Japan’s Kao Corporation has joined the $120 million venture previously announced by Genomatica and Unilever to scale and commercialise plant-based alternatives to palm kernel oil. The firm described this is as a key move towards meeting goals of becoming carbon-neutral by 2040 carbon-negative by 2050, by making responsibly sourced palm oil and derivatives a critical feedstock.
Unilever and Genomatica have launched a $120 million venture to scale up and commercialise plant-based alternatives to palm oil and fossil fuel-derived cleansing ingredients, particularly for use in personal care products. This will use Genomatica’s established biotechnology platform that makes materials from plant- or waste-based product.
Earth Day, 22 April, saw a world first in the launch of the first product using a surfactant made from industrial carbon emissions. This was developed by Unilever, LanzaTech and India Glycols (IGL), and was used in an Omo laundry capsule in China.
Consumer products giant Unilever has announced plans to source all of the carbon-based materials in its cleaning and laundry products from renewable or recycled sources, thus throwing down the gauntlet to chemical suppliers. According to Unilever, this will cut the carbon footprint of its product formulations by up to 20%, since the chemicals it uses in cleaning and account for 46% – of that footprint. The company’s most famous brands include Persil, Omo, Domestos, Cif and Sunlight.
Consumer products giant Unilever has announced that it fully delivered on the commitment it launched in early 2017, to disclose fragrance ingredient information down to 0.01% of the product formulation by the end of 2018, in place of generic ‘fragrance’ or ‘P
