MANILA, PHILIPPINES – Leading consumer goods company Procter & Gamble (P&G) Philippines premieres the fifth episode of “ACTIVATE: The Global Citizen Movement” rallying citizens to get governments, corporations, organizations and individuals to work together to address ocean plastic pollution. The episode will air globally on October 3, and in the Philippines on October 5, on National Geographic in 172 countries and 43 languages.
“ACTIVATE: The Global Citizen Movement” is a six-part docuseries from P&G and National Geographic, co-produced by Global Citizen and RadicalMedia. It raises awareness around extreme poverty, inequality and sustainability issues to mobilize global citizens to take action and drive meaningful and lasting change.
Each episode delves into a different issue connected to the root causes of extreme poverty, including sustainable sourcing, criminalization of poverty, disaster relief, girls’ education, plastic waste and the global water crisis.
The hour-long episodes feature different stakeholders like Global Citizen, amplifiers, activists, action-takers, corporations, non-profit organizations, government, and individual people whose lives are being changed. Episodes show different celebrity advocates and activists immersing in and amplifying a particular issue. The docuseries is shot across the globe in South Africa, Mexico, the Philippines, Ghana, Nigeria and across the United States. It also highlights what P&G and its brands – Head & Shoulders, Tide, Whisper (Always), Charmin – are doing with many of its long-time partners around the world in addressing these critical issues, including waste management in the Philippines.
The fifth episode of the series focuses on the need for different stakeholders to come together to address ocean plastic pollution. Global Citizen ambassadors and advocates Pharrell Williams and Darren Criss push for governments, corporations and individuals to step up and do their role in solving the ocean plastic waste problem. Shot in different cities in the Philippines, Criss travels and witnesses first-hand the impact of plastic waste on people living in poverty and calls on global citizens to urge their mayors to commit their cities to zero-waste futures. Experts describe the impact of plastic pollution on people in developing countries and the ways different stakeholders, including brands like Head & Shoulders, can work together to solve the problem.
Inspiring Action in the Philippines
The “ACTIVATE: Ending Plastic Pollution” episode shows the critical role of multi-sectoral collaboration to start solving the complex problem of solid waste, where all must play their part and the active participation of all citizens is vital. Organizations like World Vision and industry groups mobilize communities and create livelihood, companies continue to invest in more sustainable packaging solutions, government needs to implement effective waste management systems and infrastructure, and proper waste segregation and disposal must begin at home as the each individual’s responsibility.
P&G has already taken a step in addressing the growing beach plastic waste. Head & Shoulders, the world’s no. 1 anti-dandruff shampoo, has created shampoo bottles made with post-consumer resins to reduce its eco-footprint. Since 2017, the brand has manufactured over 1 million bottles with recycled beach plastic.
Safeguard, P&G’s no. 1 anti-bacterial soap brand in the Philippines, is ditching plastic overwraps used for its bar soap multi-packs to use recycled paper board cartons. This packaging change alone will reduce up to 8,500 kilometers worth of plastic packaging waste — approximately 1,000 times the length of Boracay island.
P&G and long-time partner World Vision Philippines are executing the second phase of “Pag-Asa sa Basura,” a school-based plastic collection program aimed at educating students and families, incentivizing their efforts and executing proper plastic waste collection. The waste collection and recycling program will be implemented in several schools across Metro Manila, starting with the below sea-level city of Malabon. To date, nearly half a million sachets and almost 150,000 bottles have been collected under the program.
P&G is also a member of the Philippine Alliance for Recycling Materials Sustainability (PARMS), a multi-stakeholder partnership led by the National Solid Waste Management Commission. It is a multi-sectoral coalition of corporations in the fast-moving goods sector, the Philippine Chamber for Commerce and Industry, and the Philippines Plastics Industry Association and environmental NGOs such as the Zero Waste Recycling Movement and the Philippine Business for Environment. PARMS is premised on developing and implementing a holistic and comprehensive program to increase resource recovery and reduce landfill dependence, leading toward “zero-waste.” PARMS and its members is investing to build a facility that will address the existing need to recycle sachets and other flexible plastics. The planned facility will employ clean technology that can process more than 200 metric tons of waste per year, converting these into products like pallets, school chairs and other high value plastic products.
“P&G and our brands are committed to using our voice and broad reach to create and inspire meaningful change that benefits the environment, consumers and our business. We believe in being a force for good and a force for growth. We can amplify and accelerate this through multi-sectoral partnerships such as those we have with World Vision, PARMS, National Geographic, Global Citizen and Terracycle to name a few,” says P&G Philippines General Manager Rafael Fajardo.
Activating Partnerships
The ACTIVATE Partnership is a shared commitment National Geographic, P&G and Global Citizen have made to leverage their collective influence, audience and scale to both raise wide awareness and inspire everyone to take action. It also illustrates experimentation with new content and distribution models, and new ways to mobilize viewers across the world.
“At National Geographic, we want to tell stories that matter, and we are proud to work with P&G and Global Citizen who share our values. Through the ACTIVATE docuseries, we aim to raise awareness and drive action on some of the world’s most pressing issues among our audience,” says Jude Turcuato, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Fox Networks Group Philippines.
For more than 10 years, Global Citizen has been working to defeat extreme poverty through advocacy and citizen engagement, motivating businesses, organizations and governments to make financial commitments and policy changes to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and eradicate extreme poverty by 2030. At the same time, P&G has a rich history of leveraging its brands and its people as a force for good to make the world a better place by helping to solve critical issues related to girls’ education, clean drinking water, disaster relief, environmental sustainability and inequality. For more than 130 years, National Geographic has utilized its powerful imagery and impactful storytelling to help audiences around the globe understand the world around them so that, in turn, they care more about it.
ACTIVATE Episode 5 will premiere in the Philippines on National Geographic on October 4, 2019, Friday at 9:00 pm. For more information, visit https://www.nationalgeographic.com/activate/.
