Environmental, Social, Governance
We are a company of brands and people with a clear purpose - to make sustainable living commonplace.
We are a company of brands and people with a clear purpose - to make sustainable living commonplace.
At Hindustan Unilever Limited, responsible corporate conduct is integral to the way we do business. To succeed, we believe, requires highest standards of responsibility towards everyone we work with, the communities we touch and the environment on which we have an impact.
Our health and sanitation products can help people gain access to better nutrition and hygiene.
Through our social initiatives and marketing campaigns we are tackling the barriers
that so often hold people back from realising their true potential.
Through on-ground projects and behaviour change initiatives we address
the water, sanitation and hygiene challenges that communities face.
Suvidha is a first of its kind urban community centre that makes hygiene & sanitation accessible to all. It provides its users with various facilities including clean toilets, a full-fledged laundromat, handwashing & shower stations, purified drinking water and a safe and dignified environment, especially for women and children.
In February 2022, we launched our seventh and largest Suvidha centre in Dharavi, Mumbai, in partnership with HSBC India and the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai. Keeping sustainability at its core, all our centres are solar powered and are designed to treat & reuse wastewater.
people have access to safe sanitation every year
of water saved through wastewater recycling and rainwater harvesting every year
Lifebuoy launched its first ever children’s Alphabet Book, authored by Ruskin Bond, in 2021 under its ‘H’ for Handwashing campaign.
Through this campaign, we aim to encourage hand hygiene behaviour change by integrating it with the school curriculum.
To drive awareness of COVID-19 Prevention in communities, Lifebuoy and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) partnered for a public service campaign called 'It's In Your Hands.' The campaign made a humble appeal to the people of India to play their part in fighting Coronavirus by practising proper hygiene, wearing a mask in the right way, maintaining social distance, getting vaccinated and washing hands with soap.
Our hygiene brand Domex, which specialises in disinfecting germs, extended its product offerings to professional spaces and businesses with an aim to help provide effective germ removal solutions during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, product donations were made to municipal corporations, hospitals and schools to improve overall hygiene standards. In 2021, we donated around 2 lakh Domex disinfectant products towards various disinfection initiatives. Domex has also worked with the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) to disinfect public spaces identified by civic bodies.
Our Swachh Aadat Curriculum teaches children in classes 1-5 the importance of adopting three clean habits – washing hands with soap, safe drinking water practices and using clean toilets over a 21-day period. The textbook version of the curriculum was rolled out in Government schools in Bihar, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand and Haryana. We also launched a digital school curriculum during the pandemic that was piloted in Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Delhi.
Through our brands, we ensure that people have access to nutritious food.
Also, during the COVID-19 pandemic we stood by India and helped augment supply of medical oxygen and access to healthcare in rural communities around our operations.
Our ‘Future Foods’ ambition demonstrates our commitment to being a force for good. We are continuously working towards improving our products and helping people transition towards healthier diets. We aim to help people make the transition to healthier eating by providing positive nutrition. Foods that deliver positive nutrition are defined as products containing impactful amounts of vegetables, fruits, proteins, fibre, unsaturated fatty acids, or micronutrients such as vitamins, zinc, iron, and iodine.
By 2025, we will double the number of our products that deliver positive nutrition.
Launched in 2013, the program aims to improve the nutritional status of women and children between the age of 2-15 years. It is India’s largest village-level, community-based nutrition program that impacts.
Mission HO2PE was launched to help augment the supply of medical oxygen and reduce pressure on our healthcare infrastructure during wave 2 of the COVID-19 pandemic. We procured over 5,500 oxygen concentrators from across the world and made them accessible free of cost to the most impacted areas of India, including 19 hospitals across 16 states.
Additionally, in partnership with Portea Medical and KVN Foundation, we delivered oxygen concentrators to COVID-19 patients at their homes through a borrow-use-return model.
