Unilever’s Project Sunlight - Is There Really a Ray of Hope Here?

You take a famous celebrity, babies and play upon the emotions of people by recording the reactions of to-be parents. Seems like a pretty good recipe for an advertising campaign. What do you get after mixing all these ingredients? You get thousands of likes on social networking sites, more than 3 million views for the ad and still counting.

So, what exactly is this “Project Sunlight”? The website claims that it is a movement towards sustainability, a movement that has already started.

But I see no movement here. What does Unilever exactly plan on doing? It would have been better if they would have stated their goals on the website clearly. So, they plan on helping 2 million children through partnerships. They plan on providing school meals, improved hygiene and clean & safe drinking water. This will be done with the help of the World Food Programme, Save the Children and UNICEF. The question here is how are they going about their goals, where is the clarity on that? We all are waiting to hear some answers.

Unilever has also made pledges like using 100 percent cage-free eggs by 2020. They have also stated that their Lipton tea products will come from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms by 2018.

Will all these good things they plan on doing override the unethical stuff they’ve been doing all these years. Will people ever forget about the rain forests Unilever keeps on destroying? Unilever purchases palm oil in large quantities from suppliers who are responsible for the depletion of rain forests. What about the association of Unilever with unethical companies like Wilmar?

Unilever also uses harmful substances like BHT (butylated hydroxytoluene) in its products. BHT is a toxic carcinogen which also causes many allergies and respiratory problems.

Unilever is responsible for destroying Indonesian villages and contributes majorly towards Indonesia being the third largest emitter of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Closer home, the Indian subsidiary Hindustan Unilever is responsible for harming Tamil Nadu by dumping highly toxic mercury waste.

All this boils down to one simple thing. You can’t just make a fancy advertisement and tell people to buy your stuff to save the environment. Yes, there are people out there who are asking: How do we save the environment by stocking up on soaps, deodorant sprays, fairness creams et al.

Mumbai BEST / NMMT Bus Services

Why don’t these AC bus drivers halt at the stops where they are supposed to? And then the authorities say that AC buses are going into losses.  There are passengers out there, but these id**ts are not ready to halt for us.

And when you somehow manage to get into one of these buses by standing in the middle of the road without being run over by a passing vehicle, you may feel you are lucky. But the real question is whether all the effort was worth it? The answer is - No.

You wait for hours on end in the heat or rain and what you get in return is nowhere close to the whopping amount you pay for the journey. And just in case you are planning to catch up on that new movie and decide on travelling by an air conditioned bus, your bus tickets may even cost you more than your movie.

For those of you who always seem to hit the snooze button a couple of times and don’t find the time for a shower before leaving for office early in the morning, just get into one of these AC buses in monsoon. The leak in the roof will keep you feeling fresh all day long. If you have travelled by an AC bus in summer then you must be aware that it does nothing to keep the heat out. There’s always a gap near the window or some other place to keep reminding you of how hot it is outside and how lucky you are to be sitting there.

Lastly apart from the regular strikes, there are these ever so important holidays, like Janmashtami last month. So if you had a day off and planned to go meet that old aunt after long, if you thought of doing so by travelling in an AC bus then all your plans went down the drain.

So what should the authorities do to serve their passengers better? There’s a long way to go. Why not start with following simple rules like not talking on the phone while driving, halting at designated bus stops etc.

So… Finally here I am… Writing this...

Having created this blog for quite some time, I kept telling myself that I’m going to post soon enough. But other things always took precedence over this mundane activity. So, how is it that I finally came to write here?

It all began one fine day while I was sitting in office and discussing some insignificant stuff with a colleague of mine (if you’re reading this, yes, it’s you Mr. +Shivprasad Phadake). That’s when we started googling random names just to see what search results came up.

It was fun whiling away those precious minutes, until the moment my colleague decided to Google my name. Sure enough, Google knew who I was and another person from the hotel industry with the same name as me. There it was - my blog, along with all my social profiles, on the second page of Google search results.

So, here I am, finally posting this. Yet a good 30-40 days have passed since all this happened. Hope to keep posting here on a regular basis now that I have started with it. Till then, Cheers!!