Unilever criticized for plastics approach

Not-for-profit group Greenpeace has urged global consumer products company Unilever to consider offering more packaging reuse options in response to plastics recycling progress outlined in Unilever’s 2025 annual report.

“Unilever’s latest sustainability targets fail once again to match the scope of its plastic problem or provide clarity for its shareholders and customers on how it will end its plastic sachet [flexible packaging] disaster,” says Graham Forbes, of the Greenpeace USA Global Plastics Campaign.

Forbes says Unilever brands such as Dove “are among those contributing to this flood of single-use packaging, leaving communities to deal with the consequences of waste they did not create,” adding, “As one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies, Unilever has both the responsibility and the ability to lead the shift away from single-use packaging toward reuse solutions.”

That reaction comes after Unilever says it reached some of its plastic recycling targets in 2025. “We increased our use of post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastic this year, achieving our goal of 25 percent PCR by 2025,” the company writes in its annual report.

Through much of 2025, however, the plastics recycling sector was described as consisting of ongoing financial challenges by recycling companies and the trade groups that represent them.

Contributors to an early 2026 edition of a Brussels-based Bureau of International Recycling “World Mirror” publication on plastics recycling said neither existing but unenforced policies designed to support the sector nor the lack of such policies in some places have led to favorable results.

“The absence of recycled content mandates has allowed manufacturers to shift back towards a lower-cost virgin resin, further limiting demand for recycled low-density polyethylene (LDPE),” wrote Sally Houghton of The Plastic Recycling Corp. of California.

Contributor Max Craipeau of Hong Kong-based Greencore Resources Ltd. wrote, “Current difficulties are caused by a combination of cheap virgin [material] and weak enforcement of recycled content mandates.”

While Unilever says it is hitting its plastic recycling targets, global petrochemical firm LyondellBasell last month announced a 60 percent reduction in the volume of recycled-plastic content it intends to produce annually by 2030.

In previous sustainability-related reports and statements, the chemicals and polymers company published a goal to produce and market 2 million metric tons per year of recycled-content polymers. Now, the company says its circularity goal is to produce and market 800,000 metric tons of recycled and renewable-based polymers annually by 2030.

In the United States, this decade has seen financial distress plague its polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottle mechanical recycling sector.

In 2021, Los Angeles-based CarbonLite Holdings LLC filed a voluntary petition for relief under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code. The firm had operated three PET bottle recycling plants.

Earlier this year, Ohio-based Evergreen Recycling announced the idling of two PET bottle recycling plants. Last year, it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and closed a plant in California it earlier had purchased from the entities overseeing the CarbonLite bankruptcy.

In the chemical recycling sector, Florida-based polypropylene (PP) plastic recycler PureCycle lost more than $180 million in 2025.

In its most recent Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) 10-K filing, PureCycle writes in part, “Our ability to continue as a going concern longer term is dependent on continued improvement in operations at the Ironton [Ohio] facility, which is the first commercial scale recycling facility, the commercialization of our PureFive resin product, and the successful construction and sale of product from our planned future Augusta [Georgia], Thailand and Belgium facilities.”