UK consumers found that seven out of 10 (68 per cent) identified the main barrier to living a more environmentally-conscious lifestyle is that it costs more — a myth that Unilever wants to overturn.
“We know that nearly 70 per cent of our environmental impact occurs when consumers use our products at home so changing consumer behaviour is one of the biggest challenges we face in achieving our Sustainable Living Plan goals," commented Amanda Sourry, chairman of Unilever UK and Ireland.
“We are committed to making sustainable living commonplace and in order to help our consumers live more sustainably and help their household budgets go further, we need to understand the triggers, barriers and motivators to inspire people to adopt new behaviours," she added. "We are excited to be working with families on this new challenge and gain insight that we can feed back into the business, so we can provide practical ways for consumers to make sustainable choices easy, rewarding and habitual.”
The experiment will help the consumer goods company better understand consumer attitudes to food waste, citing Fabian Society research which indicates that more than 60 per cent of adults identify food waste as a problem that needs to be solved. More than half (53 per cent) of adults said they would waste less food if it could save them money and over a quarter (28 per cent) would change if they found it easier to do.
"I am looking forward to taking these insights and using them productively within our business for long term solutions. We want to help people not just to adopt new behaviors, but to stick with them," Sourry commented to Marketing magazine at the press launch. But is promoting sustainable living and not wasting goods at odds with Unilever's corporate mandate to drive profitable growth and consumption?
Helping families stretch their food budget is certainly in Unilever's wheelhouse. Nora Costello, brand building director for Unilever’s savoury, dressings and snacking division, told Marketing ahead of the kick-off that Unilever brands such as the quick-serve Knorr product line have "tremendous potential" to benefit from the results of the challenge, which could be seen in upcoming marketing campaigns for the brand.
The dozen families across the UK and Ireland will test practical ways to adapt their daily routines in order to reduce their impact on the environment and cut their household bills. More than two-thirds of Unilever’s environmental impact results from consumer use and disposal of its products – underlining the need to help consumers change their behaviour in the home if the company is to succeed in its long-term aim to halve its environmental footprint.
With the average family throwing away £680 of food waste each year, the participating families’ first area of focus will be on food. Throughout November and December 2012, they will aim to reduce their monthly food bill by 15 per cent and their household rubbish by 25 per cent.
Unilever designed the food challenge around financial savings in response to the findings of its project with The Fabian Society to understand how Unilever can help consumers reduce avoidable food waste. The advice and support that Unilever will provide to families will focus on increasing confidence and skill in the kitchen which will address the top three barriers which the research highlighted to reducing food waste: food going off quickly; throwing away leftovers; and preparing too much food.
In addition, new supplementary research carried out by Unilever has shown that unavoidable food waste, the biggest culprit of which is tea bags – a 370,000 tonne-per-annum issue produced by the 165 million cups of tea we drink a year – needs to be addressed through awareness raising. Four in 10 stated that they did not know that tea bags can be recycled, yet an overwhelming 82 per cent of people might or would be inclined to recycle their used tea bags if they knew how. Unilever has already begun to tackle the issue this year through an awareness-raising pilot with WRAP and two Essex councils which showed consumers that tea bags can easily be recycled in kerbside food waste collections or on domestic compost heaps.
“Food waste is a major issue for the UK - we throw away 7.2 million tonnes of food and drink from our homes every year; most of this could have been eaten, costing us £12 billion," stated Emma Marsh, head of WRAP's Love Food Hate Waste, in Unilever's press release. "With practical help and advice, this is a pioneering experiment with the power to help people waste less and save more. It’s fantastic to see Unilever taking action with the support of Love Food Hate waste, to help families in a way that benefits the environment as well as consumers’ bank balances.”
"Our research shows that in Britain we are not a nation of callous food wasters," added Fabian Socieity senior researcher Natan Doron. "People overwhelmingly recognise that food waste is a problem and when they find out about the environmental damage that food waste does, they are even more willing to do their bit to help tackle it. Policy makers, though, must understand that food waste behaviour is complicated. We need to support people through measures such as making food waste collections universally accessible. Business must also play its part and in that sense, the work that Unilever does as part of its sustainable living plan is encouraging.”
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