Coming Clean

There was an interesting article in the New York Times on Thursday, September 17. Under the title "Fight grows over Labeling  on Cleaning Products", Leslie Wayne reports on the fight  that  is going  on between the giants in our industry and consumer groups, regarding the disclosure of all ingredients in washing  and cleaning  products.

Consumer groups demand manufacturers to  disclose all ingredients on the product labels. Manufacturers, on the other hand refuse to  give all details on their formulations, in order not  to  make life too  easy  for competitors and copiers. For an industry that  prides itself on the fact  that  it  understands and fulfills all consumer needs, this consumer need has been  shuffled under the carpet  for far  too long.

Ok, an Ecover label  discloses all ingredients but  in a language that  no  consumer can easily understand but go  to  our website, look up any product and you  will find, on the same page, a full listing of the ingredient names used in this product. It is part of European legislation that  manufacturers must  disclose all ingredients on the web. However, I invite you  to  try  to  look up the ingredients on some other manufacturer's website and you  will see that  it  sometimes becomes a real challenge to  find the information you  are looking for.

The argument that  full disclosure would make life too simple for the competition does not  stand. There are labs in many  places that  can analyse products and return far more detailed description than a simple list  would ever give you.  I also  do not  believe that  consumers will become alchemists  and start mixing their own products and I would also strongly discourage this.

Concerns of consumer groups that  sometimes small additions and additives, which  legally  do not  have to  be disclosed, can be harmful is absolutely  justified. I would therefore strongly support a similar disclosure discipline as used in the Cosmetic industry. The INCI code is a list  of all ingredients used in a product ranked by  the importance of their content.

On the other hand consumer groups should also watch over the information that  is being spread on certain raw materials and substances. Totally  unjustified criticism of certain substances like LAS, has created sometimes hysterical  reactions that  were based on wrong (in this case we better say false) information.

But  that  may  be a subject  for another post.

For the moment, Let Us Come (and stay) Clean.

Some media highlights

As CEO of Ecover for more than 15 years, addressing the media about what we do as a company feels like second nature to me now… even when questions tend to get tricky, like when discussing the EU ecolabel or animal testing. And sometimes I’ll get misrepresented or I’ll say something that is taken out of it original context and poured into a entirely new one. I’ve seen it happen. It also seemed to be much more simple back in the day when there was just radio, tv and the written press. Now, you can google my name on any random day and keep your fingers crossed to see what the search results come up with.

So whether I’m standing in front of the camera or sitting across the table with every last word being tape recorded, my view is to keep it simple, open and honest. I avoid responses that are open to interpretation and always try to get my point across. Over the last few weeks and months, I saw some pretty good coverage come in, interviews, articles, videos ... all reflecting the level of quality that our brand delivers. I picked out some highlights to share below:

http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=110251

http://www.forumforthefuture.org/greenfutures/articles/The_Knowledge_73

http://www.green.tv/greentalk_ecover

http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/analysis/2248217/ecover-boss-reflects-move

http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2248199/ecover-shuns-eu-eco-label

Back to work.

Ooooh, it is so difficult to get back into the right working rhythm after a week of holiday. I enjoyed a wonderful week with the family on a riverboat in the south of France. Probably as any holiday afterwards you feel that it was too short. Though I am blessed with the capacity to switch off completely from work during time off, some thoughts about the environment were never faraway.

It was hot in the South of France and the small living area of a riverboat does not provide much shelter from the heat. Nice weather maybe one of the conditions for a successful holiday in Southern Europe, but living more northern the heat reminded us a little bit too much of the effects of global warming and climate change.

