Over the last few months, we’ve all been glued to our newsfeeds, have read the headlines, and have seen the chaos unfolding in countries around the world. The impacts of COVID-19 are much worse than many of us ever anticipated and it is clear that whilst we are all vulnerable, there are enormous inequities in access to adequate healthcare and sanitation Over 2.3 billion people do not have access to clean water and soap, this leads to hundreds and hundreds of thousands of deaths every year due to the spread of disease such as cholera, dysentery and typhoid, as well of course as COVID-19. Soap and water is the best defence against COVID-19 (alongside physical distancing.) The power of handwashing was only really discovered in 1848 by Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis. He couldn’t understand why ‘childbed fever’ killed 18% of new mothers in hospital, versus the much lower levels of infections (and deaths) at midwifery clinics. This was until he saw that doctors at the hospitals moved between tasks such as dissecting cadavers to delivering babies, without even a rinse in between. After he implemented basic hand hygiene principles in his hospital, this mortality rate dropped to 1%. Something so simple as washing hands with soap had, and continues to have the most incredible impact. It is not an overstatement to say that soap saves lives. It is our responsibility as business leaders to ensure that we are doing good and leading by example. This is why sustainability is at the core of everything we do at Ethique – and why we donate 20% of profit annually to charities. I believe people and the environment are equally as important as profit. I am so inspired by companies around the world who are making a difference. Companies like Little Yellow Bird who reached out to their community for help then passed that on to their suppliers in India by providing 2500 meals. So much so, that we matched their donation and together we’ve provided 5000 meals for migrant workers who otherwise get no support. Want to help too? You can – get in touch with LYB here. I watched Allbirds donate 500,000 pairs of shoes to frontline health workers to help them in their fight against COVID-19. Companies around the world donated bottles of hand sanitiser to help protect them. We tried to do this (in glass bottles), and would you believe it, we couldn’t get enough ethanol or isopropyl alcohol to make it. So, we have turned to what is natural to us, and what happens to be the single most effective agent against this virus, which is plain old soap. Something that seems to be ubiquitous, yet so many do not have access to it. And so, it is with great pleasure that I announce that through the new ‘Ethique Super Soap Initiative’, we are donating 10,000 full-size bars of hand and body soap to vulnerable communities across New Zealand and the South Pacific. And we’ve had people ask us how they can help too, so additionally, we will match EVERY bar purchased by you, our customers, from now until the end of May with a ‘Super Soap’ bar donation to these vulnerable communities. We are proud to join the number of businesses displaying leadership during this time and can only hope that you too will join us - if you can. Terms & Conditions:For every full-size bar sold on our website ethique.com, ethique.co.uk and ethiqueworld.com, between the 21st of April 2020 and the 31st of May 2020, we will donate 1x 80g bar of hand and body soap to our charitable partners (below) to distribute to their communities, on top of our existing donation of 10,000 bars of soap. Excludes containers, samplers, minis and trial kits. These partners include but are not limited to:Oxfam, the Fono, The Community Builders, Manurewa Marae, Manukau Urban Māori Authority, Káute Pasifika, Failoa Famili and Porirua Union and Community Health.