NRDC

SC Johnson: Coming clean

March 15, 2009

As a runner, I’m a fan of GU energy gels, including a flavor called “Tri-Berry.” The ingredients include many things…

MALTODEXTRIN (GLUCOSE POLYMERS), FILTERED WATER, FRUCTOSE, GU AMINO ACID BLEND (LEUCINE, VALINE, ISOLEUCINE, HISTIDINE), NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL BERRY FLAVOR, POTASSIUM AND SODIUM CITRATE, GU ANTIOXIDANT BLEND (NATURAL VITAMIN E AND VITAMIN C), CALCIUM CARBONATE, FUMARIC ACID, SEA SALT, SODIUM BENZOATE, POTASSIUM SORBATE, GU HERBAL BLEND [CHAMOMILE, COLA NUT (HAS CAFFEINE), GINGER], CITRIC ACID, PECTIN

…but only a passing reference to berries. Tri-Berry, indeed.

What’s inside the stuff we buy? Even when it comes to food, it’s hard to know. (Fumaric acid? Cola nut?) As for other things—including the household products that we breathe and touch, like cleaners and air fresheners, the ingredients are usually a mystery.

SC Johnson Co., the $8-billion a year, privately held company that makes Windex, Glade, Shout, Off!, Pledge, Raid and Ziploc-branded product for the home, is going to change all that in a big way.

Last week, SCJ made a couple of announcements that are likely to shake up the home cleaning industry.

First, the company says it will disclose the ingredient in all of its home cleaning and air care products. This includes products with fragrances—which, up to now, have been closely held secrets because the fragrance industry had argued that it needs to protect confidential business information.

Second, SCJ says it has told its fragrance suppliers to stop using a controversial category of chemicals known as phthalates. Right now, SCJ cleaning and air freshener products include a phthalate called DEP.

Let’s take these one at a time, because each is interesting in its own way. (That’s also why this post is longer than usual…)

The disclosure issue, which has been roiling the household products industry, leapfrogs SCJ over its biggest mainstream competitors. (Seventh Generation, a smaller company that makes natural household products, has led the way on disclosure issues for years, driven by its pioneering CEO, Jeff Hollender.) While the home products industry has adopted a right-to-know initiative that calls for household product firms to list ingredients on either a label, or a website, or an 800 number, SCJ says it will make its information available in all of those ways. You can checkout the website at www.whatsinsidescjohnon.com.

More important, SCJ will  list all of its ingredients—an unprecedented move. By contrast, the industry-wide plan makes an exception for a category called “Fragrances, dyes and preservatives,” again, because of the concern about business secrets.

Kelly Semrau, who is vice president for global public affairs at SCJ, told me last week that the company had come up with an ingenious solution to the fragrance industry’s resistance: Instead of listing ingredients specific to each product, the company will publish a comprehensive list of all of its fragrance ingredients so consumers know what could be potentially included in the products they buy.

A “palate approach,” she calls it: “We’re rather put all the ingredients up there, and begin a dialog with stakeholders, than have it be a black box.”

In a company press release, Erin Thompson Switalski of an environmental health group called Women’s Voices for the Earth is quoted as saying: “SC Johnson just raised the bar for the entire cleaning products industry.”

The phthalate decision will also increase pressure on competitors to follow suit.

Several advocacy groups–notably the Environmental Working Group—have been campaigning against phthalates with scary newspapers ads and websites like www.nottoopretty.org. that point fingers at brands like Arrid Extra Dry and Poison perfrume (“For baby, it could really be poison”) and Arrid Extra Dry.

The FDA and European regulators have approved the use of phthalates, the chemical industry says they are safe—and so, apparently, does SC Johnson. But Fisk Johnson, the company’s chairman and CEO, asked his scientists whether they could reformulate their products to eliminate phthalates.

“IF we can make our products just as good, and without the phthalates, why wouldn’t we do this?” Semrau told me. “That was the question that Fisk put on the table.”

