Rupert Posner, Global Director Sustainability Advocacy – Home Care Unilever is giving the third talk in the current SCItalks series on sustainability on 30 April. Here he talks to Steve Ranger, SCI Editor in Chief about what his talk will cover.
Unilever is working with a broad range of stakeholders – including policymakers, NGOs, industry, academics, and trade associations – to drive a faster transition to more sustainable chemicals.
Lowering the emissions linked to the chemicals it buys is a key part of its Climate Transition Action Plan.
Rupert Posner is head of sustainability advocacy for Unilever’s Home Care business, based in London, UK. He is a climate change and sustainability leader with corporate affairs and strategic communications expertise, experienced in government, large corporate and not-for-profit sectors.
His talk: The role of advocacy in accelerating the transition to more sustainable chemicals will cover why advocacy is needed to support the switch to more sustainable chemicals.
“We need a transformation in the chemicals sector and we can’t do that on our own. The market needs to change, and so we need to use advocacy as a tool to encourage and accelerate that change,” Posner said.
“In the same way that advocacy was effectively used to transform the way that energy is being produced and encouraged the uptake of renewable energy - for example solar and wind - advocacy also needs to be used to encourage a material transition, so to change the ingredients that go into chemicals,” he added.
One of the challenges is this issue is not well understood outside of the small cohort of scientists and researchers that work on it. Policy makers and other stakeholders that drive change are less aware of it.
Advocacy is about understanding what needs to be changed and who changes that and then delivering interventions that will encourage that change to take place, he said.
“It takes time, the challenge is we don’t have as much time as we would like. The science is pretty clear on the scope of emissions reduction that needs to take place,” Posner said.
Rupert Posner’s free SCItalk takes place online on Wednesday 30 April at 4pm. You can sign up for this free online webinar at the link: The role of advocacy in accelerating the transition to more sustainable chemicals
You can see the previous SCItalks in this series on the SCI YouTube channel.
Get the more science and innovation news every month in Chemistry & Industry magazine. You can subscribe to C&I here.
Visit Blog