Wednesday, April 22, 2009

When you're Green, your growing.

Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald's, encouraged his employees to strive for product improvements and understanding their customer. To keep an inspiring edge to his message, Mr. Kroc's complete quote is, "When you're Green, your growing. When you're ripe, you rot."

I hope this quote stirs up the few who are holding on to conventional practices when it comes to formulating environmentally sound cleaning products and promoting Fragrance materials not made to the upcoming EPA DfE standards.

Happy Earth Day.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Green Circumlocution

Several major consumer Household product cleaning manufacturers announced that they will disclose their product's ingredients. This announcement has been greeted positively by the environmental press but The Green Nose is totally convinced they have not gone far enough. One product component, fragrances, will remain a disclosure exception in order to maintain trade secret limited access requirements and vendor confidentiality agreements aka proprietary interests. Fragrance components will be available to review by a composite breakout of all the fragrance ingredients used in the respective companies cleaner lines.  

The Green Nose feels the indirectness of a composite fragrance(s) ingredient disclosure will contribute to the transparency concept but this seemingly pragmatic approach will make it altogether different from the directly expressed concept. 

For example, a fire warden has unfettered access to a similar composite listing from MSDS' for safety purposes. But if there is an event like a fire, how will the fire warden know which  fragrance drum might launch itself if in direct contact with flame, or create a hazard?

At the upcoming convention, Sustainable Fragrances 2009, the fragrance industry will view a demonstration by CleanGredients on the DfE module. This algorithm  will be the most comprehensive fragrance safety ingredient rating standard that will include the wisdom of RIFM data and EPA's environmental resources. Therefore, an ingredient disclosure in any format, should indicate if the material meets the new DfE standard.





    

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Ethical Case Studies

Case number 1:

About five years ago, an air freshener was successfully commercialized in the US with a "grapefruit" compound containing Geranyl Nitrile. This material was under study due to test data of concern when the fragrance was submitted to the manufacturer. By the end of 2006, with additional data, further testing was no longer being funded. IFRA announced to its membership it would no longer support its use. 

The toxicological endpoint of greatest concern was genotoxicity, Geranyl Nitrile produced chromosomal aberrations. Annual worldwide usage during this study period was just over 100 metric tons.

Meanwhile substitute "grapefruit" compounds were submitted but not considered acceptable by the manufacturer. Some fragrance competitors, perhaps just one (whom the Green Nose was employed) were given the opportunity to duplicate. Eventually, the original compound supplier omitted Geranyl Nitrile and the manufacturer added the ingredient themselves. Were these motives justified or did they just lose their ethics? How would you act?

Case number 2:

Currently the EPA's DfE program gives provisional approval for fragrances that need revision if deemed justifiable. This period for improvement is three years and the manufacturer can show the DfE logo without an asterisk. Now consider that the new DfE module which will be formally introduced this June, will only "pass" compound ingredients that fall within acceptable standards for both human and environmental toxicity. Should a clear deadline be determined for all outstanding provisional fragrances with allowance for stability testing? Is December 31, 2009 fair?

The meeting this June, Sustainable Fragrances 2009, has tremendous potential to adjourn with agreements to make things better, set deadlines where needed and attendees have mutual and moral respect for certain sciences, for ourselves and others. 







  

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Sustainable Fragrances for Cleaners

The Green Nose (TGN) is very proud to announce his attendance at the Sustainable Fragrances 2009 meeting to be held June 3 - 5 at the Marriott Washington, DC. TGN will be focusing his efforts to sniff out for you, in this blog, every significant development and valuable nuance. This is the first meeting where Fragrance industry experts and regulatory members of the trade associations, EPA's DfE and NGO's are conferring in a formal setting to propose green and sustainable industry definitions, raw material ingredient standards for both safe human and environmental toxicity and a module to preview fragrance formulas for DfE criteria. The sheer complexity of assessing hundreds of chemical classes and working toward viable agreement is laudable to the presenters and attendees, regardless of the understanding of the issues and likely consequences. The program is very representative of the current body of technical and proprietary industry interests.

The Green Nose promises to report in depth on each session, to share real conversations with attendees, and to give you insightful commentary about this dynamic conference.