There’s a risk, of course, of allowing scare campaigns to drive business decisions. (I’ve written about this problem when it comes to BPA and baby bottles. See Wal-Mart: The New FDA. ) Neither the media nor retailers nor ordinary consumers are trained to assess scientific research. But until we can rely on an aggressive and independent FDA and EPA to police the products we use—they have failed in the past to meet that standard–it makes sense for companies like SC Johnson to both be cautious and to stay ahead of consumer sentiment.

“We cannot walk away from science. Science should drive public policy,” Semrau says. “But when you are a consumer products manufacturer, you have to listen to consumers.”

Frances Beinecke, the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, wrote on the NRDC blog: “What is promising to me is that SC Johnson has made this move voluntarily, after NRDC raised the issue of phthalates in air fresheners last year… The company’s response is a testament to the power of consumers to make a difference.”

I emailed Rich Liroff, the executive director of the Investor Environmental Health Network, who knows more about these issues than anyone I know, to ask him what he thought of the SCJ decision. He replied:

this represents a precautionary business judgment by SCJ that even though they believe that regulators’ judgments are on their side in terms of continued use of phthalates, the better competitive position to adopt is to side with their consumers lacking faith in regulators’ judgment and to make a focused effort with their supply chain to eliminate chemicals of concern. So rather than taking the position so many other companies have taken—“the regulators say our products and chemicals are safe” or “we are in compliance with all applicable rules and regulations”—SCJ is acknowledging that such positions are no longer adequate for consumer-facing manufacturers and retailers.

Two final thoughts. First, this issue isn’t going away. Just last week, Rich told me, a group called the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics released a report showing that that toiletry products for children contain formaldehyde. And The Walt Disney Co. released a healthy cleaning policy saying that it would take a “precautionary” approach to reducing its chemical use.

Finally, anyone who knows SC Johnson and Fisk Johnson won’t be surprised see them leading the way on an environmental issue. Back in the 1970s, SCJ took CFCs out of their products before they were banned. And at last year’s Brainstorm Green conference about business and the environment), Fisk spoke eloquently about how the company has been trying to avoid using coal-fired electricity in its manufacturing plants, turning instead to methane from a nearby landfill and wind power. I’m really pleased that Fisk will speaking again this year at Brainstorm Green.

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Washington’s coal wars

January 14, 2009

The debate over clean coal has come to Washington in a big way. Specifically, you can see it in Metro Center, D.C.’s busiest subway stop, where millions of people, including those headed to town for President-elect Obama’s inauguration, will see walls of posters and banners saying that “clean coal” is a myth.

The ad campaign comes courtesy of a coalition called This is Reality. Behind it are enviros including the Alliance for Climate Protection (Al Gore’s group), the Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters, Natural Resources Defense Council (disclosure: they’re a client for whom I do some writing) and the National Wildlife Federation. The “reality” coalition says

In reality, there is no such thing as “clean” coal in America today. Coal cannot be called ‘clean’ until its CO2 emissions are captured and stored safely.

Let’s be clear: there are no US homes, factories, shopping centers or churches powered by coal plants that capture and store their global warming pollution.

Today, coal power plants emit carbon dioxide (CO2), the pollutant causing the climate crisis. A third of the America’s carbon pollution now comes from about 600 coal-fired power plants. And of the more than 70 proposed new coal power plants, barely a handful have plans to capture and store their CO2 emissions. If these dirty plants are allowed to be built, this will mean an additional 200 million tons of global warming pollution will be emitted in America each year. Until coal power plants no longer release CO2 to the atmosphere, coal will remain a major contributor to the climate crisis.


This is, in part, a response to a costly campaign created by a coal industry group called the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), a group which says:

As you might have guess, we are pro-coal and proud of it. Not only does coal keep America’s lights on, it keeps everything else that needs electricity running.

