Solvay has announced that P&G Beauty has joined its Sustainable Guar Initiative (SGI), an industry-leading program launched in 2015, aimed at developing sustainable guar production at scale within the Bikaner desert district of Rajasthan, India. The district is one of the country’s largest guar producers and supplies Solvay with guar as a natural and renewable resource for Jaguar used in hair and body care formulations.
“I am delighted to welcome P&G Beauty to the Sustainable Guar Initiative,” said Solvay CEO Ilham Kadri. “Through this fantastic partnership we will be able to significantly increase our impact and I’m particularly proud that together we will ramp up our efforts to empower farmers, especially women farmers. This is a win for farmers, customers and consumers.”
With the partnership of P&G Beauty, one of the market leaders in the beauty category, the SGI program will nearly double its reach in the region. It will significantly expand its efforts to equip guar farmers, especially women farmers, with the tools and knowledge in good agricultural practices that promote continuous improvement on key outcomes like higher-yield production and crop productivity, improved financial stability, and better living and working conditions.
P&G Beauty’s partnership will add 5,250 new farmers to the program, bringing the total reach of the SGI program to just over 11,000 famers. This includes doubling the reach and scale of the program with women, by training, supporting, and empowering 1,800 additional women as farmers, entrepreneurs, workers, and members of farming households.
In addition, P&G Beauty will enable the SGI program to double the number of women trained (nearly 900 in total) in the adoption of household hygienic practices as well as in the building of kitchen gardens, which will give women and their families the ability to improve their food security, household nutritional diversity and their livelihoods. The P&G Beauty project will also include the construction of a new johad (a local community owned pond), designed to improve the capture and percolation of rainwater for home use, animal hydration as well as the establishment of a community plantation unit.
“We are proud to join forces with Solvay to significantly expand the positive impact of the Sustainable Guar Initiative and to accelerate the growth of this important program,” says Alex Keith, CEO, P&G Beauty. “Working in partnership with Solvay and TechnoServe India is enabling our continued commitment to Responsible Beauty and to being a positive force for beauty in the world. We hope this program inspires others to invest in the sustainable growth of guar, empowerment of women farmers and improving the lives and livelihoods of farming communities in India.”
