Unilever is estimated to produce about 508,000 metric tonnes of waste in 2026 (1.1 billion pounds) in their own factories, warehouses and other sites. That is the first full year without the ice cream business, which left the group in December 2025.
Those 508,000 tonnes are only the waste Unilever handle themselves. The plastic packaging they sell is a second pile of about the same size, at 655,000 tonnes in 2024 across just 27 markets, and most of it ends up in household bins.
Unilever's annual waste totals (2024-2026)
Unilever first published a total for the waste their own sites generate in 2024. The table below runs from that first year to our estimate for 2026.
| Year | Total waste (tonnes) | What the year covers |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 508,000 | Unilever without Ice Cream, up about 3% |
| 2025 | 493,000 | Unilever without Ice Cream |
| 2024 | 731,000 | Unilever including Ice Cream |
Note: 2024 and 2025 are measured totals from Unilever's Annual Report and Accounts 2025. The 2026 figure of 508,000 tonnes is our estimate, the 2025 total grown by the roughly 3% rise in sales volumes Unilever expect for 2026.
That 3% is Unilever's own full-year guidance. Volumes grew 1.5% in 2025 and 4.2% in the first half of 2026, which puts the 2026 total somewhere between about 500,000 and 514,000 tonnes.
Why Unilever's waste total fell by a third in 2025
The drop from 731,000 to 493,000 tonnes is mostly a change in what gets counted. Unilever split off their ice cream business on 6 December 2025, and it now trades on its own as The Magnum Ice Cream Company.
The ice cream sites generated another 205,000 tonnes of waste in 2025 before the split. Added back, the like-for-like total is about 698,000 tonnes, 4.5% below 2024 rather than a third.
Unilever say they have not restated earlier years for the split. The boundary will move again soon, because the Foods business behind Knorr and Hellmann's is due to combine with the spice maker McCormick by mid-2027 at the latest.
Who are Unilever?
Unilever are a British consumer goods company behind brands such as Dove, Knorr, Hellmann's and Vaseline. Their head office sits on the River Thames in London.
These are the numbers that set the scale of Unilever after the ice cream split:
- Sales: €50.5 billion in 2025, across four business groups (Beauty & Wellbeing, Personal Care, Home Care and Foods).
- Reach: sold in 190 countries and used by 3.7 billion people every day, by Unilever's own count.
- Sites: more than 190 manufacturing sites around the world.
- People: 96,092 employees at the end of 2025, after 19,266 moved to the ice cream company.
A year earlier the picture was bigger. In 2024 Unilever ran over 250 factories, employed 120,040 people and turned over €60.8 billion, with ice cream still inside the group.
Unilever's plastic packaging is a second waste pile of the same size
Every bottle of shampoo and jar of mayonnaise leaves a Unilever site in packaging that becomes someone else's waste. Unilever report that plastic each year to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's Global Commitment, a voluntary pledge on plastic signed by large brands.
Unilever's 2024 total was 655,000 tonnes. That figure only covers 27 markets, which Unilever put at about 82% of their plastic footprint. Scaled up to the whole company, our own calculation comes to roughly 800,000 tonnes, close to the 731,000 tonnes Unilever's own sites generated that year.
Below are the 2024 plastic totals that Unilever and five other large brands reported to the foundation.
| Company | Plastic (tonnes) | Share of their plastic counted |
|---|---|---|
| Coca-Cola | 3,606,000 | Main consumer packaging, about 90% |
| PepsiCo | 2,095,000 | Key markets, over 80% |
| Nestlé | 873,000 | Whole business |
| Danone | 670,000 | Whole business |
| Unilever | 655,000 | 27 markets, about 82% |
| L'Oréal | 152,000 | Whole business |
Note: Figures from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's Global Commitment 2025 report. Procter & Gamble have not signed the Global Commitment, so their plastic does not appear.
The two drinks makers report between three and six times as much plastic as Unilever, and Coca-Cola's packaging total is the largest in the report. Among the food companies, Unilever sit level with Danone and below Nestlé's plastic footprint.
Unilever's own total has edged down, from 698,000 tonnes in 2022 to 670,000 in 2023 and 655,000 in 2024. The markets counted have shifted slightly between reports, so the trend is a guide rather than an exact measure.
Why sachets are Unilever's hardest plastic to fix
Unilever sort their plastic into two kinds. Rigid plastic is bottles, jars and tubs. Flexible packaging is pouches, sachets and films, the thin bendable kind that most recycling systems turn away.
Unilever's flexible plastic problem comes down to three numbers.
- 28% of Unilever's plastic is flexible. Rigid packaging makes up the other 72%, according to Unilever's plastics page.
- 15% of that flexible plastic is reusable, recyclable or compostable. For rigid plastic the share is 75%, which is why Unilever's overall figure stuck at 57% in 2025.
- 53 billion sachets in 2023. Greenpeace said Unilever were on track to sell that many single-serve sachets that year, an estimate made for them by the research firm Future Market Insights. Unilever do not publish a sachet count of their own.
Unilever call hard-to-recycle flexibles, sachets included, "an industry-wide challenge and a priority". From 2026 they are adding a target for paper-based flexible packaging to replace part of the plastic.
