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SC Johnson Starts Listing Product Ingredients Publicly
By GreenBiz Staff, GreenBizPublished March 13, 2009

RACINE, Wis. -- SC Johnson has started listing all of the ingredients in products on a new website, and is also making the ingredient lists public on product labels and through a consumer hotline. The ingredient website, http://www.whatsinsidescjohnson.com/, launched this week and so far includes ingredient lists for Nature's Source cleaners, Windex outdoor spray, Shout wipes and Glade candles and sprays. The company will continue to add products over the next three years, aiming to have all ingredients for air care and home cleaning products public by January 2012.SC Johnson is listing not only the product ingredients, but providing explanations of what the ingredients do. The company is also taking ingredient listing a step further than other companies by pledging to list details of preservatives, dyes and fragrances. Although, in order to protect proprietary details, SC Johnson will list all ingredients that could potentially be in fragrances.The company's ingredient listing is an outgrowth of a voluntary industry initiative to list ingredients online, on product labels, via toll-free numbers or other non-electronic means.It also comes just weeks after public interest law firm Earthjustice filed a lawsuit against cleaning product makers Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, Church & Dwight Co. and Reckitt Benckiser Group for not complying with a New York law that requires companies selling cleaning products in the state to file reports listing the chemicals in products.Earthjustice says it did not include SC Johnson in that lawsuit because when Earthjustice informed SC Johnson it was not following the law, the company began speaking with Earthjustice and other groups about what it could do to come into compliance.SC Johnson's ingredient website will provide listings in both English and Spanish, with the Spanish listing to be added later this year. SC Johnson Canada will start listing ingredients next year in English and French.SC Johnson is also working to phase phthalates out of its products, an initiative it started last summer, when it began talks with suppliers on how to remove the phthalate DEP from fragrances. Some new and reformulated products are already being produced without phthalates.