As oil continues to spew into the Gulf of Mexico and disheartening images of oil-covered birds permeate our national consciousness, at least one commercial lifts our spirits. In a television ad for Dawn soap, a duck waddles by, a fluffy otter splashes, and other happy water creatures are gently cleansed of oil by a pair of rubber-gloved hands. A voice tells us that thousands of animals in oil spills have been saved using the dishwashing liquid made by Dawn, and now our purchase can help. A trip to the local grocery store to buy a cheap bottle of soap can save the life of a furry friend. Dawn, owned by Procter & Gamble, is donating $1 to wildlife-rescue organizations for every special bottle of Dawn soap purchased. The campaign started a year ago but has gotten more attention and a renewed push in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
There's a catch: Each donation has to be "activated." Consumers who buy the bottle have to fill out an online form before the bottle turns into a donation. It's not automatic. Total donations for the two groups receiving the money, the International Bird Rescue Research Center and the Marine Mammal Center, were capped at $500,000, and Proctor & Gamble says it's reached $460,000. Spokesperson Susan Baba says the company now plans to extend its campaign with a new goal of $1 million over two years total.
Consumers may think they are supporting a company that saves animals, but it's not so simple. While the soap is used by some wildlife-rescue organizations to clean animals affected by oil spills, Procter & Gamble is far from a green company: It tests cosmetics on animals, sells consumer products laden with chemicals, and spends millions lobbying against consumer and environmental protections. (There also is some debate over the survival rate of birds covered in oil. A German scientist recently advocated against cleaning the birds at all because less than 1 percent survive, but other scientists say that it's impossible to give a survival rate and that cleaning birds is worth the effort.) This is, as ever, an example of how good Procter & Gamble is at marketing its products: Dawn is just dish soap, but its special characteristics have earned it the loyalty of wildlife-rescue organizations, and so should win yours, too. This is an organization with $79 billion in sales in 2009, 29 percent of which came from generic household products like Dawn whose sales advantage depends entirely on creating the public impression that they are somehow different. The company spends $7 billion a year on advertising and, according to Advertising Age, is the No. 1 advertiser in the U.S.
Procter & Gamble also dominates the wildlife soap donation field. Mark Russell is part of the Gulf team for the International Bird Rescue Research Center and says the center has been using Dawn since the 1970s. After testing different substances, the center found that Dawn met all its criteria for removing oil from animals. The center, while testing other soaps periodically, has been using Dawn since, partly because Proctor & Gamble began donating the dish soap after the center approached the company in the 1980s.
Ironically, the salvation for these birds creates demand for the very thing harming them. Some environmental groups say Dawn is part of the broader problem. It's a petroleum-based product packaged in plastic. Russell says the center often hears calls to test new, greener products, but those calls come at a time of a disaster when testing a new product is impractical. "If another product with the same characteristics but with greener qualities presented itself, we may use it, but it would have to be readily available countrywide," he says.
While individuals may be able to donate a dollar to these worthwhile organizations by buying Dawn, the reality is that Procter & Gamble's profit goes to lobbying against environmental regulations. The company spent more than $4 million in lobbying last year and $1 million in lobbying in the first quarter of this year, fighting efforts to restrict or regulate the household chemicals in its products and to ban animal testing. Though the company does not have to disclose its position on proposed legislation, Procter & Gamble lobbied against a 2009 effort to disclose ingredients in household cleaning products, instead supporting an industry-led voluntary-disclosure effort. It also lobbied against bans in various states on dishwashing detergent containing high levels of phosphorus and fought to delay the bans' implementation.
One of the main issues for the company's public action committee, its lobbying arm, is chemical regulation. The group opposes state and local laws banning chemicals and supports instead "uniform regulations at the federal level, when needed." The company opposed stricter household chemical regulations in the European Union in 2003 and is rated poorly by Greenpeace for the chemical content of its household products. Those chemicals, including ones banned in the EU because they can be harmful to fish and humans, end up in the environment. Animal-rights groups have long called for advocates to boycott Procter & Gamble because it tests cosmetics on animals. In addition, a complaint filed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals against a facility that researched Iams pet food (the brand is owned by Procter & Gamble, but the company did not run the facility) for animal cruelty sparked a Department of Agriculture investigation. It resulted in $33,000 in civil penalties in 2006.
Promoting charity alongside consumerism isn't new territory for Procter & Gamble. In 2009, the company launched a charity-themed Tide bottle, "Loads of Hope," as part of a disaster-relief campaign for victims of Hurricane Katrina. Commercials for the detergent featured survivors talking about what a relief it was to do their laundry. By that time, the company had handled 30,000 loads of laundry for the people of New Orleans.
For Procter & Gamble's part, Baba says getting consumers to register their bottle of Dawn online allows them to learn more about the wildlife organizations and choose whether to donate a larger amount. But donating still requires visiting the website, which means many consumers could be buying the bottles without understanding the extra steps needed to make a donation. Consumers could believe they are helping simply by buying Dawn. One of the goals of this campaign, which started a year ago, is raising consumer awareness for the wildlife-rescue organizations involved. However, it also clearly benefits Proctor & Gamble. Baba would not share the number of bottles shipped to stores or the percentage activated for donations, because she says it is proprietary information. "We will make sure that people who buy bottles are able to activate those bottles," she says.
Other companies, including BP, the oil company responsible for the spill in the Gulf, also promotes a similarly green image and worked hard to present itself as a reformed petroleum company. No longer British Petroleum, it started its "Beyond Petroleum" campaign a decade ago and advertised its renewable-energy efforts. It regularly touts its investments in wind energy (BP owns eight wind farms in the U.S.) and growing solar-energy sales. BP's commercials talk about reducing carbon emissions and moving beyond the use of fossil fuels. This is all despite anti-environmental actions before and leading up to the spill. The company spent $16 million lobbying for more deepwater offshore drilling, making it one of the highest spenders on lobbying in the U.S.
Surely, the organizations partnering with Dawn welcome the donations and attention. But the bigger questions are how much do environmentally questionable companies like Proctor & Gamble profit from disaster, in money or in image, and why do we buy into their "goodwill" campaigns without making them reform their practices.