Unilever’s Water Purification
Unilever, which has operations in more than 100
countries and sales in 190, has increasingly intertwined
its social and corporate goals. In 2010
it launched the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan,
which aims to halve the greenhouse gas impact of
the company’s products, source 100% of agricultural
raw materials sustainably, and help more than a billion
people improve their health and well-being.
One effort that supports this plan is the Pureit
water filtration business, overseen by Yuri Jain, a
vice president who leads the company’s global water
initiatives. People in most parts of the world—
especially developing countries—lack reliable access
to safe drinking water. Studies show that low-cost
interventions to purify water can have a big impact,
reducing the risk of potentially lethal diarrheal diseases
by 50%. However, many consumers in, for instance,
Bangladesh and India have no choice but to