UNILEVER'S "GREEN AND CLEAN" PROGRAMME AS A CONTRIBUTION TO ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

Unilever (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) is a multinational company originating from the United Kingdom and has been established in Indonesia since 1933.

As a company that produces the largest daily-use products, Unilever is aware of the environmental problems faced in the world, especially in Indonesia, therefore Unilever created a project that is able to help facing environmental problems in Indonesia through a program called 'Green and Clean'.

The Green and Clean (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) program was started in 2001 in Surabaya, East Java, with the aim of creating a healthy, clean, beautiful and green environment driven by participation of the citizens. Green and Clean program is supported through several activities;

Bank Sampah (Trash Bank)

Bank Sampah (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) as one of the activities in the green and clean program is a collective dry waste management activity that encourages the community and citizens to contribute an active role in it, using the concept of 'saving'.

This activity is done by sorting waste, composting, greening and depositing waste that has been sorted into Bank Sampah and people that collect dry-waste can get benefit in the form of money from saving waste.

Trashion (Trash And Fashion)

Trashion stands for trash and fashion. Trashion (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) is an activity in the Green and Clean program that aims to reduce plastic waste by recycling plastic waste into useful and attractive items with economic and aesthetic value such as bags, umbrellas, wallets, or sandals.

Trashion comes as a next-step activity of the Bank Sampah activity. Trashion also focuses on developing housewives to become waste entrepreneurs by educating them to turn plastic waste into useful and attractive items.

In Trashion activity, housewives are given training to recycle plastic to reduce plastic waste.

Starting from 2005 to 2014, the Green and Clean program itself has successfully reduced the number of waste in the cities of Surabaya and Yogyakarta to a total of 600 tons. By 2020, Unilever has recycled up to 16.300 tons (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) of organic trash and until 2021, Unilever has successfully reduced up to 12.400 tons of non-organic trash with a total of 3.800 units of Bank Sampah.

Through this Green and Clean program, Unilever successfully helps some cities face the  environmental issues in Indonesia, especially waste. The program also educates the public about the importance of maintaining environmental cleanliness.

The Green and Clean also shows that environmental sustainability can be done through community participation. Through this program, society not only enjoys the result but also participates to act for the change.