05 Aug 2024
Local Greenpeace volunteers stickered beauty company Dove’s plastic bottles on sale in the St Albans branch of Morrisons with the message ‘Stop Dove’s plastic pollution’.
They also added shelf inserts asking customers to pledge to ‘Ditch Dove’ and if they knew that Dove’s owner Unilever is one of the world’s biggest plastic polluters. These shelf inserts feature a photo of Dove plastic waste found in Manila Bay in the Philippines last year. They also placed inserts into magazines such as Grazia and Cosmopolitan with the same shocking message.
A Greenpeace volunteer from St Albans said: “I stickered Dove’s products in Morrisons to show customers that instead of Real Beauty, Dove’s products are actually causing Real Harm. I stand in solidarity with women and girls across the world whose health is being damaged by Dove’s plastic pollution and call on Dove and Unilever to phase out the single-use plastic that’s blocking rivers and drains, causing flooding and spreading disease from India to Indonesia. Will you join us and pledge to Ditch Dove?”
Since Greenpeace launched their campaign against Dove at the end of 2023 a massive 140,000 people have signed up to their open letter calling on Dove to take action.
A Greenpeace spokesperson said: “Dove is not listening to their customers. September is the 20th anniversary of the launch of Dove’s flagship Real Beauty advertising campaign. They’re celebrating 20 years of toxic trickery – so Greenpeace volunteers across the world are getting hundreds of thousands of people to pledge to ditch all Dove products this summer.
“Dove likes to boast about its commitment to Real Beauty, but its plastic waste is causing Real Harm to women and girls. Dove and its parent company Unilever are refusing to move away from toxic single-use plastics. Unilever is one of the top three global plastic polluters and 99.8% of their plastic products are single use. These plastic products earn them billions annually but the real cost of pollution is paid by communities far from their corporate headquarters.
“Plastic waste from products like theirs is choking rivers and blocking drains, including in Indonesia and the Philippines, causing floods and spreading harmful diseases. Dove sells 12,000 impossible to recycle plastic sachets every single minute. What’s more, the emissions caused by extracting oil and gas to make new plastic are driving runaway climate change.
“But Dove and Unilever can play a role in the solutions. The UN Global Plastics Treaty is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to cut single-use plastic production. Dove and Unilever are one of the key companies that could make or break a deal to solve the plastics crisis. They need to commit to phasing out single-use plastics and moving to reusable packaging, and call for the UN Treaty to contain a legally-binding target to cut plastic production.”
Pledge to Ditch Dove at – act.gp/ditchdove
