Pressure Points
Working toward Cleaning
Product Ingredient Disclosure
When consumers get in the habit of using the same
product over and over, they tend not to notice when
the label changes, especially if it’s not a logo or color
change on the front of the package. However, there might be
changes that a consumer wouldn’t ever notice.
I recently attended a webinar where the presenter mentioned
seeing more ingredients listed on the back of cleaning product
labels and assumed that it was the result of product manufacturers
and marketers moving to Greener (and safer) ingredients in an
effort to differentiate their products in the marketplace. However,
cleaning product professionals know that more ingredients are being
listed on product labels as a result of the California Cleaning
Product Right to Know Act of 2017, also known as SB258.
The Household & Commercial Products Association (HCPA)
played a lead role in negotiating the California Cleaning Product
Right to Know Act, which aims to provide consumers and
workers with information about the ingredients in their cleaning
products to help them make informed decisions and feel
confident about the products they’re using. As a result of this law,
companies could comply with realistic disclosure requirements
and customers could deservedly gain access to information about
the ingredients in their cleaning products.
Any law enacted in California will have ripple effects across
the U.S. It’s not practical for companies to manufacture products
just for California, so products across the country now include
ingredient information that is required by the Cleaning Product
Right to Know Act. The fact that I live across the country but still
have access to the same ingredient information as someone living
in California is evidence that the law is working as intended.
I didn’t consider that consumers would think products are safer
as a result of disclosing ingredients on the label. In fact, I feared
that we would see pushback and criticism about the hazard of
certain ingredients. While it’s not fair to raise concerns about the
safety of ingredients without considering the full formulation, this
does happen.
Take preservatives, for example. Products could be reformulated
without preservatives by making the product more acidic or
alkalinic to prevent bacteria from growing; however, this would
introduce new risks to the consumer
since a product would no longer be a
neutral pH and could be corrosive to
the skin.
Product manufacturers consider all
of these situations during the development
of a product and make the best,
and most responsible, decisions keeping
safety in mind—even if it requires using
ingredients that consumers have to look
up online to understand their purpose.
Companies have invested significant
time and resources into creating an
ingredient inventory that’s easy for
customers to understand and use, which
was harder than it sounds. In recognition
of this challenge, HCPA (then
named the Consumer Specialty Products
Association) developed a Consumer
Product Ingredients Dictionaryi to provide standardized nomenclature
to assist companies with their ingredient disclosure efforts.
Systems can be built to manage one set of ingredient disclosure
requirements, but it becomes difficult when there are conflicting
requirements—for example, if States start to implement requirements
that don’t align with California. This can cause confusion
among consumers and workers, who will not understand the
different disclosure requirements.
That’s why HCPA supports a national standard for cleaning
product ingredient disclosure, one that is workable for companies
to comply with and customers to have access to the important
information they need to make informed purchasing decisions.
Consumers and workers deserve transparent and consistent
information about the ingredients that make up their cleaning
products—the products they rely on to keep them safe and healthy.
Industry also needs consistency from legislators and regulators in
order to effectively provide this information.
For more information about ingredient disclosure, please contact
me at ngeorges@thehcpa.org. Spray
10 Spray June 2021
NICHOLAS GEORGES
HCPA VP of Scientific
& International Affairs
i www.productingredients.com
Consumers and workers deserve transparent
and consistent information about the
ingredients that make up their cleaning
products—the products they rely on to keep
them safe and healthy…