A second thought went to the amount of waste a family (of five during the holiday) creates. Obviously we sorted our waste and soon we found ourselves moving different garbage bags around all the time we moved in the boat. Overnight stops in nice picturesque small ports allowed us to correctly dispose of this annoying charge, only to pass the inconvenience on to someone else. Packaging is a huge issue and the reduction of packaging waste must remain high on our agenda. Obviously we brought our own dishwashing liquid along in a refill bottle that we nicely took back home. Sailing on the canals we also met another family, using Ecover to do the dishes. They owned a health food store "La Maison d'Olive" in Aubenas. (Si vous habitez à Aubenas ou dans les environs, faites vos courses à la Maison d'Olive, ce sont des gens très sympas). I was happy to meet them because it somehow calmed down my uncertainty about the environmental quality of my holiday.

It was funny that the last day, when both our families returned the boat and had to settle the fuel consumption of the week, we both immediately reacted that we had sailed the boat at a really reduced regime. But it did not help we were charged a flat rate per hour of operation and we learned the lesson again that acting consciously for the environment does not always pay off. It is a third thought, that far too often still it is not the polluter who pays. At any level in our society it is still too common to spread the cost of pollution over the whole of society rather than to charge more to the polluters. Whether it is on CO² emissions, toxic waste, renewable energy, etc... we need to internalize the cost for the environment in the cost of all human activity whether at consumer, community, country, continent or global level. Only that will be the big motivator for all to act more consciously.

Nevertheless we had a wonderful holiday, à votre santé!

A new dawn for the EU Ecolabel...?

Much to my surprise, I read in a Belgian newspaper earlier this week that the European Commission is planning to review the Ecolabel criteria for washing products as well as some of the regulations that allow the use of the EU Ecolabel. Firstly, the Ecolabel criteria are to be periodically reviewed and that is a good thing because a quality label should be a dynamic tool that strives towards excellence rather than a justification of what is already present in the market. Secondly, the commission will tighten controls for the use of the Ecolabel as well as give the option to manufacturers in applying for the label in a country outside the country of origin.

In general, I welcome the announcement because it’s a reaction to our arguments published earlier this summer here in Belgium (on June 4^th) regarding the misuse of the Ecolabel. Our arguments were based on our 15-year long involvement in several ad hoc committees that discussed the Ecolabel criteria for our category of products, as well as third party research performed and findings that we gathered in the latter part of last year and the first half of ‘09. Now, whether this move towards improving the Ecolabel is actually serious or not, meaning that we can expect to see a dependable European Ecolabel come to light, remains to be seen. Nonetheless, I am willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

Let me give you some background. For years we’ve been repeatedly disappointed with the quality of the Ecolabel in its present form. It’s aimed to serve as a guarantee for European consumers so they can believe that the products they buy carrying the Ecolabel are indeed ecological, or should we rather say have something sustainable about them. Roughly said, our disappointment stems from these reasons:

o The actual criteria lack a window into the future. Basically, the criteria try to justify the actual choices for raw materials that are used in the manufacturing of washing and cleaning products. There is no strive or incentive towards continuous ecological improvement. And even worse than that, approved products carrying the Ecolabel aren’t even subject to any control or audit afterwards ensuring ongoing compliance.

o Today’s rules for obtaining the Ecolabel aren’t coherent either. Their application is interpreted differently from country to country and there are no rules that apply to all products in the category of washing and cleaning.

o The use of fossil raw materials is still permitted by the Ecolabel, while these days a wide range of renewable and more sustainable raw materials are readily available in our industry.

o The standards for biodegradability are far from ambitious and don’t even exist for biodegradation in anaerobic circumstances (i.e. conditions where oxygen is not present). There is nothing said about the use of stable metabolites, materials that do not even biodegrade at all.

o Synthetic raw materials, such as phosphates, phosphonates, polycarboxylates and optical whiteners, are completely unacceptable in an ecological product, yet, for the EU Ecolabel, perfectly acceptable. Pretty ironic, I have to say, when you know that in most European countries the use of phosphates in laundry products is generally prohibited! Again, all these inconsistencies and loopholes reinforce the fact that the Ecolabel rules are less stringent than the standard rules.

o The manufacturing processes or the environmental policies of the manufacturer are not taken into account.

o A manufacturer can apply for the Ecolabel for one single product even if that manufacturer does not offer any other “ecological” product.

o The criteria are negotiated and final decisions are made within the industry as a whole which automatically means that any attempts to have a more stringent outcome or higher quality label are blocked by the traditional manufacturers.

