Hindustan Unilever turns to water conservation

Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL), the maker of detergent and toilet soap brands like Wheel, Rin, Lux and Lifebuoy, on Monday said it would look at saving 50 billion litres of water in the next four years through its new initiative India Water Body in a bid to address water scarcity woes of future.

Nitin Paranjpe, chief executive officer and managing director, HUL said the company intended to halve the water associated with the consumer use of its products by 2020. For this, it has developed a metric which measures the water in the product as well as the water required for its use.

Interestingly, daily hygiene products like detergents, toilet soaps, toothpastes, and shampoos where the company gets the bulk of its sales from, consume the maximum amount of water from households. Nearly 40% of company’s water footprint comes from the laundry process.

Paranjpe said HUL’s R&D team is focusing on product innovations that will help consumers reduce water usage. It will formulate such products across shampoos, laundry and personal wash over the next few years. Currently, HUL’s laundry product Surf Excel Quickwash is touted as a product that requires less water for washing clothes.

HUL has been working on water conservation for 12 years by partnering with NGOs and local communities and has ongoing projects in several states.

The company said it will ensure reduction of water usage in its manufacturing processes as well as reuse and recycle water, and recharge rain water. In 2010, it reduced water usage in manufacturing operations by 36% (measured on per tonne basis over a baseline of 2004), and 50% of company’s manufacturing sites have rain water harvesting facility. The India Water Body initiative is now going to be a part of Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan that it launched in November 2010 to halve the environmental impact of its products and to source 100% of its agricultural raw materials sustainably by 2020.

Anglo-Dutch parent Unilever gets close to 53% of its sales from emerging markets like China, India, South Africa and Indonesia, which it has identified as water scarce. Other consumer firms that have fastened CSR initiatives towards water conservation over charges of depleting groundwater in the recent years are PepsiCo India and Coca-Cola India.