Lifebuoy partnered with Practo and Reliance Jio to make free of cost telehealth facilities available for both urban and rural India
Prabhat’s 7 telemedicine centres near our factory locations ensure that rural communities have accessible and affordable health care
HUL runs a free mobile medical service camp ‘Sanjeevani’ for the local community near its Doom Dooma factory in Assam. There are two mobile vans dedicated to the project. Each vehicle has one male and one female doctor, two nurses, a medical attendant, and a driver. Over 6,000 camps have been organised in villages so far.
We constantly endeavour to ensure a fairer world by
empowering communities and enhancing livelihoods.
Through our Shakti initiative, we help enhance livelihoods and financially empower rural Indian women.
Prabhat operates in communities around our operations with interventions that lead to economic empowerment, environmental sustainability, improved health and nutrition and skill building through education.
Improving safety for women and girls in the tea industry is a priority and we are working extensively to drive change in this area since 2016. Along with UN Women, we developed and implemented human rights-based violence prevention program targeting women and male workers and their families in our extended supply chain in Assam. Currently, we are in the scale-up phase of the program with IDH, The Sustainable Trade Initiative, and have set up a Women Safety Accelerator Fund (WSAF) to extend the workplace women safety to more producers in Assam. The WSAF enables tea producers to implement the women safety framework to strengthen the prevention and response mechanisms focused on women safety.
The safety of women and girls in our operations and communities where we operate, including our extended supply chain, is our top priority. With the alarming rise in domestic violence cases during the lockdown, we were the first employers in India to formally launch a holistic, gender-neutral policy for survivors of domestic and other abuse by providing them with access to counselling, special paid leave for relevant appointments with support agencies and solicitors, temporary/permanent changes to working times and more.
A program designed to help women create an identity for themselves by providing them career guidance, skill-based courses and information on job opportunities.
Our Kwality Wall’s mobile vending initiative ‘I am Wall’s’ facilitates self-sufficiency in vendors by enabling them to become micro-entrepreneurs selling ice creams on the move.
We are working to help young people find their purpose and match it with skills that will prepare them for the future of work. We believe that while the future will be driven by automation and new technologies, it will continue to be about people above all else. To build a better business and a better world, we are committed to reshaping the employment landscape.
We aim to advance and promote respect for human rights in everything we do – within our workplaces, supply and distribution chains and through our brands. With our suppliers, peers, industry bodies, trade unions and civil society, we are working to address the human rights impact and ensure that all those connected to our value chain are treated with respect, dignity and fairness.
In addition to this, our Code of Business Principles (CoBP)upholds human rights principles and fair treatment. The CoBP also conforms to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) principles.
The principles of human rights are followed in the same spirit within and outside our organisation when engaging with business partners.
Through our brands and operations across India, we strive to address social
inequalities and improve people’s health, confidence, and wellbeing.
Positive nutrition
Double the number of products sold that deliver positive nutrition by 2025
70% of our portfolio to meet WHO-aligned nutritional standards by 2022
95% of packaged ice cream to contain no more than 22g total sugar per serving by 2025
95% of packaged ice cream to contain no more than 250 kcal per serving by 2025
85% of our Foods portfolio to help consumers reduce their salt intake to no more than 5g per day by 2022
Health & wellbeing
Take action through our brands to improve health and wellbeing and advance equity and inclusion
We will focus on:
Equity, diversity & inclusion
Achieve an equitable and inclusive culture by eliminating any bias and discrimination in our practices and policies
Accelerate diverse representation at all levels of leadership
5% of our workforce to be made up of people with disabilities by 2025
Spend `2,000 crore annually with diverse businesses by 2025
Increase representation of diverse groups in our advertising
Raise living standards
Ensure that everyone who directly provides goods and services to HUL will earn at least a living wage or income by 2030
Help 2 million small and medium-sized enterprises grow their business by 2025
Future of work
Help equip 1.5 million young people with essential skills by 2030
Pioneer new models to provide our employees with flexible employment options by 2030
Reskill or upskill our employees with future-fit skills by 2025