CSR Departments are redundant, Unilever CMO

CSR Departments are redundant; Unilever Chief Marketing Officer, Keith Weed told the annual Marketing Society Conference in London.

Weed said brands should weave CSR into their practices across the company, and that stand-alone CSR departments are an “add-on,” Marketing magazine reports.

Weed added: “The only sustainable growth is consumer-demanded growth. Clearly, in a resourcefully strained world we need to think about environmental and social responsibility.”

He said the company plans to focus its growth efforts heavily on sanitation products because of the projected growth in urban slums.

Weed also said that the manufacture of Unilever products only contributes three percent of the products’ lifetime greenhouse gas emissions, compared to 26 percent for the raw material stage and 68 percent for product use.