Clorox Aims to Show that 'Green Works'

Can a major consumer packaged goods company with a name indelibly associated with household bleach become a leading light in the green marketplace? That's the hope of Clorox, the Oakland-based company, which this week is launching its first new brand in twenty years: Green Works, a line of cleaning products that are, in the company's words, "at least 99 percent natural" — made from coconuts and lemon oil, formulated to be biodegradable and non-allergenic, packaged in recyclable bottles, and not tested on animals. The initial launch includes five products: an all-purpose cleaner, a glass cleaner, a toilet bowl cleaner, a dilutable cleaner, and a bathroom cleaner.

It's an intriguing moment. Green Works enters the marketplace with a near perfect storm of market conditions: growing mainstream consumer demand for green products that don't require compromise or sacrifice; significant interest from Wal-Mart and other big retailers in pushing greener products to the masses; a product that seems competitive with the leading green brands; and endorsement from Big Green.

That last item comes in the form of an "alliance," just announced, with the Sierra Club, which has endorsed Green Works and whose logo will appear on Green Works labels starting around Earth Day. Sierra Club will receive an unspecified financial payment. Sierra Club doesn't often endorse products, especially ones from big companies. The last one I can recall was Ford's Mercury Mariner Hybrid SUV, back in 2005.

The idea of Clorox as a green leader may strike some as odd. The company is known mostly for its flagship product, Clorox Bleach, which is seen by some as a stain from an environmental perspective, though the company says the product is misunderstood and safe. (Green Works products do not contain bleach.) Household bleach, it explains, is a water-based solution containing six percent sodium hypochlorite, whose chemical symbol, NaOCl, is essentially table salt (sodium chloride, or NaCl) with a molecule of oxygen. That is, bleach comes from, and degrades into, salt. (You wouldn't want to drink it, but you wouldn't want to eat a cup of salt, either.) Moreover, the company points out, bleach's disinfectant properties are essential to public health — endorsed by the World Health Organization and others.

Some environmentalists warn against using bleach, pointing out that it is toxic and corrosive and can create suspected carcinogens in the water supply. Suffice to say, Clorox refutes this. "The bleach cycle — from production to use to environmental fate — is simple and sustainable," it maintains.

So, can The Clorox Company become a green brand leader? I spent some time last summer talking with the company about Green Works, part of a small consulting project. I was asked to help Clorox think through how it was positioning both Green Works and the company itself in advance of the product launch. I met with the Green Works brand and marketing managers, as well as the company's corporate responsibility staff — a relatively new function there.

What I found was that the company — whose brands include Glad, Formula 409, Liquid-Plumr, S.O.S. Pads, Kingsford charcoal, Ever Clean kitty litter, Brita water filters, Hidden Valley salad dressings and, as of about ten weeks ago, Burt's Bees personal care products — had a relatively blank slate from an environmental perspective. It did not have any significant  skeletons. It enjoyed a solid compliance record, has joined several voluntary programs to reduce waste and emissions, and has received modest recognition for its performance. Except for concerns about bleach, it has been largely off activists' radar. From an environmental perspective, it was neither a leader nor a laggard.

Under CEO Don Knauss, who joined the company in 2006 from Coca-Cola, Clorox began to recognize that environmental and social sustainability are of growing importance for the company. By the time I showed up in July, Clorox had undertaken efforts to reduce its packaging and had begun to inventory its carbon footprint across its North America operations. (Among other things, the company is working to make the Green Works manufacturing process carbon neutral.)

Green Works seems to have potential to be a breakthrough brand — a line of cleaners competitive, environmentally speaking, with the leading green brands like Seventh Generation and Method, effective enough to wear the Clorox label, priced less than other green cleaners, and enjoying widespread distribution; Wal-Mart, for one, will be featuring the products in its stores. If one of the goals of the green consumer revolution is to get brand leaders to create greener products at affordable prices, this seems a significant step in the right direction.

Green Works' roots go back about three years, when a small group of individuals within the company began investigating the green-cleaning market and conducted market research. Through a market-segmentation exercise, they identified a slice of the consumer market they dubbed "Chemical Avoiding Naturalists," consumers who wanted greener cleaners but felt the incumbent products didn't work well, came from brands they didn't know or trust, were too expensive, and weren't always available where they shopped. These are the folks who want strong, effective cleaners, but worry about their health effects — the ones who say, "Let's open the windows and send the kids outside — we're going to clean now!"

As the team developed and tested products with real consumers, they recognized they had a potential hit. "We were actually in a perfect position as a company," Jessica Buttimer, Green Works' director of marketing, told me last fall. "We have the Clorox brand. We have these distribution channels and great relationship with Wal-Mart. We have the science to make an efficacious product. And we have the scale to charge just a 20 percent premium, not a 100 percent premium." Moreover, Buttimer and her team found that consumers trusted the Clorox brand and the fact that a greener cleaner was coming from a company they'd known for years.

But the kicker was that the product actually did what it was supposed to do. "We did blind testing versus the market leaders," says Buttimer. "We were at parity or better in performance, which as a chemical company, you can imagine, was a huge surprise — that these things, with 99% or more natural ingredients, work as well as Lysol, 409, and Pine-Sol."

Time will tell whether Green Works will be a game-changer — whether it will make green cleaning more affordable and accessible to the masses. But the potential is there. Clorox doesn't launch a new brand unless it sees a $100 million or greater market opportunity.

