Unilever introduces plant-based hand dishwash

20 / 12 / 2021

By Marwa Nassar - -

Unilever has launched a new hand dishwash product made with naturally derived ingredients which means that, while delivering the same superior cleaning performance, it’s much kinder to the planet.

Unilever’s Research & Development teams have been working to find an alternative that’s not only made using renewable ingredients but also offers the same – if not better – cleaning performance.

The result is a new formulation that’s three times more renewable and 99% biodegradable, using 100% plant-derived ingredients. Better yet, the company has removed the use of fossil-derived chemicals. What’s more, the product is packaged in bottles made from 100% recycled plastic.

The product has hit the shelves in the Gulf region with its Lux brand (also known as Sunlight) and Unilever is now looking to roll it out to other countries.

In September last year, Unilever launched its Clean Future strategy which, at its heart, has the ambition to replace 100% of the carbon derived from virgin fossil fuels in its cleaning and laundry product formulations with renewable or recycled carbon sources instead.

Central to that strategy is what Unilever calls the Carbon Rainbow. This describes how we will replace non-renewable fossil sources of carbon (also known as black carbon) with captured carbon (purple carbon), plants and biological sources (green carbon), marine sources such as algae (blue carbon), and carbon recovered from waste materials (grey carbon).

With the launch of this new formulation, Unilever takes another significant step forward in its Clean Future journey as it provides us with the base into which we can incorporate future technologies such as rhamnolipids. This is a type of surfactant found in nature. It’s 100% renewable and biodegradable, and importantly is also ultra-mild on skin, which sets it apart from other surfactant alternatives.

As Bert Nijhuis, Product Development Director, Home Care says “With this latest innovation, our R&D team has created the optimal combination using 100% naturally derived, renewable cleaning ingredients while giving better performance than the conventional ingredients. This is a great example of the Carbon Rainbow in action – moving away from black carbon-sourced surfactants in favor of green carbon-sourced ones.”