Leading safety and environmental sustainability sciences
The scientists behind our safe and sustainable products
Everyone at Unilever has a part to play in making sure that our products are safe and sustainable and that we continue to reduce our environmental impacts. The team of scientists in our Safety, Environmental & Regulatory Science (SERS) group has a vital role in helping to deliver these commitments.
SERS is a team of industry-leading safety, environmental sustainability and regulatory scientists. They use the latest techniques, deep scientific expertise and an evidence-based approach to ensure that our products are safe for consumers and workers, better for the environment and compliant with regulatory requirements.
Working with teams across Unilever, from the beginning to the end of a product’s life, SERS scientists ensure that safety and sustainability are built into everything we make and do. In addition to this, SERS scientists work with leading experts around the globe to constantly advance the science we use to assess our product innovations of the future.
SERS is part of Unilever’s Research and Development (R&D) function, with a diverse team of about 180 people. SERS scientists use industry-leading approaches to assure the safety, sustainability and compliance of our products. They draw on a wide span of multidisciplinary scientific expertise to carry out robust safety and environmental impact assessments and prepare regulatory dossiers. This includes expertise in consumer, environmental, process and worker safety and regulations, as well as in environmental sustainability. At the heart of our risk and impact assessments is an in-depth understanding of Unilever’s product formulations and knowledge of how people use our products.
SERS covers many different fields of science including microbiology, toxicology (looks at the potential effects an ingredient could have on the body), chemistry, data science & analytics, mathematical modelling, and environmental, sustainability and regulatory science.
Many of SERS’s scientists have international reputations in their field.
Advancing science through partnership
SERS scientists are at the forefront of modern advances in safety and environmental sustainability science, sharing our work and partnering with many other leading experts around the world to continue to advance this science.
SERS scientists partner with leading academic groups, government scientists, other companies, trade associations and NGOs around the world. We publish our research findings in peer-reviewed scientific journals, talk about our research regularly at international scientific conferences, and discuss our approach to safety risk and environmental impact assessment with policy makers, regulators and other authorities. For more details about our safety and environmental sciences, see sers.unilever.com and our video (shown below) that explains our new approaches to safety science.
Watch: Safety without Animal Testing
Our collaborative approach to safety and sustainability science means we can harness the latest scientific evidence and create approaches to assess the product innovations of the future.
Case study: safety without the use of animals
We use a wide range of non-animal approaches to evaluate the safety of our products for consumers, our workers and the environment. We also develop ‘next generation’ safety assessment approaches that do not rely on new animal data.
In September 2015, we announced a major collaboration with the US Environmental Protection Agency to develop ground-breaking, non-animal approaches to better assess the safety of chemicals used in consumer products.
We also partner with more than 90 other scientific groups across the world to develop new, non-animal tools and approaches for assuring the safety of Unilever’s ingredients. In doing so, we use cutting-edge research, including computer modelling, exposure science and mechanistic chemistry.
We were honoured to receive the 2019 Corporate Consciousness Award from the Humane Society of the United States, recognising the impact of our non-animal safety science in replacing animal testing.
We regularly publish and present our research advances and make them available through a unique website, sers.unilever.com that also provides an overview of all of the non-animal safety and environmental sustainability approaches that underpin our assessments.