Customer purchases to help fund Body Shop bio-bridges programme
Melanie May | 26 May 2016 | News
The Body Shop has partnered with World Land Trust in its new Bio-Bridges programme, which aims to regenerate and protect 75 million square metres of forest, funded by customer transactions.
The Bio-Bridges programme will create protected areas of forest, regenerating and reconnecting corridors between healthy rainforest, and linking isolated and endangered animals and plant species.
To fund the work, The Body Shop is launching an in-store and online campaign, ‘Help Reggie Find Love’, featuring Reggie, a Red-Shanked Douc from Vietnam that will raise awareness and see customers directly support the project with every customer transaction restoring and protecting one square metre of habitat in the forest.
The campaign will launch online and in The Body Shop stores globally this summer, in 65 countries.
The first Bio-Bridges project is in Khe Nuoc Trong forest of North Central Vietnam, and will see The Body Shop work with World Land Trust and partner Viet Nature Conservation Centre, to protect the area and its wildlife through regular patrolling and the use of camera-traps. Viet Nature will also work closely with the local community to encourage sustainable forest resource use and farming and with schools to encourage involvement.
The second Bio-Bridges project will begin in late 2016 in the Garo Hills of India. This project will also be delivered in partnership with World Land Trust and its partner Wildlife Trust of India.
Christopher Davis, director of corporate responsibility and campaigns, The Body Shop, said:
“Bio-Bridges are an innovative way to create protected corridors of biodiversity that allow the wider forest to flourish and its inhabitants to breed and thrive. We’ll be promoting ‘Find Reggie Love’ online and in our stores, helping raise awareness of this serious issue in a different way and allowing our customers to make a direct and positive impact with every purchase.”
The programme is part of The Body Shop’s Enrich Not Exploit Commitment.
Picture: The Body Shop transforms Westminster Bridge to raise awareness of Bio-Bridges. Credit: Getty Images for The Body Shop
Advertisement
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.