The law is moving the same way. Under the PPWR recyclability rules, packaging sold in the EU has to be designed for recycling from 1 January 2030, or later if the EU's detailed criteria arrive late.
Where Unilever's factory waste ended up in 2025
Unilever describe their site waste as raw materials caught part-way through production, such as food ingredients, plus packaging materials like plastic and paper and production waste such as boiler ash. Sites like the one below produce it.
The table below shows what happened to Unilever's own waste in 2025.
| Route | Tonnes | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Recycled | 242,000 | 49% |
| Prepared for reuse | 137,000 | 28% |
| Recovered in other ways | 107,000 | 22% |
| Burned without energy recovery | 4,000 | Under 1% |
| Sent to landfill | 3,000 | Under 1% |
Note: Figures from Unilever's 2025 sustainability statement, rounded to the nearest thousand tonnes as Unilever publish them. Other recovery covers routes such as burning waste to make energy. They exclude the ice cream sites, which sent all of their 205,000 tonnes to recycling or recovery.
Unilever's own breakdown also shows the following.
- Landfill: about 3,000 tonnes was buried. Unilever count it as "zero non-hazardous waste to landfill" when under 0.5% goes there, and say they have held that since 2015.
- Hazardous waste: 24,000 tonnes, about 5% of the total. Most of it was recycled or otherwise kept out of disposal.
- Not recycled: 114,000 tonnes, or 23%, was recovered another way, burned or buried instead of being recycled or reused.
- No targets: Unilever say they "do not have formal waste targets" for their own sites. A global waste standard for every site arrived in 2024.
How Unilever scaled back their plastic targets
Unilever set their plastic goals in 2019 and rewrote the biggest one in April 2024, a year before its deadline.
The table below sets each goal next to what Unilever reported for 2025.
| Goal | What happened to it | Result for 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Cut virgin plastic | Halve it by 2025, rewritten as 30% by 2026 and 40% by 2028 | Down 29% on 2019 |
| Recycled plastic in packaging | 25% by 2025, kept | 25% |
| Reusable, recyclable or compostable | 100% by 2025, moved to 2030 for rigid and 2035 for flexible plastic | 57% |
| Collect more plastic than they sell | By 2025, kept, dropped as a formal target from 2026 | 111% |
Note: Results from the Annual Report and Accounts 2025, for 26 countries that make up about 82% of Unilever's sales, without ice cream.
Virgin plastic is plastic made new from oil and gas rather than recycled. The 111% collection result includes plastic gathered through the EPR schemes Unilever pay into by law, and Unilever say it "does not represent voluntary Unilever activity alone".
Unilever's recycled plastic target was met with help from the ice cream split
Unilever reached 25% recycled plastic in 2025, exactly on target. Their own report credits the ice cream demerger for part of it, "as Ice Cream products typically contain less recycled plastic". Counted with ice cream, the 2025 figure was 24%.
What Greenpeace say about Unilever's plastic target cut
When the virgin plastic goal was cut, Nina Schrank, head of plastics at Greenpeace UK, said "Unilever should hang their heads in shame today." The trade press put the gap between the old and new goals at about 100,000 tonnes of plastic.
Hein Schumacher, Unilever's chief executive in April 2024, called the new goals "very stretching" but "unashamedly, realistic".
Frequently asked questions about Unilever's waste
Below are the seven questions people ask most often about Unilever's waste.
How much waste does Unilever produce each year?
About 508,000 tonnes in 2026 by our estimate, from Unilever's own factories, warehouses and other sites. Unilever measured 493,000 tonnes in 2025 and 731,000 tonnes in 2024, when the ice cream business was still part of the group.
Why did Unilever's waste drop so much in 2025?
Mostly because the ice cream business left the group on 6 December 2025. Its sites produced another 205,000 tonnes that year. Counted together, Unilever's 2025 waste was about 698,000 tonnes, 4.5% below 2024.
How much plastic packaging does Unilever use?
Unilever reported 655,000 tonnes of plastic packaging for 2024. That covers 27 markets, about 82% of their plastic, so the whole company uses roughly 800,000 tonnes on our calculation.
How many sachets does Unilever sell?
Unilever do not publish a sachet count. Greenpeace said Unilever were on track to sell 53 billion sachets in 2023, about 1,700 every second, on an estimate made for them by Future Market Insights.
Did Unilever meet their 2025 plastic targets?
Two of four. Recycled plastic reached 25% and collection reached 111%. The goal to halve virgin plastic was rewritten in 2024, and only 57% of their plastic was reusable, recyclable or compostable against a goal of 100%.
Does Unilever send waste to landfill?
Very little. About 3,000 tonnes of Unilever's 493,000 tonnes of site waste went to landfill in 2025, under 1% of the total. Nearly half was recycled and over a quarter prepared for reuse.
Will Unilever's waste figure change again?
Yes. The Foods business behind Knorr and Hellmann's is due to combine with McCormick by mid-2027 at the latest. Once it leaves, Unilever's waste total will drop again for the same reason it did after ice cream.
Images: Tilman2007, Bill Boaden
