Famous for its ubiquitous brands, P&G is now tackling issues focused around extreme poverty, inequality and sustainability. Learn how the effects of small actions are not always obvious, but by working together specific and tangible outcomes are achieved. Here are just a few of the things P&G is doing in the world today.
Access to safe drinking water.
Though it’s something we in the developed world take for granted, clean drinking water is one of mankind’s greatest needs. Access to potable water is a serious challenge for 844 million people worldwide. Without this most basic ingredient for sustaining life and preventing disease, many children die every day, mostly in developing countries.
Working in partnership with a number of leading global children’s charities, P&G Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program (CSDW) is saving and transforming lives by purifying water. In the early 2000s, P&G’s laundry scientists began researching how to recycle dirty laundry water in water-stressed regions, leading to the invention of a powdered technology that separates dirt and contaminates from the water to effectively clean and disinfect it. With only a bucket, a stick, and a clean cloth, P&G water purifier packets purify 10 liters (2.5 gallons) of dirty, potentially deadly, water into clean, drinkable water in only 30 minutes.
As the CSDW Program enters its 16th year, it has already achieved its 2020 goal of providing 15 billion liters of clean drinking water to people in need all over the world with the help of partner NGOs and these life-saving packets.
Growing futures by saving forests.
By buying responsibly-sourced paper products, we can all protect the planet and reduce global poverty, creating better lives for the people who live and work in some of the world’s largest and most endangered forests. We need forests to stay forests – and not just for the carbon benefits.
Responsibly sourced paper products help protect forests, that’s why Charmin supports the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the Rainforest Alliance. They work to ensure that forests are harvested responsibly and address social, economic, and environmental needs of forests.
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P&G knows that responsible sourcing is key to protecting the environment and fighting global poverty. They work with over 40,000 suppliers worldwide to produce the responsibly sourced produces used by five billion people every day.
Restoring dignity with laundry.
For nearly 50,000 families faced with unthinkable loss, a sense of dignity, normalcy, and empowerment has come through a surprising source. P&G is supporting families in crisis from natural disasters, homelessness, and poverty by doing what a great friend would do: their laundry.
In just the past couple of years in the U.S. alone, natural disasters are increasing in frequency and severity, leaving many families totally devastated. Through its Global Disaster and Mobile relief programs, P&G is providing those effected by disaster with necessities when and where they are most needed.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, P&G created The Tide Loads of Hope mobile laundry program, offering a mobile laundromat where survivors, first responders, and volunteers could bring their clothes to be washed, dried, and returned to them for free. Since then, in the wake of devastating floods in Texas, wildfires in California, and hurricanes along the East Coast, the program has done more than 68,000 loads of laundry across the U.S. and Canada.
Breaking down barriers to build opportunity and self-esteem.
Every day, all over the world, millions of girls miss school because they lack the information and resources they need to navigate something totally natural, yet very challenging: menstruation.
One of the greatest strides in global development in recent years has been a focus on opening the doors of education, work, and leadership to girls and women, particularly in developing countries. Yet all over the globe, girls still approach puberty without the knowledge, tools, and support they need to grow up feeling confident, an issue identified as ‘period poverty.’ Fortunately, Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) programs are creating truly revolutionary change.
P&G’s Always, Whisper, and Orkid brands believe in the responsibility of removing stigma and challenges surrounding menstruation. Their Confidence Education Program is transforming cultural attitudes as well as breaking down barriers for girls in the most practical ways, through education and supplying menstrual products. This program currently reaches over 18 million girls in more than 70 countries every year, offering the kind of life-skills and confidence education that increases girls’ knowledge, influence, and voice.
Recycling and reusing to rescue the oceans.
With half a billion more people on the planet than we had fifteen years ago, plastic use has risen dramatically, and it's set to increase even more over the next decade. Today, only fourteen percent of global plastic packaging is collected for recycling. Unless we act now, in just over 30 years, there will be more plastics by weight in our oceans than fish.
For over a decade, P&G has partnered with TerraCycle, a global recycling company on a mission to eliminate waste. They’ve recently expanded their partnership to engage with thousands of volunteers and hundreds of non-profit organizations, working to collect plastic waste from beaches, oceans, lakes, river worldwide. This effort has produced the world’s first recyclable shampoo bottle for Head & Shoudlers, made with up to 25% recycled beach plastic, diverting more than six tons of plastic that could have otherwise ended up in the oceans.
Fighting racial bias by talking about it.
It’s a subject as sensitive as it is imperative to address: the pervasive but sometimes subtle, unconscious biases that inform personal and institutional decisions, perpetuating injustice and inequality in our society. As the world’s largest advertiser, P&G is making a conscious effort to wake us up and change our minds about a group that’s been the subject of so much bias in our culture: men of color.
Cultural stereotypes affect how people see themselves and how others see them as well, including police officers, judges, juries, teachers, employers, and landlords. Not only are men of color not seeing themselves in media and advertising, our society is seeing them in ways that are not reflective of who they truly are.
To inspire change, P&G has created a visionary campaign geared towards more positively and accurately reflecting men of color in roles that go beyond star athletes or musicians. “The Look” calls out racial bias directly, inspiring us all to begin an uncomfortable but long-overdue cultural conversation. Through conversation we can get to understanding, and from understanding comes action that helps bias become a thing of the past.
