Today, Unilever announced plans to partner with leading mass social movements Global Citizen and Live Earth: Road to Paris, which respectively commit to activating consumers to demand climate action at COP21 and reducing extreme poverty by 2030.
Today, Unilever announced plans to partner with leading mass social movements Global Citizen and Live Earth: Road to Paris, which respectively commit to activating consumers to demand climate action at COP21 and reducing extreme poverty by 2030.
Unilever built the partnerships as part of its brightFuture campaign, which – combined with its Project Sunlight initiative – encourages consumers to take action for a more sustainable future. Through joint efforts with these mass social movements, the CPG giant says it is demonstrating its support for ambitious sustainable development and climate goals this year.
Activity includes:
- Partnership with Live Earth: Road to Paris across the series of global events on June 18, 2015
- Encouraging climate-conscious people to sign the “Take Climate Action Now” pledge
- Helping to build the world’s largest social activism campaign to help address global sustainable development as one of Global Citizen’s major partners.
“2015 is a critical moment in time, an opportunity to agree on a universal agenda that tackles poverty and inequality and to all take action to protect the one planet we have. As a business we can deploy our resources, expertise and scale to help our consumers to take action. Today, we are adding our support for the growing movement of citizens and businesses demanding change,” said Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever, who recently joined 40 other CEOs in signing an open letter urging world leaders to take climate action at COP21.
Live Earth: Road to Paris is a campaign calling on citizens to “Take Climate Action Now,” which launches with a series of global events on June 18. Live Earth co-founders Kevin Wall and former Vice President Al Gore, along with creative director Pharrell Williams, the United Nations and Gore's Climate Reality Project, present global events across all media platforms anchored in Paris and New York, produced by Control Room and executive producer Aaron Grosky.
"Unilever has integrated a forward-looking sustainability strategy into its core business in order to truly impact our global climate challenge,” Wall said. “They are committed to working with their customers and empowering billions of people to be impactful agents of climate change. We could not be more excited to be on the Road to Paris with partners like Unilever that literally pave the way.”
The Live Earth campaign is designed to unify a billion voices worldwide calling on world leaders to take meaningful climate action during December’s United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris, France. Global events will be broadcast across all major media platforms and supported by a yearlong awareness and activation campaign in partnership with Unilever.
Unilever’s concurrent partnership with Global Citizen is a movement to end extreme poverty by 2030. Its newest campaign, “Unlock Your Power,” aims to encourage people to act towards making the new Sustainable Development Goals a reality. Unilever will become a Global Citizen leading partner in the effort to help build the world’s largest social activism campaign.
“The support Unilever has given to Global Citizen will enable us to engage millions of people in the movement to end extreme poverty by 2030,” said Hugh Evans, CEO of The Global Poverty Project. “Their commitment to encouraging people to take action to change the systems and policies that keep people poor is remarkable. Unilever is a true example of a global citizen, and we are honored to be on this journey together.”
Unilever has also been aggressively addressing its own environmental and social challenges this year, achieving zero waste across its North American distribution centers, and making headway on its commitments to improve food security and end deforestation throughout its supply chain.
Published Apr 28, 2015 2pm EDT / 11am PDT / 7pm BST / 8pm CEST