A Green Takeover: Why I Will No Longer Be Supporting Wild

Well, it happened. We all read the news a couple of months back about Unilever being in line to purchase the green company Wild (at a wild amount) and most of us couldn’t believe it. Having worked with them for the last 5 years or so, I certainly couldn’t, so I contacted them directly, and was shocked when I received their bog standard copy and paste dancing around the query response. I truly thought they would have at least been a little more upfront with those who had supported them. As word got around, more people began questioning them, mostly on social media, but Wild either ignored their comments or deleted them. That was the point when we all knew the sell-out was coming. And sure enough, at the start of April, the £230 million deal(!) was done. Wild are now owned by the unethical company Unilever.

What Makes Them Unethical?

Unilever have long been scrutinised with many consumers boycotting them for many reasons, including some of these I have come across during some online research:
– They are criticised for their plastic polluting with Greenpeace reporting that Unilever sells 1700 single-use plastic sachets every single second (Dove!)

– They buy their plastic from huge fossil fuel companies like Shell, ExxonMobil, and Chevron

– They claim they are cruelty free but according to the website Cruel Kitty, they cannot be listed as such as they own brands that do

– Some brands they own contain chemicals that disrupt hormones such as parabens and phthalates

– There have been allegations of abuse towards workers including sexual abuse in their Kenyan supply chains

– In April 2024 it was reported in the Guardian that Unilever had decided to scale back on its environmental and social pledges to focus more on their stock market performance (is purchasing wild a way to tick those green boxes??)

– Greenpeace is investigating them on grounds of greenwashing (again, hello wild takeover)

You can read more over on the Ethical Consumer website (some facts taken directly from there)

Time to Step Away

So yeah, due to all of this, I have left the ambassador/affiliate scheme and will no longer be working with this brand. It’s a huge shame as they’ve really made waves in the last six years but I cannot continue to support them after selling out. Yes, they may well stay the same and keep their own ethics, but for many sustainably conscious people, it’s just not enough and it’s not right. This was an eco brand that we loved. They brought their fantastic plastic-free deodorant to the market and pledged to do so much for the environment, but then sold out to one of the world’s biggest plastic polluters. If this were any other brand, I may not have even noticed (it was an eye-opener when I read Unilever owns Marmite, Hellmans and Magnums), but because Wild has built their entire branding and business model on being eco-friendly, this is now just a large parent company using them for greenwashing… And that does not wash with me! It’s a big blow for the eco world, but there are other brands we can all turn to and try out, so off I go, starting with Fussy. I’ll keep you posted on how I get on.

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