P&G partners with Chicago relief organization

CINCINNATI -- The Procter & Gamble Co. is rolling out a special Tide detergent bottle to help support disaster relief.

The containers reaching retailers' shelves this month highlight the faces of people in disaster areas aided by Tide's "Loads of Hope" program. It has provided mobile laundry service in disaster areas such as New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina; Waterloo, Iowa, after flooding and southern California during wildfires.

The program is in partnership with the Chicago-based Feeding America hunger-relief organization.

"It's like a laundromat on wheels," said Ross Fraser, spokesman for Feeding America. "It's a godsend for these communities -- people show up with bags of dirty laundry; they wash and dry the clothes, and neatly fold them."

P&G spokesman Kash Shaikh said the program began in response to the 2005 Katrina devastation that left thousands of people cut off from any laundry service for their waterlogged, stained clothes.

"In times of disaster, people turn to their most basic human needs," Shaikh said. "Clean clothes are essential in that mix. The feeling of hope and dignity you get when you get to wear clean clothes helps elevate the spirits."

He said the program has done more than 30,000 loads of laundry so far.

Shaikh said the bottle is the most significant variation the consumer-products company has ever made in the six-decade-old detergent's packaging logo. Ten cents from each sale will go to disaster relief.

P&G also sells vintage Tide logo T-shirts to benefit the relief effort.

The maker of such products as Pampers diapers and Gillette shavers has since 2003 contributed its PUR water-treatment packets for international disasters, such as earthquakes in Pakistan and Iran and flooding in Colombia.