Greenpeace UK activists have shut down the entrances to Unilever’s HQ in Central London today following the firm’s ongoing failure to tackle their overwhelming plastic pollution and its recent sustainability rollback.
Teams of activists are blockading the entrances to Unilever House, locking themselves onto barricades made of giant Dove products and a subverted ‘Dead Dove’ version of their logo. The activists are stocked with enough provisions to continue blocking the entrances for the full day.
The activists were joined by seven climbers from Greenpeace UK who are scaling the walls of the building and working to affix a huge 13 x 8 meter canvas to the facade. The artwork displays a powerful advertising subversion featuring a young girl peeling back Dove’s iconic ‘Real Beauty’ branding to reveal real examples of the toxic plastic waste churned out by the brand.
The action is the latest escalation in Greenpeace’s ongoing campaign against the corporate giant and comes after the announcement of a major rollback of their plastic reduction targets earlier this year. It also comes ahead of the final round of negotiations for the Global Plastics Treaty in November, where Unilever will play a critical role as chair of the Business Coalition.
Twenty years ago this month, Dove launched its iconic “Real Beauty” campaign, positioning it as a brand with a social and environmental ‘purpose’. But Dove, and its parent company Unilever, remain one of the largest plastic polluters globally. A Greenpeace International report released late last year showed that Unilever was the largest corporate seller of the super-polluting plastic sachets, selling the equivalent of 1700 a second. An estimated 6.4 billion sa chets were produced by Unilever signature brand Dove alone in 2022, making up over 10% of Unilever’s total sachets sales.
An accompanying field investigation by Greenpeace South East Asia and Greenpeace UK revealed shocking images of Dove’s sachet waste polluting beaches and waterways in the Philippines and Indonesia. Plastic sachets are infamous for being near impossible to collect and recycle, and for exacerbating flooding when they enter the environment and jam local waste systems and waterways.
Greenpeace is calling on Unilever to phase-out single-use plastic from its operations and transition to reuse in the next 10 years, starting with the worst offenders: plastic sachets. Greenpeace is also calling on the company to advocate for this same level of ambition at the UN Global Plastics Treaty by backing a treaty which caps and phases down plastic production by at least 75% by 2040.
Will McCallum, co-executive director at Greenpeace UK said:
“Unilever’s plastic pollution is trashing the planet and harming communities. They hide behind the clean, respectable face of brands like Dove but we’re here today peeling back this facade to show the ugly truth behind it.
“Whether it’s devastating floods or toxic fumes from waste burning, the billions of pieces of plastic waste they’re pumping into the world are exacting a toll on communities far from this London office. There’s no ‘Real Beauty’ in the real harm Dove and Unilever are causing.
“This peaceful protest is aimed squarely at Hein Schumacher and Unilever’s executives. Where their predecessors led the way for companies to push the boundaries of what environmental ambition looks like, instead they’ve spearheaded Unilever’s sustainability roll back.
“It’s time for them to take their heads out of the sand and recognise their company needs to change. They must stop selling plastic sachets now, commit to phasing out single-use plastic within a decade and advocate for this same level of ambition at the final round of UN Global Plastics Treaty negotiations in November.”
