Joely Richardson Supports New Ariel Initiative to Donate 80 Million Litres of Safe Drinking Water

WEYBRIDGE, England, May 21/PRNewswire/ --

- Be Water Wise With Ariel

- With Photo

Joely Richardson is supporting the "Be Water Wise with Ariel" initiative
which is donating 10 litres of safe drinking water to children in developing
countries for every special pack of Ariel purchased.

Joely encourages the nation to take action: "I have just come back from
Malawi where I saw first hand how the Children's Safe Drinking Water and Five
& Alive programme is saving lives. If everyone in London got behind the
initiative we could help bring precious water to those who need it most and
go some way to reduce the staggering 4,000 deaths that occur unnecessarily
every day in developing countries due to water contamination."

For more information on how you can help visit
http://www.ariel.co.uk/water

Stockists

The promotion will be available in all leading supermarkets
and retailers. Special packs will be available for all Ariel variants,
including Biological, Sensitive and Colour & Style.

Ariel

Ariel is one of the leading brands in Procter & Gamble's
Future Friendly initiative. Future Friendly is a consumer education programme
that aims to inspire and enable people to do their bit for a more sustainable
future. It is a partnership between brands and leading experts in the fields
of saving water, energy and packaging.

As part of their sustainability commitment, in 2006/2007 Ariel
partnered with the Energy Saving Trust to encourage UK households to 'Turn to
30degrees' by lowering their washing temperature to 30 degrees, saving over
40% in energy consumption. Ariel's advanced 'cool clean' technology enables
users to achieve brilliant cleaning even at low temperatures. Independent
research by IPC has shown that UK consumers are already getting the 'turn to
30' message with 8 times more loads now being washed at 30 degrees (from 2%
in 2002 to 17% in 2007).

Children's Safe Drinking Water Programme

The Children's Safe Drinking Water Programme consists of not-for-profit
social and emergency relief work to provide P&G's safe drinking water
technology in the developing world. Over the past 4 and a half years, P&G has
donated $8 million to the Programme. Its goal is to reduce the sickness and
death in children that results from drinking contaminated water. The
Programme has been recognised as making an important contribution to help
meet the United Nations Millennium Development Goal of reducing by half the
number of people without access to safe drinking water. For more information
about the Children's Safe Drinking Water Programme or to make a donation,
visit http://www.csdw.org.

Five & Alive

Five & Alive is a program of Population Services International (PSI) - a
leading global health organization. Five & Alive reaches children five and
under to prevent and treat malaria, water-borne illness, pneumonia and
malnutrition by providing children and their families with the education,
products, services and care needed to improve health and save lives in more
than 30 countries. Five & Alive's safe water communication strategies, which
include both commercial marketing and community mobilization, generate
awareness of the link between contaminated water and disease, and the value
of disinfecting drinking water.

P&G and Five & Alive have been in partnership for the last three years
with the goal of providing safe drinking water in the developing world
through household water treatment using P&G's PUR(TM) Purifier of Water.

PUR(TM) Purifier of Water

P&G's PUR Purifier of Water(TM) is a powdered technology packaged in a
4-gm sachet. The product is designed for outdoor recreation and emergency
preparedness use. Using some of the same ingredients used in municipal water
systems, PUR(TM) is engineered to be a mini-water treatment plant in a
packet. It works like a dirt magnet, pulling dirt and contaminants out of
unclean water. The portability of the light-weight sachets makes them a
viable option for distribution to victims of emergencies and natural
disasters or to hard-to-reach rural areas. PUR(TM) product, a powdered water
clarification and disinfectant that comes in small, affordable, and
easy-to-use packets.

Note to Editors:

A picture accompanying this release is available through the PA
Photowire. It can be downloaded from http://www.pa-mediapoint.press.net or
viewed at http://www.mediapoint.press.net or

Source: Ariel

For further press information and images please contact: Sarah Trombetta / Giles Harrison, Hill & Knowlton, T: +44(0)20-7413-3033 / +44(0)20-7413-3732, E: firstname.surname@hillandknowlton.com

2008-05-20 19:05:08 0367202 PRNEWSWIRE