Sustainable shower sensations

We make some of the world's best-known products for showering, and bathing. But the hot water our consumers use to enjoy our products creates a substantial greenhouse gas footprint.

In the drive to halve the environmental impact of our products, finding ways to reduce the amount of heated water consumers use is crucial.

We are looking to open innovation to help us: working with partners who have technical or design innovations that could improve the cleaning power of our products at lower temperatures, or reduce the amount of time a consumer spends in the shower – without reducing their pleasure.

Small actions really could make a big difference in this field – because billions of people use our cleaning products every day. Cutting shower times by one minute a day for 200 million households in the US alone would save 26 billion gallons of water and 1.3 million tonnes of carbon.

To meet our challenge, we need to reduce the overall impact of heated water associated with the use of our products while ensuring that consumers continue to enjoy effective cleansing and a satisfying sensory experience. This means:

• reducing shower times, and/or reducing water usage

• generating warm water more efficiently

We have some ideas for areas where innovation could meet this challenge:

• chemicals, formulations, ingredients or solvents which enhance or accelerate the cleaning process

• improved foaming agents

• modified shower designs

• combinations of new products with new shower devices

We're open to working with partners who can help with the solutions we're already considering – or who have a technical solution we haven't thought of at all. But any solution must meet some key requirements:

• measurable improvement to hot water requirements

• measurable data on convenience and comfort which show consumer acceptance

• safe for human use

If you have a design or technical solution that could help us meet this challenge, we'd like to hear from you.