Last year, Unilever announced packaging reduction targets and initiatives for their Dove brand of personal care products, with an overall goal of lessening the use of 20,500 tons of virgin plastic a year. As part of that effort, Dove now uses bottles made from 100% recycled plastic, something they wished to highlight in a new promotional campaign, which included installing an uncommon vending machine in New York’s Grand Central Terminal.
Dove’s “Proud Of What We’re Made Of” installation, created with agency New Creatures, invited folks passing by to deposit their used plastic in exchange for a bottle of Dove Body Wash in its new recycled plastic packaging. In other words, your exchanged plastic gets recycled, and you get a little something for it, which, you know, isn’t a terrible tradeoff. The installation itself was built using wood and aluminum and gets powered by a lithium-ion battery pre-charged using solar energy.
This campaign is a departure from Dove’s usual body-positive theme and the first instance of a sustainability-themed experiential promotion for the brand. It is also part of parent company Unilever’s overall corporate goal of reducing virgin plastic packaging in half by 2025, as well as collecting and processing more plastic than it sells.
“The impact we know we can make to the totality of our environmental footprint is huge,” Amy Stepanian, marketing director, Dove told Adweek. “We’re excited to be digging into an area that is important to consumers as well.”
