In 2005, at the intersection of having just watched Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and receiving data that showed the brand she worked on could drive significant carbon emission reductions, Procter & Gamble (P&G) Chief Sustainability Officer Virginie Helias — then working for P&G detergent brand Ariel — found her calling.

Inspired by the movie and its message on the gravity of climate change, Helias — a CES® 2021 speaker — launched the P&G Ariel campaign Turn to 30, which encouraged consumers to wash clothes in lower temperatures, reducing their environmental footprint and their energy bills.

It was the success of early campaigns like Turn to 30 that led Virginie Helias to her title today — the events prompted Helias to lobby P&G leadership to create a sustainability director role.

“[My single mission] was to embed sustainability into everything we were doing, all business practices, all innovation, brand building, and really, the culture of the company,” Helias said in a Forbes article.

Championing Sustainability

Breakthrough products such as P&G’s Head & Shoulders’ recyclable shampoo bottles made of recycled beach plastic inspired record-level interest from consumers, further accelerating P&G’s ambition to be a force for good by leveraging the power of its brands to inspire and enable responsible consumption.

Since then, consumer expectations and preferences for brand purpose have only increased. Consumers want to align with companies seen as good and are putting their purchase power and support behind companies driving positive change. In fact, 81% of consumers view brands “doing what is right” as a major consideration for purchasing decisions.

Purpose is now a key selling point for brands — and P&G is on a mission to make sustainable lifestyles irresistible for consumers and companies.

“We have an opportunity to use our voice responsibly,” said Marc Pritchard, Chief Brand Officer of Procter and Gamble (P&G) during the P&G C Space Storyteller session at CES 2020.

Driving Change Together

With its global reach, deep consumer knowledge, commitment to innovation and supply chain capabilities, P&G has a unique ability to drive positive change in the world — but the company knows it cannot do it alone. Collaboration across industries and among private and public institutions is necessary to create real, scalable change.

P&G actively engages industry, governments, civil society groups and coalitions to challenge thinking and forge new paths at the scale and speed needed for meaningful change.

For example, P&G led a coalition of companies to solve one of the largest obstacles facing recycling — ineffective sorting at material recovery facilities that impacts the quality of recycled material. Holy Grail is an intelligent sorting technology that uses digital watermarks embedded in packaging. The result is faster, more accurate sorting, which leads to better recycling.

P&G Makes Sustainability Irresistible at CES 2021

At the all-digital CES 2021, P&G will demonstrate how it is leveraging groundbreaking tech innovations and deep consumer knowledge to help solve some of the most pressing global challenges, including water scarcity, waste and climate change.

Virginie Helias will be speaking at the all-digital CES 2021, exploring the importance of sustainability as a business imperative and the importance of protecting our planet, our common home.