Safe water stance

I would like to respond to your article regarding P&G’s Children’s Safe Drinking Water programme (MW 24 September), which questioned why we don’t talk more about this fantastic programme.

This week we publish our 11th annual Sustainability Report, which provides an update on our Children’s Safe Drinking Water programme, which is focused on reducing sickness and death resulting from drinking contaminated water. Our 2012 commitment, announced at last week’s Clinton Global Initiative, is to provide more than 4 billion litres of clean drinking water, saving 20,000 lives. I am delighted to say we are well on our way – since 2007 we have delivered 930 million litres of clean water, saving over 5,200 lives.

Our PUR technology is an amazing innovation developed by P&G in Newcastle, which enables people anywhere in the world to purify dirty water in a simpler, more affordable and convenient way. PUR is a powdered mixture that removes pathogenic micro-organisms and suspended matter, making previously contaminated water clean. Because the PUR sachets are much smaller and easier to ship than plastic water bottles, anyone anywhere in the world can easily use it. This has enabled P&G to support the recent disaster in the Philippines by deploying over 450,000 sachets of PUR (enough to treat 4.5 million litres of water) to the flood victims.

The Children’s Safe Drinking Water programme is the focal philanthropic programme of P&G’s overall Live, Learn & Thrive initiative. Through Live, Learn & Thrive we have so far helped 135 million children get off to a healthy start, receive access to education and build skills for life.

If you would like further information about PUR or our environmental goals and progress, please contact me on 01932 896306, or go to www.pg.com/sustainability

Kirstie Hawkes
Sustainability affairs manager
P&G UK and Ireland