ARLINGTON — Local detergent maker Country Save hopes an overhauled federal labelling campaign will catch safety-conscious shoppers’ eyes.
The Arlington-based company’s products are among the first on shelves with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Safer Choice label, a signal to shoppers that the product uses more benign chemicals.
“I’m thrilled about the new logo,” Country Save President Don Nordness said.
Using simple, clean shapes, the logo features a home, a parent and child, and two leaves.
“It’s much easier to get across to consumers what its about,” he said.
Country Save, which did about $4 million in sales last year, makes eco-friendly detergent. It’s a small company. It has seven employees and one production line.
Without a marketing budget, Country Save’s products get on store shelves “where we can,” he said.
That mostly means stores in the West. But it is used across the world. The Defense Department uses it’s single-load packs in comfort kits given to soldiers deployed in remote areas overseas.
To qualify for the Safer Choice label, a product’s chemical ingredients cannot hurt people or the environment if used in reasonable amounts.
“You more or less have to start drowning yourself in it for bad things to happen,” said Jim Jones, the EPA’s assistant administrator for chemical safety and pollution prevention.
Companies apply to include their products. The EPA uses a third-party entity to verify that ingredients meet the program’s criteria. Products are periodically reviewed to make sure they still qualify.
More than 2,000 products from about 500 companies have been approved. Most are cleaning products.
The program has been around since 1995, but until a branding overhaul earlier this year, it was called Design for the Environment and its logo centered on a map of the world.
That didn’t grab shoppers’ attention, he said. “We actually had partner companies that wouldn’t use the logo because it didn’t help them with customers.”
For comparison, most shoppers know the Energy Star logo, he said. Energy Star is an EPA labeling program for energy-efficient household appliances.
“That’s our fantasy — to have the same level of consumer awareness” for Safer Choice, Jones said.
Dan Catchpole: 425-339-3454; dcatchpole@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @dcatchpole.
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