Friday, October 15, 2010

Writing to Unilever Philippine's Chito Macapagal regarding plastic pollution

After some searching, I was able to find a media contact for Unilever Philippines.  It wasn't exactly on the Unilever Philippines website media contacts page, but appeared as a fragment on one of the Google search results.  I was also surprised to discover that the Unilever Media Contact page didn't contain a media contact page for the Philippines.



In anycase, I was able to fire off a letter to Mr. Chito Macapagal whom I assume must be in a Corporate Communications capacity.

Dear Mr. Chito Macapagal,
It was rather difficult looking for a way to contact you through e-mail.  Apparently, the link leading to your contact page on the Unilever website had been taken out or replaced.  Moreover, after looking, I found out that no listing for media contacts for the Philippines appears on the contact page.
I was rather lucky enough to find a fragment of the Unilever Philippines Media Contact page and am now able to write to you.
I realize that Unilever Philippines, being firmly committed to helping preserve the environment, must know the impact made by the plastic packaging of its products.
I want to know more about what Unilever is doing to minimize the impact of the plastic packaging of its products on the environment and therefore, would like answers to the following questions.
I would like to know, how many Unilever Philippines products have plastic sachet/pouch variants or are packaged in plastic sachets? 
What are these products? Are the plastic sachets that you use recyclable or biodegradable?
How many of these plastic sachet products are sold in the Philippines?
How do you make sure that the discarded sachets do not end up polluting the environment? 
How do you make sure that they don't end up clogging water ways or the seas? 
Do you have a retrieval system for the sachets that your company uses to package its products?
Moreover, I would also like to ask if Unilever is a participant to the US "Plastics Disclosure Project" of the Clinton Global Initiative, which takes its cue from the Carbon Disclosure Project's carbon and water program.  The project aims to come out with a comprehensive report on every company's plastic usage and encourage the world's investment community to help reduce plastic use, redesign their products and identify programs where money can be saved when it comes to plastic.

I hope my e-mail doesn't bounce back because I really dread having to send snail mail.

After writing to Unilever, I intend to send other companies which also produce products in plastic sachet packaging the same questions.

No comments:

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...