Unilever Pilot Turns Unwanted Flowers into Fragrances
Unilever - together with the University of Nottingham and Bridge Farm Group - is trialling turning unwanted flowers into fragrances for its products.
This initiative is a sustainability win-win for Unilever and Bridge Farm. Tonnes of flowers every year currently go to waste because of quality and demand issues. Using these unsellable flowers to extract oils from for use in Unilever’s products reduces this waste.
Unilever is also working with the University of Nottingham on a more energy efficient extraction process - incorporating ultrasonication - that is also 40% faster, taking as little as 20 minutes to extract the ingredients and compounds.
The FMCG giant is exploring other opportunities for extracting ingredients from waste, which could open up new sustainable product sourcing paths.
By Jack Stratten, Head of Trends at retail trends agency Insider Trends.