ACCCE believes that the robust utilization of coal – America’s most abundant energy resource – is essential to providing affordable, reliable electricity for millions of U.S. consumers and a growing domestic economy. Further, ACCCE is committed to continued and enhanced U.S. leadership in developing and deploying new, advanced clean coal technologies that protect and improve the environment.

The truth is, both the anti-coal and pro-coal forces have a point.

There is, today, no such thing as clean coal—not even close. And there is, today, no way to power the slumping U.S. economy without coal. If you hate coal, then turn off your TV, iPod, refrigerator, air conditioning, etc, for 12 out of every 24 hours – because half of America’s electricity comes from coal.

The reason that the debate is getting so heated is that coal, and clean coal, will be at the center of the debate over greenhouse gas regulation in Congress this year. Environmental groups, scientists and some big companies will argue for a rapid reduction in greenhouse gas pollution—saying that a tight cap will be the only way to stimulate innovation, including the technology breakthroughs needed to capture and store the C02 created when coal is burned. Coal-industry types and utilities will argue that the regulation can’t get too far ahead of clean coal technology or it will wreck the economy by driving up electricity costs.

This morning, the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of environmental groups and big companies, will unveil it latest climate change proposals. Here’s a preview from the WSJ’s Environmental Capital Blog.

Six weeks from now, coal will again make headlines. As Bill McKibben writes in Grist, environmentalists are planning a day of protest and civil disobedience at the coal-fired plant that powers the Congress. He writes:

There are moments in a nation’s — and a planet’s — history when it may be necessary for some to break the law in order to bear witness to an evil, bring it to wider attention, and push for its correction.

So those posters in the metro are just the opening shots in the coal wars.

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Brainstorm Green 2009

January 11, 2009

Not long ago, Big Business and environmental activists were sworn enemies. No more. Today, companies and NGOs come together to work creatively around a variety of issues—from climate change to recycling to protecting the Amazon, from cleaning up dirty businesses like gold mining and to “greening” professional sports. One place they literally come together is at Brainstorm Green, FORTUNE’s conference about business and the environment, which will be back on Earth Day, 2009.

Helping to create Brainstorm Green was a highlight of my 12 years at FORTUNE, and I’m pleased that I’ll be back this year, co-chairing the event with my colleague Brian Dumaine, FORTUNE’s global editor. The program for this year’s Brainstorm Green is still a work in progress, but a group of us got a draft agenda down on paper last week and I’m confident that it will again be a lively, exciting, information-packed event. The theme, once again, will be: How can business help solve the world’s biggest environmental problems?

We’ll discuss and debate climate change regulation, “clean coal,” nuclear power, electric cars, the smart grid, investing in green, renewable energy, sustainable consumption (if there is such a thing), carbon finance and too many other topics to list here.

What makes Brainstorm Green special is the diversity of the crowd. This year, we’ll again hear from many of America’s most important environmental leaders, including Fred Krupp of Environmental Defense, Glenn Prickett of Conservation International, Mark Tercek of The Nature Conservancy (who was there last year on behalf of Goldman Sachs), David Hawkins of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Mindy Lubber of Ceres and Mike Brune of Rainforest Action Network. At least two dozen CEOs of big and medium-sized companies have agreed to speak, including Shai Agassi of Better Place (the electric car company), Ray Anderson of Interface, Carl Bass of Autodesk, David Crane of NRG Energy, Jeff Hollender of Seventh Generation, Fisk Johnson of S.C. Johnson, Donald Knauss of Clorox, Mike Morris of American Electric Power, Ralph Peterson of CH2M Hill, Jim Rogers of Duke Energy and Tom Werner of SunPower.

Other companies sending speakers include Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Goldman Sachs, Mars, Intel, Boeing, McKinsey, the private-equity firm KKR and architectural firm HOK. That list is sure to grow.

