Clorox’s winning approach to deliver safer products
Clorox’s environmental, social and governance goals are integrated into our IGNITE strategy because we believe they create value for our company, brands, people and communities. We’ve focused on areas where we can make the biggest impact, and much of our progress is realized through the work of our purpose-driven brands.
Clorox was named a 2024 Safer Choice Partner of the Year for manufacturing products with ingredients that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency designates as safer for families, pets, workplaces, communities, and the environment. We spoke with Lisa Pankiewicz, our vice president of global stewardship, about how we continue to achieve this recognition through advanced product safety and ingredient transparency.
What does it mean to be an EPA Safer Choice partner, and how does it reflect Clorox’s overall commitment to safer product innovation?
Product stewardship is a direct expression of Clorox’s commitment to do the right thing and ensure consumers know what’s in the products they bring into their homes. This marks Clorox’s seventh year as a Safer Choice partner, building upon 17 years of partnership with the EPA’s Design for the Environment/Safer Choice Product Labeling program since we first participated.
Our certified products, which proudly display the Safer Choice or Design for the Environment labels from the EPA, signal to our consumers that they have met the rigorous human health and environmental standards that these programs stand for. This includes four products in our Clorox EcoClean line and two products in our Clorox Free & Clear line — all of which are formulated to provide superior cleaning performance, not tested on animals and packaged in bottles that can be recycled.
Ingredient transparency and advocacy are critical elements of Clorox’s environmental, social, governance, or ESG, goals embedded in the company’s IGNITE strategy. Representing a key benchmark in this ongoing work, this award supports Clorox’s commitment to enhance consumer confidence in its products through certification programs.
This recognition also builds on Clorox’s longstanding product stewardship efforts, including becoming the first major consumer packaged goods company to voluntarily disclose ingredients in our U.S. retail and professional cleaning, disinfecting and laundry products over a decade ago.
Can you share any specific breakthroughs in ingredient sourcing or formulation that were key to making these products safer for families, pets, workplaces, communities and the environment?
When we formulate and manufacture Clorox products, we keep both our consumers and our planet in mind. Our product safety team is involved at the start of every formulation process across our entire portfolio of brands to encourage the selection of safer ingredients. We also consistently work to develop more efficient, more sustainable solutions for our product packaging that include optimizing the use of resin, recyclable or compostable materials.
To meet growing demand for safer cleaners and disinfectants without sacrificing efficacy, in 2022 we proudly launched our Clorox EcoClean line. The EcoClean disinfecting spray utilizes plant-acid based active ingredient that kills 99.9% of common germs in 2 minutes or less and sanitizes hard surfaces in 15 seconds. That same year we also launched our Clorox Free & Clear line, which was made possible by a breakthrough cleaning formula free of dyes, bleach or ammonia.
In addition to the EPA, what other partnerships or collaborations have been most instrumental in driving ingredient safety and transparency?
The challenge of balancing performance and safety in ingredient innovation isn’t something one company can tackle alone. That’s why we partner with a wide range of external collaborators to contribute learnings and develop scalable solutions to move this work forward.
For example, the CleanGredients database, from GreenBlue, has been critical to our product stewardship efforts, and we encourage the product formulators of all Clorox products, not just those with the certifications, to consult this resource to help them understand the available options for safer chemistries during ingredient selection.
Through our participation in the American Cleaning Institute Sustainability Committee, we’ve contributed to creation of a Material Circularity Index to help members assess progress and status against the ambitious ACI-led industry public goal of eliminating all cleaning product packaging waste by 2040. Through this partnership we also helped establish a Sustainable Concentrates & Refills Initiative to understand consumers motivations and desires with concentrate/refill products and generate greater awareness of what the industry can do to enable adoption of these more sustainable product forms while ensuring consumer safety.
To track our progress toward reducing the chemical footprint of our cleaning products, in 2021 we began participating in the Chemical Footprint Project to ensure we are meaningfully benchmarking our efforts. This partnership has been a game changer for proactively identifying opportunities for further improvement, and we are on track to achieve our 2025 interim goal of improving the Chemical Footprint Project score for our domestic cleaning portfolio by 35%.
As Clorox plans its next steps to advance product stewardship across its portfolio, what emerging trends or technologies in sustainable chemistry are you most excited about?
As proud recipients of the EPA’s Green Chemistry Award, Clorox understands that we all share a responsibility to help prevent pollution by advancing green innovation and the design of more eco-friendly chemicals and materials. Looking to the future, we’re excited by the potential for our industry to drive even greater breakthroughs in green chemistry and circular packaging. Achieving innovations in those areas could enable the development of biodegradable and renewable alternatives. These innovations would serve growing consumer trends and present an exciting opportunity to build a future where products are safer for both people and the planet.