Dawn dishwashing soap

Dawn dishwashing soap has been running the same campaign for years, all about how they help save wildlife. In their most famous commercial they show their product being used to wash baby ducks and penguins covered in oil from oil spills. And then at the end of the commercial they talk about how much money they are donating to save wildlife. According to the add above, for every bottle you buy a dollar gets donated to wildlife. When you watch the commercial and pay attention to all their advertising dawn comes across as some sort of philanthropic hero and savior of animals and the environment. When in reality quite the opposite is true. First of all Dawn is owned by the company Procter & Gamble which is notorious for their contribution to deforestation in places like Indonesia for palm oil. Second of all Dawn uses triclosan in their dish soap. Triclosan is an antibacterial agent that is known to be toxic to aquatic life, and since it is a cleaning agent it ends up getting washed down the drain and into rivers and streams. It is a chemical environmentalists are wanting to be banned, but companies like P&G won’t comply. So basically Dawn dish soap is greenwashing with the lesser of two evils sin. They use the fact that they donate a very small portion of their profits to wildlife to cover up the horrible chemicals they are releasing into the environment. And the majority of people only recognize the good side of Dawn, and are completely unaware of whats really going on behind the scenes. Images of furry animals that people love constantly mixed in with images of Dawn does exactly what the company wants it to, which is associate Dawn with being green in peoples minds. Unfortunately in Dawn’s case, their greenwashing tactics have worked perfectly.

Natalia Tooley