CREATING A HAPPIER PLANET, ONE LICK AT A TIME

Streets has always had purpose at its core. Our founders - Ted Street and his wife Daisy – were beacons of this, donating more than $2 million to local communities, retirement homes, hospitals and schools.

As a Unilever brand, Streets strives to continue our founders’ legacy through our commitment to make sustainable living commonplace. We want to do more good for our society and planet, not just less harm.

We take this very seriously and we’re really proud that Unilever Australia and New Zealand is a Certified B Corporation – this means we’ve been independently verified for going beyond business as usual to meet high standards of social and environmental performance.

For ice cream specifically, we have global targets for the areas where we can have the most impact -  Cabinets, Cows, Communities & Crops, and Circularity.

 

Cabinets

When it comes to ice cream, one of our challenges is reducing greenhouse gas emissions from our freezers. These account for 10% of our value chain greenhouse gas footprint.

Many freezers contain hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerants. Although freezers are designed to keep refrigerants sealed inside, they can be harmful if released.

That’s why in 2004, Unilever scientists started pioneering the use of freezers with natural hydrocarbon refrigerants. These freezers are environmentally safe, and they demand less energy. Across Australia and New Zealand, 90% of our freezers now contain natural hydrocarbon refrigerants and we have an ambition to reach 100% by 2026.

Globally, we’re also trialling “warming up” our ice cream freezers from the industry standard -18°C to -12°C. By warming up our freezers, our aim is to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions from our freezers by 20% to 30% per freezer. This would be a huge step towards achieving our global ambition of net zero emissions across our value chain by 2039. You can read more about this here.

 

Cows

Another focus for us is reducing emissions from the dairy sector. From looking at reducing cow burps with red seaweed to heating homes with manure, our global team is piloting new regenerative agriculture projects to lower emissions from our dairy supply chain. You can read more about this here.

We also know that using less dairy is a critical way of cutting emissions, so we’re expanding our portfolio of dairy-free and plant-based options across our brands, including Magnum, Twister and Golden Gaytime.

 

Community & Crops

Streets has always been at the centre of community, and we want to make sure our products are responsibly delicious. We’re striving to ensure that 95% of our packaged ice creams contain no more than 22g of sugar and 250 Kcal per serving, by 2025. This is in addition to the commitment we’ve had in place since 2014 to cap our children’s ice creams at a maximum of 12g sugar and 110 Kcal per serve. We’re also innovating to give Australians and New Zealanders portion-controlled options with our mini-sized Weis bars and mini-Magnum range.

Unilever is dedicated to maintaining the highest standards of ethical and responsible marketing practices for children.

Streets is also committed to ensuring our ingredients are sustainably sourced. Since 2012, we’ve purchased Rainforest Alliance Certified sustainably sourced cocoa for the chocolate coating in our Australian-manufactured Magnum ice cream range. All of the sticks used in our locally made ice creams are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council as being sustainably sourced, and 100% of the paper and board packaging used for our locally made products is sustainably sourced. To learn more about our commitment to sustainable and regenerative sourcing, head here.

 

Circularity

Unilever has a bold ambition to end plastic pollution through reduction, circulation, and collaboration.

Our plastic goals focus on the areas where we believe we can have the most impact. Reducing our virgin plastic use and developing solutions for hard-to-recycle flexible plastic, like our ice cream wrappers.

Unilever is a founding signatory of the National Plastics Recycling Scheme which aims to provide Australians a convenient way to recycle their soft plastics.

You can read more about our plastic goals and progress here.