We’ll also be joined by speakers whose ideas are shaping the sustainability debate. I’m looking forward to spending time with Paul Hawken, whose books have shaped much of my own thinking about business and the environment. The dynamic Van Jones, who is profiled in the current issue of The New York by Betsy Kolbert,  will talk about green jobs. The always-inspiring Janine Benyus, who spoke last year, will be back to show us how biomimicry works in practice. My friend Joel Makower, the guru of green business and author of Strategies for the Green Economy, will return as well.

Venture capitalists from some of America’s top firms and entrepreneurs touting exciting startups will round out the group. We’re hoping to attract senior officials from the new Obama administration as well.

You can find a full list of speakers on the Brainstorm Green website. That’s also the best place to propose new speakers or to sign up for the event. (FORTUNE screens all participants.) We’ll meet in a beautiful setting—the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Laguna Niguel, CA, and I’m looking forward to seeing many of you blogreaders there.

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The upside of the meltdown

November 27, 2008

While there’s little to like right now about what’s happening to the global economy, or about the government’s never-ending rescue efforts—did you really want to become an owner of Citigroup?—there is this: The possibility that Americans will at long last rethink our habitual consumption. I stopped by my local mall (for a haircut) the other day, and it sure looked busy, but the statistics tell a different story. Consumer spending fell by 1 percent in October, the largest drop since the 2001 terrorist attacks, according to the Commerce Department. November is likely to be worse.

This is welcome news. While I’m mindful that a pullback on consumption will claim some victims—shop clerks, fashion designers, Chinese laborers who make toys or electronics for the global market, maybe even a U.S. automaker or two—and while people losing their jobs is always regrettable, the rate at which we Americans have been spending money is unsustainable both in economic and environmental terms. To put it simply, we’ve been living off cheap credit and cheap energy, neither of which can last.

U.S. financial markets collapsed for many reasons–the recklessness and greed of lenders and mortgage brokers, the willingness of investment banks to repackage and sell junk, the breakdown of the bond ratings agencies which are supposed to investigate the value of securities, the ineffectiveness or indifference of government regulators and the blind faith that markets will take care of everything. But one more very big reason that we are in such trouble now is that is that Americans have borrowed a lot more money than they could afford to repay to buy bigger homes and cars, and more stuff of all kinds. As a government and as individuals, we’re borrowing more each year just to stay even. This massive intergenerational transfer of wealth—from our children and grandchildren to ourselves—is not only unjustified but certain to end badly.

Environmentally, we quite literally cannot fuel our current levels of consumption without destroying the planet, until we radically transform the way we use energy and materials, a process that will take decades. “Sustainable consumption” is, for now, pretty much an oxymoron—just think about how much gasoline, coal-fired electricity and plastic you use every week. Deforestation, the depletion of the ocean’s fisheries, loss of biodiversity and, of course, climate change are all driven by the fact that we are living beyond our collective means.

OK, enough of a rant. Now I want to pose a question, and humbly make a suggestion as the holiday shopping season kicks off. (Friday, November 28, is Buy Nothing Day and Black Friday.) The question is, why don’t the U.S. environmental groups talk more about consumption?

I don’t know the answer (and I will try to ask Fred Krupp of Environmental Defense Fund or Frances Beinecke of NRDC, next time I run into them) but I think it’s in part because they are focused on policy and they don’t want to place too much of the blame for our environmental crisis on consumers. They also don’t want to come across as scolds (Unlike me!) because that hasn’t been an effective message for environmentalists. I can’t help but wonder if it is also because they depend on the kindness of rich people to stay afloat. Their boards and major donors come from Wall Street, corporate law firms and big companies. (Check out the EDF board and the NRDC board.) This leaves the consumption issue to much smaller groups like the Center for the New American Dream, which has found creative ways to get people to think about their buying habits. The economist Juliet Schor, who is co-chair of the New Dream board, has an article on the group’s website calling for “a local, frugal, just, and fun holiday season” filled with more music and less wrapping paper!

