Procter & Gamble announced two multi-year commitments aimed at improving the lives of millions of families worldwide.

The first, its new "Future Friendly" program, is an educational initiative that will target millions of U.S. households by Earth Day 2010. The multi-brand program is designed to inspire and educate consumers about making sustainable choices that can have a positive impact on the environment. As part of this pledge, the company will provide conservation education to at least 50 million U.S. households during the year.

The consumer packaged goods giant also forecasts it will place its "Sustainable innovation products" in 30 million U.S. homes by the end of 2010. This supports its larger, previously announced goal of $50 billion in cumulative sustainable product sales between 2007 and 2012.

Its Pampers brand, for example, has unveiled a new diaper design that is 20 percent slimmer than before that pledges no sacrifice in performance. If current U.S. Pampers users switch to the new Pampers slim diaper, they could together throw away the weight of 1 billion fewer diapers every three years, according to P&G.

P&G also pledged to provide 4 billion liters of clean drinking water by 2012 through the "Children's Safe Drinking Water" program. This will save nearly 20,000 lives and prevent an estimated 160 million days of diarrheal illness. As part of this effort, P&G will create an awareness campaign to reach at least 300 million people and will significantly expand its efforts to provide safe drinking water to people living with AIDS through new programs.

The announcements came at the annual Clinton Global Initiative conference in New York City.