Sometimes you have to put on waders and trek through a swamp to get a good answer in life. Other times the answer is quick ‘n’ dirty, as it is today.
Why don’t most green cleaners, or any cleaning products for that matter, divulge all or any of their ingredients? Simple: no one’s holding a squirt gun to their head.
We now have mandatory ingredient lists on cosmetics (not the case just five years ago), but there’s still no sign of compulsory content listing on dish detergent or toilet bowl cleaners. It’s an outrage, really, considering all the lung-irritating, skin-inflaming, hormone-disrupting, water-pol-luting and cancer-linked cleaning chemicals on the market.
You’d think green cleaners would take the high road and automatically share their earth-friendly contents with the health- and planet-conscious crowd. And the vast majority do tell us more about what’s in their products than conventional cleaners do, but they don’t necessarily tell us everything.
Case in point, one reader contacted me to say Ecover’s ingredient list on its packaging isn’t entirely the same as what’s disclosed online. Turns out the online list reveals the use of a formaldehyde-releasing synthetic antimicrobial preservative called 2-bromo-2-nitropropane-1,3-diol. Ecover apologized for the inconsistency, saying the package lists active ingredients only and that they’re working on harmonizing the two.
When I approached Ecover about the ingredient, the company argued that apples also release formaldehyde as they decompose and that 2-bromo is readily biodegradable and skin-safe. Regardless, Ecover says it’s working on alternatives (and new labels).
What about other companies? Some brands only list their ingredients online. Why? Well, Simply Clean, which used to have this strategy but now coughs it up on the bottle, spells out its old reasoning on its website: “Unfortunately, the basic Canadian secondary education leaves us all a bit short in our understanding of chemistry names. As a result, some of our formulas are simply too confusing to place on the bottle. Contrary to popular belief, Simply Clean and all other green cleaners still use chemicals with long incomprehensible names (i.e., except for a chemist), whether they are plant- or petroleum-source.”
I feel like I’m being patted on the head and sent off to bed with a cup of warm milk. Luckily, Simply Clean has changed with the times, joining Nature Clean and others that voluntarily list full chemical names of plant- and non-plant-derived ingredients on the bottle. But still, that “keep the kids in the dark” attitude prevails at too many brands.
Pink Solution says it removed the ingredients list from its label seven years ago after its recipe was copied, but it will share the list with customers who request it.
More commonly, when you see lists of ingredients on green cleaners, some will be referred to in a pretty murky fashion: think “coconut-based detergent” or “vegetable surfactant.” Some claim the formulas are proprietary, while others, like Eco-Max, tell all if you call in. At least if a product, like theirs, has third-party certification by a seal like EcoLogo (that Environmental Choice maple leaf stamp), you know someone out there is screening the ingredients to make sure they’re greener than at least 80 per cent of cleaners on the market.
Then there are those whose labelling is comically misleading. Take Eco Mist, which, with a straight face, says its product is made of “corn, grass, potatoes, sugarcane.” If those items were in there, it would look more like a slurry than a clear spritz.
So I’m wishing upon a star for full transparency in the future. If enough of us bug Health Canada and our MPs, maybe the feds will revise their cleaning product standards to one day mandate full ingredient lists.
In the meantime, Seventh Generation and others now come clean about the fact that they use, say, sodium lauryl sulfate (an irritant that we’ve realized over the years is way less dodgy than it’s cousin sodium laureth sulfate), and people still buy their products in record numbers.
Okay, so Seventh Generation lists ingredients under peel-back labels, but the info is on the bottle nonetheless. And that’s a sudsing start.
Got a question?
Send your green queries to ecoholic@nowtoronto.com
