Corporate responsibility and sustainability

We aim to manage and grow our business around the world in a responsible and sustainable way, creating long-term value for all those with a stake in our business.

We believe our brands must be at the forefront of delivering our sustainability commitments. The successful brands of the future will be those that satisfy both the functional needs of consumers and address their concerns as citizens – including concerns about the environment and social justice.

To enable our brands to integrate social and environmental drivers into their development plans in a structured way, we are rolling out a programme called Brand Imprint. This helps our managers to understand and assess the challenges and opportunities that sustainability presents for our business. An early example of the potential of Brand Imprint is our decision to put the sourcing of all our tea on to a sustainable, ethical basis and to work with the Rainforest Alliance to achieve certification for our tea estates. Lipton the world's largest tea brand, and PG Tips, one of the UK's leading brands, became the first to carry the Rainforest Alliance logo, showing that they meet the independent organisation's strict sustainability criteria.

Another significant step was taken by our ice cream brand Ben & Jerry's, which announced plans to invest €2.4 million over the five years 2007-2012 in reducing its impact on climate change through initiatives covering every stage of its European production process.

Our ambitions for our brands are underpinned by our Mission and Corporate Purpose and our Code of Business Principles. These encapsulate the values and standards by which we expect our employees and our business to be judged. We communicate and monitor these standards actively and any lapses are fully investigated: in 2007 we dismissed 54 people for conduct that breached our Code of Business Principles.

To reinforce this commitment and maintain our operational integrity, we seek to share these standards with our suppliers and contractors through our Business Partner Code. This sets out standards on ten key points of business ethics, labour standards, consumer safety and the environment.

In 2007 we reviewed our sustainability strategies for agriculture (from which about two-thirds of our raw materials come), packaging, water and greenhouse gases to connect them more closely to our business objectives.

Our targets in these areas will help us control costs, respond to our customers' and consumers' desire to reduce waste and open up avenues for innovation that benefit our consumers, for example concentrated laundry products such as all Small & Mighty. Small & Mighty's consumer and environmental benefits were promoted by Wal-Mart, helping the brand to grow its sales in the US to US $140 million in 2007. Small & Mighty, which uses less water, less packaging and less fuel for transport, has now launched in Europe across the brand portfolio, for example Persil, Surf and Omo.

Many of our major retail customers are focusing on sustainability and, by sharing our expertise in this area, we are able to strengthen our relationships with them and grow our business. For example, the success of our ongoing partnership with Wal-Mart led the world's largest retailer to name us 2007 Supplier of the Year for Sustainable Engagement.

We continue to work in partnership in fields where we can contribute our expertise. The breadth of our portfolio means we are uniquely placed to share our understanding of how to run effective programmes to improve both nutrition and hygiene. For example, through our partnership with the UN World Food Programme we are working to improve the health and nutrition of poor children through school feeding programmes, providing over 15 million school meals to 80 000 children in 2007. With the FDI World Dental Federation we are running projects to improve oral care in 38 countries. In 2007 we contributed €89 million to communities through corporate and brand initiatives.

In 2007 the strength of our commitment to sustainable development was recognised by our ranking as foods producers sector leader of the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes for the ninth year running. We were also ranked best in class in the food products sector of the fifth Carbon Disclosure Project (a coalition of over 315 global investors with combined assets in excess of US $41 trillion) and named in its Climate Disclosure Leadership Index in recognition of our efforts to address the challenges of climate change.

Further details of the progress we are making to integrate sustainability into our day-to-day business operations can be found in our annual Sustainable Development Report, available at www.unilever.com