Shoppers want safer and healthier products for their families, and EPA’s Safer Choice certification makes it easier to find them. The Safer Choice label is found on nearly 2,500 household, institutional, and industrial cleaning products, as well as a growing number of other products ranging from pet shampoo to bike lubricant. The label provides consumers with reassurance that every ingredient in the product has been reviewed by independent toxicologists and is among the safest in its functional class for humans, pets, and the environment. All products that receive the certification also must meet performance standards, as well as product-level standards for pH and volatile organic compound (VOC) content, and receive final approval from EPA before they can carry the label. The Safer Choice program, originally known as Design for the Environment, has existed for over 15 years, and is backed up by the expertise and experience of the Safer Choice team at EPA as well as EPA’s resources for evaluating chemical safety.
Since 2006, CleanGredients (a project of the nonprofit GreenBlue) has supported the Safer Choice program by providing product formulators access to a database of market-ready safer chemical ingredients pre-screened by third-party toxicologists and EPA against criteria established by Safer Choice. Because ingredients listed in CleanGredients are already verified as meeting the Safer Choice standard, formulators who use the database don’t have to pay third-party reviewers to review the ingredients again when they are used in a product formulation, and reduce the risk of having a product fail a review for the Safer Choice certification. This resource helps formulators get safer products to market faster and at a lower cost, increasing availability of products with safer ingredients in the marketplace.
Recently, CleanGredients launched a new website, highlighting the role we play in supporting EPA’s Safer Choice program. We have expanded our site to include a blog and news hub for sharing information about the Safer Choice program, environmental health issues, and the latest developments in green chemistry.
We are also making it easier to find Safer Choice-certified products, starting by providing direct access to the EPA’s product search tool. In the future, we plan to add a product search tool within CleanGredients, which will allow consumers and purchasers to discover Safer Choice-certified products and to learn where to find them.
CleanGredients is proud to support the work of the Safer Choice program to make it easier for consumers to find safer products. Our new site will be a community hub for those interested in safer chemistry and looking for information on safer products, so visit us at CleanGredients.org to stay in the loop.
Learn more by visiting CleanGredients.org, or follow us on Twitter at @CleanGredients. CleanGredients is a project of GreenBlue.