I’d like to suggest that you substitute a gift to charity for your next trip to the mall. This is a win-win-win-win because you can help out a nonprofit (and many are feeling squeezed right now), avoid purchases that deplete our natural resources, save on gas and lower your personal carbon footprint. There are many websites that can help with this, but you can start with Redefine Christmas. They have this eye-popping statistic on their website:

the amount of money spent on candy alone during the holiday season is greater than the annual budgets of the American Cancer Society, The American Heart Association and Habitat for Humanity combined.

Stunning, isn’t it. Another site, Just Give, includes a database of 1,000 charities, grouped by category, that have met stringent reporting requirements, and makes it easy to send gift cards, collect tax receipts, etc. Still another nonprofit that does good work makes holiday giving easy with gift cards is Global Giving (disclosure: I’m friendly with its founder, Dennis Whittle), which enables you to directly support small NGOS all around the world. Imagine sending blankets and clothes to needy families in India or contributing to a school for AIDS orphans in South Africa instead of buying a new sweater or tie for a family member or friend.

Whatever you choose to do, I hope your holidays are filled with peace and love–which, incidentally, are infinitely renewable resources.

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Obama, clean tech and change

November 5, 2008

What an extraordinary night for America! Here’s a brief dispatch from the streets of Washington, D.C., before getting to today’s column: The U Street neighborhood was known as “Black Broadway” in the 1920s–Duke Ellington grew up nearby, jazz clubs thrived, theaters were built and a black-middle class grew there for years. It remained the cultural hub of black D.C. until 1968, when it was all but burned down after the assassination of Martin Luther King. After a period of blight, U Street was reborn as a vibrant neighborhoo in the 1990s, as restaurants, clubs and condos sprung up. Last night, it was the site of a spontaneous street party, with blacks and whites, mostly young people, hugging one another, celebrating the election of Barack Obama. Can anyone doubt, after this election, that dramatic change can happen in America, and in a hurry, too?

Which brings me to today’s Sustainability column, a look at the prospects for clean technology. I’ve recently spoken with several venture capitalists who are optimistic — despite the credit crunch, despite the recession, despite declining oil prices — about the business of producing clean energy and creating a more sustainability economy. Here’s how the column begins:

Some people are saying that the clean energy revolution is over, before it has even begun. “Alternative energy suddenly faces headwinds,” declared The New York Times. “Winds shift for renewable energy as oil price sinks, money gets tight,” reports The Wall Street Journal. “Will the Economic Crash Take Down Our Hopes for Clean Energy?” asks Alternet.

There’s no doubt that recent developments cast a cloud over the renewable energy business. The capital markets have turned risk-averse, making financing for alternative energy hard to come by. Declining oil prices make it harder for cleaner transportation fuels to compete with gasoline. In a slumping economy, the government will be reluctant to pass climate change legislation that will raise gas and electricity rates.

Never mind – there are compelling reasons, even now, to believe that the U.S. is on the verge of a dramatic shift, away from a economy dependent on cheap fossil fuels and towards cleaner, greener, more efficient ways of doing business.

Recently, I spoke with three leading venture capitalists who focus on clean tech: William E. “Wilber” James of Rockport Capital, Alan Salzman of VantagePoint Venture Partners, and Paul Maeder of Highland Capital Partners. Needless to say, they are biased – they are invested, personally and professionally, in renewable energy and other clean technologies.

But they all see powerful forces driving the U.S. economy towards a more sustainable way of doing business in the long run.

Obama’s election will bring new energy to the environmental movement. McCain would have been a welcome change, too, but the environmentalists and business people I’ve talked to today seem jazzed by the election of Obama.   (I’ve spoken to quite a few people, because I’m at Business for Social Responsibility’s annual conference in New York) . They understand that government policy matters enormously to the environmental movement.

As Frances Beinecke of NRDC wrote in a email this morning:

Barack Obama’s election is a huge win for everyone exhausted from playing defense. Count us among them. It rekindles our hope that environmental protection may be restored to its rightful place as a treasured American value.

