In June 2018, we committed to following the Health First Roadmap and are ready to share the preliminary results of our self-assessment.
The Health First Roadmap is published by Women’s Voices for the Earth and contains specific benchmarks for company performance in four categories:
We're sharing details about one Category each week. Check out the links above for more details on the other Categories. This week we'll discuss the final Category: Industry Collaboration.
Category: Industry Collaboration
Current State: DO LESS HARM
Explanation for Current State
The cleaning products industry is made of both large multinational corporations (SC Johnson, Procter and Gamble, Unilever) as well as smaller brands. Some smaller brands (Seventh Generation, Method, Mrs. Meyers) are even owned wholly by the larger ones. Various companies participate in different ways to move the industry forward or away from greater transparency.
We are proud to have partnered with both NGOs and other companies to support legislative efforts to increase transparency. A notable recent example is SB258, which was signed into law in California in 2017 and which we supported along with other companies. We don't believe that "industry" should be assumed to be in conflict with a consumer's right to know and we believe our business does better financially and in the world when more people have more information available about cleaning products. We look for opportunities to speak out on this topic and encourage the slower-moving large companies to see chemical reform as an opportunity as well.
Next Steps
The Cleaning Products industry does not currently have a widely adopted or agreed upon Restricted Substance List (also called an RSL). Various NGOs have identified chemicals of concern, so it's now up to the industry how to adopt these recommendations and whether to do so voluntarily. We'll be exploring efforts to lead and participate in building and adopting an industry-wide RSL.