Clorox introduces line of green cleaning products

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Clorox bleach and Liquid-Plumr will gain some unlikely siblings this week -- a line of green cleaning products.The Clorox Co., the Oakland, Calif. firm that introduced bleach to American households a century ago, is adding a series of natural, biodegradable household cleaners called Green Works to its $4.8 billion family of cleaning and household products. As the first major consumer products firm to launch such a line, Clorox has the potential to move green cleaning products beyond the niche of Whole Foods-type stores and into the wider world of Wal-Marts and suburban supermarkets. And its new Green Works products will carry the logo of the Sierra Club -- a partnership that may raise eyebrows among some of the club's members."We'll definitely have some folks who are surprised by this decision, but also people who are pretty excited about it," said Sierra Club spokeswoman Orli Cotel. "We are supporting Green Works in hopes that more people will have access to these kinds of products, some of which aren't even available in the middle of the country."Analysts said Clorox's commitment to Green Works -- the company's first new brand in 20 years -- is the latest evidence that environmentally friendly products are going more mainstream. "This is a kind of watershed moment," said Joel Makower, executive editor of GreenBiz.com, who did some consulting work for Clorox on Green Works. "We finally have major consumer companies taking the green marketplace seriously, and not as an afterthought."Small companies like Seventh Generation and Method Products have made natural cleaning products for years. But they amount to only a tiny sliver of the market. Americans spent over $432 million on all-purpose cleaners in 2007 -- but only 1 percent of that went to Method and 0.3 percent went to Seventh Generation, according to Information Resources Inc. By comparison, Clorox makes three brands of conventional all-purpose cleaners -- Pine-Sol, Clorox Clean-Up and Formula 409 -- that together raked in 41 percent of consumer sales."There are four reasons this (green) category has been held back," said Matt Kohler, Clorox's brand manager for Green Works. "There's a perception that natural products don't work. They've been very expensive. People often have to go to special stores to get them. And there's not a brand that consumers know and trust."But the green market started looking increasingly attractive to Clorox, which manufactures STP auto care products, Hidden Valley salad dressings, Glad plastic bags and Brita water filters along with cleaning brands such as Liquid-Plumr and Pine-Sol. Sales of natural cleaning products rose by 23 percent between 2006 and 2007, according to SPINS, a market research and consulting firm for the natural products industry.So company scientists set about creating cleaners that were at least 99 percent natural, biodegradable, nontoxic, made from plant- and mineral-based ingredients rather than petroleum, and not tested on animals. Clorox chose to keep its own logo on the Green Works label.The idea was to reassure customers who are leery of natural products that they would clean as well as Clorox's more familiar brands. "We're putting the Clorox logo prominently on the label to communicate that this is a trusted source," Kohler said.But Clorox also sought some way to reassure customers that its environmental claims were genuine, and not just hype or "greenwashing."It received certification as a safer product by the Design for the Environment program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. And it approached the Sierra Club for permission to include the club's logo on Green Works labels, beginning this spring.The Sierra Club asked several of its volunteer committees to review Green Works and ended up approving the use of its logo -- the first time it has given its blessing to a household cleaning product. In return, Clorox will pay the club an undisclosed fee based partly on sales. "We hope we are transforming the marketplace by doing this," said Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope. "These products are clean, they're green, they're not going to hurt you, and they're not going to hurt the environment."As part of the product launch, Clorox will undertake a nationwide advertising campaign for Green Works. The products -- which include a general purpose cleaner, window cleaner, toilet bowl cleaner, dilutable cleaner and bathroom cleaner -- will be available in 24,000 stores nationally, including Safeway and Wal-Mart. E-mail Ilana DeBare at idebare(at)sfchronicle.com.(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)