This week, P&G’s Bounty paper products line is wrapping up their 2-month “Make a Clean Difference” cause marketing campaign, according to a P&G company news release. The campaign paired Bounty with the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation and the Hands On Network to answer what the campaign’s toolkit describes as “…the call from President Obama for Americans to volunteer in the community” and organized over 1,000 volunteers to clean-up schools in a handful of cities around the US. When it comes to wiping up a cause marketing mess, Bounty’s not exactly the “quicker picker upper”.
The Numbers
As part of the campaign, Bounty made a $10,000 donation to ArtWorks Cincinnati, in addition to programmatic work done to develop classroom curriculum and promotion of the effort. If monetary donations were made to Rush Philanthropic or individual schools, it was not disclosed. And just for the record, the New York Times reports that Proctor and Gamble spent $46.9 million to advertise Bounty last year.
Speaking of Messes
This is one cause campaign dripping with irony that no paper towel can absorb. While, yes, paper towels are used to clean up household messes (in fact, it’s no surprise that Bounty encourages you to make messes so they can help you clean them up), our domestic messes pale in comparison to the environmental mess caused by paper products like Bounty paper towels, which make up 40% of trash in U.S. landfills.
Consider this double-decker combo of irony and inauthenticity: a portion of Bounty’s own curriculum developed for the “Make a Clean Difference” campaign champions recycling efforts in schools. Come on, P&G, really?
Rethinking The Stance on “Clean”
Better for P&G to save their precious fraction of a penny they so dutifully invested in this “cause” campaign and rethink their approach to their stance on “clean”. Even though paper towels and toilet paper are two of the largest environmental offenders in this country, most of us use them as part of our daily lives. There are ways to mitigate some of the environmental impact by making changes in raw materials and processing that P&G would be well-advised to consider.
Recycled vs. Virgin Wood
Bounty is made using 100% virgin wood. A more environmentally friendly option is recycled post-consumer materials. According to Greenseal.org,
If all paper towels were made with 100% recycled materials, approximately 1 million tons of used paper would be kept out of our waste stream.
The recommended input for paper towels is 40% postconsumer waste.
Bleaching
All Bounty paper towel products are bleached. Again from Greenseal.org,
Paper towels are sometimes bleached with elemental chlorine (chlorine gas), which causes the release of chlorinated compounds, such as dioxins and furans, which are powerful carcinogens and mutagens. These compounds adversely affect immune systems and reproductive systems and are harmful to aquatic life and wildlife.
There is a continuum between bleached to unbleached paper towels, including PCF (process chlorine free) and ECF (elemental chlorine free).
Central Core
The central core around which the paper towel is wrapped is another area upon which manufacturers can improve by switching to 100% recycled fiber.
Better Use of P&G’s Marketing Dollars
If P&G truly wanted to take a stab at an authentic campaign for its Bounty brand and set an example for consumers and their families, how about introducing a line of paper towels to their existing line of 6(!) paper towel products that took some steps toward addressing, I don’t know…maybe ONE of the environmental aspects addressed above? To date, the only glance in this direction from P&G is their new Huge Roll that packs more paper towels on a single cardboard core, although you have to dig pretty deep into the Bounty website to read anything about this environmental benefit.
To Really Own “Clean”
Please, P&G, spare us the “Do as I say, not as I do” cause campaigns and put your marketing smarts to work in addressing something that would have a lasting impact on our families. Take a serious look at how you can provide us with more sustainable products and then help to educate us about what we can do in our own homes. If you truly want to become a champion of “clean” in our homes, it’s gonna take more than a surface swipe at the definition.
Thanks for the insightful post, Megan. It often rings hollow to hear brands who spend tens (or hundreds) of millions of dollars in order to change people’s minds (in order to buy their product instead of the competition) then speak out of the other side of their mouth and say that they can’t/won’t make more sustainable products because ‘the consumer doesn’t want it.’
After all, the consumer wasn’t clamoring for the ‘quicker picker upper’ until Bounty put hundreds of millions of dollars into that awareness.
Bounty does seem to have some issues with reconciling their corporate efforts with their messaging. Here’s to hoping the two get aligned and improved–and cleanly!