Creating a happier and healthier planet, one lick at a time

Streets was founded in the 1920s by Edwin (Ted) Street –

Australia’s first ice cream hero. Ted began by hand churning frozen custards in his back shed which he would sell to neighbours along with sweets, cakes and lemonade. As popularity of his sweet treats grew, Ted started using a cart and means all Streets ice cream wrappers can be recycled at any Soft then a one horse-power motorbike to transport and sell ice creams. Today, Streets ice creams are made at a big factory in Minto and sold throughout Australia and New Zealand. On any given day, we make around 200,000 litres of ice cream which is equivalent to filling a couple of backyard pools.

Streets has always had purpose at its core and our founders were beacons of this. Ted and his wife Daisy gave away more than $2 million to local communities, retirement homes, hospitals and schools. As a Unilever brand, Streets is committed to making sustainable living commonplace. We want to do more good for our society and planet – not just less harm. We are guided by the Unilever Compass and our ‘Future Foods’ initiative  – our global plan to be a force for good in food. Here are just some of the ways we’re bringing this to life in Australia and New Zealand

Globally, we have committed to halve food waste by 2025

Each year, we rescue around 300 tonnes of ice cream during the production process. What do we mean by ‘rescue’? Well, throughout the process of making ice cream, we accumulate ‘leftovers’ of ice cream mix. Previously, the majority of this leftover ice cream was thrown out. But our innovative team came up with a way to rescue this perfectly good leftover mix by blending it with other ingredients to create an equally delicious 100% of the paper and board packaging used for our locally flavour!

For ice cream that cannot be rescued, we either send it to a piggery as stock feed or to an anaerobic digestion facility where it is converted into renewable energy and nutrient-rich fertiliser. While we don’t use a lot of palm oil in our ice creams, the palm. By doing so, we save over 3,000 tonnes of ice cream waste from going to landfill every year.

Ensuring our ingredients are sustainably sourced

In 2013, the Australian Dairy Industry was the first in the world to be recognised as sustainable, based on a review of current industry practices against Unilever’s Sustainable Agricultural code.

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.

made products is sustainably sourced, we use a mixture of recycled and virgin boards which are sourced from sustainable forests. Oil that we do use comes from traceable, certified sustainable sources. For more than 15 years, Unilever has been at the forefront of driving industry-wide change to ensure a sustainable future for palm oil, you can read more about this here - Sustainable and deforestation-free palm oil.

Reducing emissions

In January 2020, Unilever Australia and New Zealand switched to 100% renewable electricity to power all of our operations. As a result of making this switch, each year we’ll reduce our greenhouse emissions by at least 30,840 tonnes of CO2, each year. That’s equivalent to the emissions generated by powering more than 3,600 Australian homes or 6,600 cars annually.

We also know that our ice cream freezer cabinets contribute to our greenhouse gas footprint so in 2004, we started pioneering the use of hydrocarbon refrigerants in our freezers. Since then, we have been reducing the carbon and energy footprint of our freezers worldwide, engaging customers on our progress and driving a shift in industry. To date we have installed over 55,000 greener freezers in Australia and New Zealand, so far switching over 85% of all Streets freezers in the region.

We also know that reducing dairy intake is a critical way of reducing emissions, so we’re accelerating the availability of dairy free options of Magnum and Weis.

Making our ice creams responsibly delicious

As part of our Future Foods initiative, we’re ensuring our products are Responsibly Delicious – with a focus on both taste and goodness. That’s why we’ve committed to ensure 95% of our packaged ice creams contain less than 22g of sugar, and 250 Kcal per serving, by 2025. This is in addition to our commitment to our children’s ice creams, which have been capped at 110 Kcal since 2014.

We’re also innovating to give Australian’s and New Zealanders portion-controlled options and we recently launched mini-sized Weis bars and our mini Cornetto range.