On the most important issues of the day — from global warming controls to clean energy solutions to wilderness preservation — President-elect Obama campaigned on behalf of far-sighted policies that NRDC has championed for years.

You can read the rest of my clean tech column here.

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The phony oil drilling debate

August 24, 2008

The other day, John McCain visited an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico to call for more offshore drilling. The massive Chevron rig produces 10,000 barrels of oil a day.

Meanwhile, I just filled up my new Honda Fit with gas for the first time. After driving 282 miles, I bought 9.47 gallons at $3.62 a gallon. So I’m getting 29.6 mpg, mostly in the city.

What’s the connection? The actions of millions of Americans like me—as we trade big cars for smaller ones, drive less, or do both—are going to have a whole lot more impact on oil prices, more quickly, than drilling for more oil.

In fact, they already are. Gas prices have been falling by more than a penny per day and the price of oil has dropped from about $147 a barrel to about $115 a barrel in the last couple of months for one primary reason: Americans are using less gasoline.

This is a reminder that the debate over offshore drilling, while it makes for good visuals and sound bites, is at best irrelevant and at worse a distraction from the big energy and environmental issues that we need to address.

That shouldn’t be surprising. The U.S. is currently responsible for about 5.7% of global oil production. The U.S. accounts for 23% of the global oil consumption. So it stands to reason that we can have a greater impact by consuming less than we can by producing more.

Of course, consuming less oil is also good for the environment and for our energy and economic security.

“It’s at least order of magnitude more important to worry about the demand side, rather than the supply side,” says Rick Dukes, director of the Center for Market Innovations at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Last week, I spoke with Rick and his colleague Andy Stevenson at NRDC about energy prices, drilling and efficiency. They are both business guys—Rick is a former McKinsey consultant, Andy’s a former hedge fund investor—and so they naturally turn to markets and data when they want to understand what’s happening with energy.

They sent me more data than I can absorb, or reproduce here, but here are their two major points.

First, offshore oil drilling won’t drive down prices, at least not by much. Citing US EIA reports, Rick and Andy say that 200,000 barrels per day by 2030 of extra output from additional outer continental shelf drilling represents a mere 3% increase in projected US production in 2030 and only a 0.2% increase in global output in 2030. The Department of Energy says the projected price impact of opening up additional outer continental shelf drilling in the US is “insignificant”. If McCain knows that (and he should), he’s being a cynic when linking offshore oil drilling to price cuts.

Second, conservation and efficiency can make a difference. Indeed, they already have. U.S. consumers have reduced our oil consumption by about 860,000 barrels a day in the past seven months. This reduction helped offset growth in demand from China and the rest of the developing world. Rick said, by email, that the “U.S. has single-handedly corrected a chronic global supply demand imbalance, helping to drop crude prices nearly 25% over the past 2 months.”

I asked them how we can sustain and build on this momentum, especially if oil prices continue to fall. They told me they’d like to see more aggressive government fuel-economy standards for cars, higher mileage standards for heavy duty trucks and more government investment for public transportation (which could pay dividends for everyone in the form or lower oil prices).

Changing driving habits also would do more good than drilling.“Even the much-mocked tire opportunity saves another 600,000 barrels a day,” Rick says. (Although Edmunds.com did not find that tire pressure had much effect on fuel economy.)

The other problem with the debate over offshore oil drilling is that it’s a diversion from the debate we really should be having over how to transform our entire energy economy. Bryan Walsh had an excellent piece on that last week in Time

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What, me worry?

August 20, 2008

The Environmental Working Group looked at nearly 1,000 sunscreen products and found that “4 out of 5 contain chemicals that may pose health hazards or don’t adequately protect skin from the sun’s damaging rays.

The Natural Resources Defense Council analyzed household air fresheners and found that “most contain chemicals that may affect hormones and reproductive development, particularly in babies.