Clearly, it’s never going to be easy to come to industry wide standards and I don’t expect that a label should be designed for only few market players. Still, we have always argued for creating a label with different levels (or stars), a method which would combine actual efforts with more ambitious goals.

My concerns are slightly bigger when it comes to the second part of the announcement. One of the problems today is that interpretation of the rules varies. Rules are being differently interpreted from country to country. Manufacturers, however, are still legally required to register for the Ecolabel in the product’s country of origin. If that rule is to be dropped in the future, this will just lead to more shopping around by manufacturers until they find the competent body that is most likely to interpret the rules in their favour. Although this is not allowed today, our findings show that some products carry an Ecolabel where the place of origin and registration are not the same.

With 27 countries to choose from in registering a product, it seems very unlikely to me that the Ecolabelling scheme is going to evolve into something any more reliable than it is today. Think about what it will take to implement any type of control over a product for sale in country A, when it was manufactured in Country B and registered in Country C?

My final argument is that if the European commission wants a label that truly represents the ecological quality that our environment and the consumer are entitled to, in light of today’s state of technology, it should be:

1. Based on a clear and uniform set of rules that apply to everyone and everywhere equally;

2. A dynamic scheme that is based on ambitious and futuristic goals;

3. A scheme that rewards true efforts towards wider sustainability rather than efforts in green marketing;

4. Based on tight third party auditing and control to ensure ongoing compliance; and

5. The vocation of one single governing body and not on the work of ad hoc and temporary committees that are created for each separate product.

So, for now, we‘ll just have to wait and see what happens. But as findings in third-party reports indicate, the actual rules are openly interpreted with no control afterwards whatsoever. And I can only tell you, we still have a long way to go....

The Next Bubble...

By writing this, I believe I’ve officially become a ‘blogger’. Growing up in a generation that learned to write using a pen and penholder (I use a fountain pen nowadays), it is a big step. Not that typing on a PC is anything new, but writing without addressing someone in particular, without knowing who may actually read this, is new and unexplored territory for me. Maybe it stems from fear that nobody will read what I have to say as it will simply fade into the existing myriad of social networking on the internet. This leads me to thinking why even bother?

I am and have been for the past seventeen years CEO of Ecover, a Belgian pioneering manufacturer of ecological washing and cleaning products. Our company has been on the market for almost thirty years now and we have seen ourselves evolve from being a marginal player in a niche market to a brand that in many markets stands up against the big players in our industry. The fast growing awareness on climate change and the environment create a massive opportunity for us and we know there is a receptive audience out there. But we are not alone to notice this and that is the main reason why I wanted to start this blog.

The internet bubble of the late nineties and last year’s financial bubble have turned me into a strong believer that the next bubble (the green…, CO²…, climate…, call it whatever youlike bubble) is happening and growing fast before our very own eyes. Here we have scientists who know everything, governments and authorities that have everything under control, industries who claim to know what consumers need and citizens finding their way in a maze of communications that often range from vague to misleading and sometimes just plain false. And in ten years from now or maybe sooner, when the bubble bursts, we will again be looking for the guilty offenders and blame them just like we did with the IT yuppies of the nineties or the greedy bankers of today.

I want to have that debate now. I want to exchange and share views with citizens, consumers, housewives, scientists, politicians, officials, students and anyone who has an interesting idea or opinion toshare.

Do not expect a daily posting from me, but I will try to raise issues and opinions that I feel I know something about. I will treat everything and anyone with respect and integrity and will also monitor this blog with those values in mind.

Looking forward to sharing.