The EPA was so concerned about keeping rodenticides—rat and mouse poisons—out of the hands of children that the agency ruled this spring that four of the most most hazardous types of pesticides will no longer be sold for personal use

These days, it seems like you can’t open the newspaper or, worse, search the Internet without hearing about the dangers of ordinary household products. Even shower curtains are said to give off toxic chemicals.

Here are links to the warnings about sunscreen and air fresheners and rat poison and shower curtains

And here’s my question: Are these risks worth worrying about? I’m not a scientist, and I’m keeping my mind open, but I can’t say I’m concerned about these so-called dangers to human health. Instead, I worry about people in poor neighborhoods who can’t get access to the most potent rat poisons. (You now need a trained expert to apply them.) And I worry about people who decide not to use sun screen because they don’t want to expose their skin to “chemicals.”

I’ve been thinking about risk, science and emotion since last month when I wrote about the controversy over Bisphenol-A (BPA). Then, this week, in the aftermath story, I met with Chris Cathcart, the chief executive of the Consumer Specialty Products Association, and Gretchen Schaefer, the group’s communications director. They have the unenviable job of defending the safety of lots of the stuff under your kitchen sink, in your laundry room, in your garage and maybe in your purse—household cleaners, laundry detergent, bug spray, air fresheners, hand sanitizers and the like.

Cathcart, who is 57, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and an Air Force veteran, has worked in the chemical industry since the 1980s. The members of his association include such widely admired companies as SC Johnson and Procter & Gamble.

And he says something that I have long believed—that no well-run public company can afford to knowingly sell unsafe products, risking the health of its customers and its reputation, let alone the inevitable lawsuits that would result if it could be shown that their products made people sick.

“They can’t risk putting something out there that would create a dire health consequence, knowing how litigious everyone is,” Cathcart told me. I agree—it would be an incredibly stupid thing to do.

Right about now, you may be thinking: What about the tobacco industry? What about asbestos? If you pay really close attention to these issues, you may even be wondering, what about the dangers of microwave popcorn

I’d argue that each of these examples is sui generis. The tobacco-industry story is horrifying, of course, and well-documented, but atypical, to say the least, of corporate America in the 21st century. Asbestos and microwave popcorn posed sworkplace hazards—a serious matter, but entirely different from selling risky products to the public.

This is not to say that there aren’t plenty of unsafe products being sold by well-managed, even responsible companies. Think fast-food, soft drinks, snacks or Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. These products will make you sick if you consume too much of them. Think guns. Or even oversized SUVs, which pose a long-term risk to the planet because they fuel global warming. But there’s nothing hidden about their dangers.

Cathcart, meanwhile, argues that there’s a great deal of misunderstanding and misinformation out there about what’s “green,” what’s natural and what’s chemical. In his blog, he writes:

It is … a common misbelief that naturally occurring or naturally derived substances are always less toxic and better for the environment than synthetically derived ingredients. In actuality, scientists have found no connection between “naturalness” and toxicity.

Lest he come across as a knee-jerk advocate for his industry, Cathcart admits that some household cleaning products may be a cause for worry—not because they they are unhealthy but because of their environmental impact. How are they made? How are they packaged? What happens after they are thrown away? (I washed my new car over the weekend and surely sent some bad stuff into the storm sewers, and from there to Chesapeake Bay.) Smart companies are examining these issues, using science: S.C. Johnson, for example, has worked for years on a classification system, known as Greenlist, that evaluates the impact of thousands of raw materials on human and environmental health.

Clearly, I’m just starting to learn about these issues, mostly by listening to smart people on all sides. I’m looking forward to reading a controversial new book called Poisoned Profits: The Toxic Assault on Our Children, by former New York Times reporter Philip Shabecoff and his wife, consumer advocate Alice Shabecoff. Thoughtful critics of business like author and scholar David Michaels and Richard Liroff, who leads the Investor Environmental Health Network, also have a lot to add to this conversation.

But whatever your tolerance for risk, next time you read or hear about the dangers of a consumer product, do me a favor–be skeptical, whether it’s industry or a nonprofit group doing the talking.

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