But there's a potentially bigger story here. Clorox — a 95-year-old, relatively stodgy company — seems to have discovered its green gene. CEO Knauss has identified sustainability as one of three core consumer trends with which he wants to align Clorox products. The combination of Green Works, Burt's Bees, and Brita give it a toehold in that market space, a foundation on which it can build more offerings. Already, additions to the Green Works line are being planned.

All of which has invigorated the company, says Buttimer, a thirtysomething mother of two who has become the corporate face of Green Works. "I can't keep my calendar clear of associate marketing managers, our entry-level positioning and marketing people, asking, 'How do I work on this project?' Or people coming to me and announcing, 'My parents are members of Sierra Club.' Everyone wants to be involved."

Moreover, she adds, "What's really exciting is that we're building knowledge and confidence within the rest of the company that we can do the same things with a lot of our other product lines."

A green Clorox? Anything's possible.

Comments

[David Fox]

The three year process is a useful datapoint. Here's hoping there are many other companies well into similar transition/development that we're yet to hear about.

Also terrific to hear the "All of which has invigorated the company" sentiment.

[Danna]

Will it not be great when all the major companies get that nature does everything better!

[Karen]

I'm very happy to see companies like this making green products more widely available. I know that Proctor and Gamble has taken similar steps with their Pure Essentials line, which is actually a great product. I hope that more consumers start using products like this, and having a trusted brand name will certainly help to at least gain their consideration.

[Stephen Albinati]

One of the most interesting points about Greenworks is that they will be providing a green product at a 20% premium rather than a 100% premium.

I'm glad to see that we are finally getting away from the idea that things need to be much more expensive to be green.

[Mark W. McElroy]

Like all so-called green products, Clorox's Green Works could make it possible for consumers to live more sustainable lives and that's a good thing. But a green product does not a green company make. Rather, it only begs the question: Is Clorox itself, for example, sustainable? If I'm not mistaken, Clorox has never published a sustainability report. This raises another question: If a company's operations are wildly unsustainable and yet its products are green, doesn't the greenness of the products fade a bit, if not a lot? My own view is that any company that produces and seeks to exploit so-called green products is duty-bound to measure and report on the sustainability of their own operations. Otherwise, we really have no way of seeing the whole picture.

Regards,

Mark

[alex]

Great Blog I always have a good time reading it. It’d be great if someone knew about this site www.earthlab.com ? I have used their carbon calculator and it seems pretty legit? Has anyone else used it? They are partners with live earth and Al Gore so it must be pretty credible? If anyone else has done digging on this let me know. Oh and I got a score of 289 on their test…lower than the average in my state! Whoop whoop!

[Arboga]

hmmm...

thanks for sharing the formula for being ' green' and authentic:

STEP ONE - put your massive PR machine in motion

STEP TWO - buy endorsements

STEP THREE - trumpet the small steps in a way that overshadows any faults.

glad to know that clorox is now the purveyors of goodness. animal testing? who cares. transparency of ingredients on green works but not other products? why bother.

candidly, i wish more time was spent supporting the brands that are actually trying to make a difference beyond a simple product proposition.

greed is good.

A

[Special K]

I have to say that I just stumbled across this blog after seeing a commercial for the new Green Works line, of course I had to instantly google it to find out if it can be true...and it seems like a hit...I'm planning to start stalking my local wal-mart...It will be a lot easier on my budget to buy these new clorox products rather than the "green" products I'm using now.

[Dave]

Thanks for the great post Joel! I am really excited about this post - gotta hand it to Clorox - they are consistently coming out with innovative products.

[anonymous]

I honestly don't mean this to be a personal attack but, Joel, do you ever right about any company that hasn't hired you on as a consultant or with whom you serve as an advisor?

[Joel Makower]

Dear anonymous: Thanks for the non-personal attack, but if you scroll through past posts, you'll see that the majority of them are about things with which I had nothing to do. For example, you'll see posts over the past few months about Wal-Mart, Google, Coca-Cola, UNEP, and many others -- none of which are clients or affiliated organizations.

I blog about companies and organizations with which I'm involved because I am able to provide insight and context, which readers seem to like.

Finally, many of the mentions I make of relationships are solely for disclosure. In some cases -- for example, with NBC's Green Week, about which I posted some months ago -- I had nothing directly to do with the initiative, but since the company is a client of a firm with which I am affiliated, I felt obliged to disclose the connection.

Funny that I'm justifying transparency to someone who criticizes anonymously!

[Chester's Clean House]

Good post on Green Works. I am glad Clorox is starting to go green, but they have a long way to go. I still like 100% natural cleaning products made from stuff around the house. Guess clorox doesn't really want you to know about that.

[Lauren S]

This is such a fascinating conversation!

Check out the perspective on WorldofGood.com, a new online Social Network for commerce as a force for poverty alleviation!

http://community.worldofgood.com/blogs/mcmilker_blog/2008/01/18/clorox-benefits-from-fdas-decision-on-natural

http://www.worldofgood.com/oo/c

-What do YOU think? Add your perspective!

[mary]

If the green works is make from 99%coconut and lemon what is the other 1%
Thank You

[josh]

Interesting read. I checked out the Clorox and Green Works websites. They claim to be taking steps on their total business (beyond Green Works) to measure Carbon Emmissions and implement an aggressive reduction plan.

I also saw that Green Works has another endorsement with the EPA that wasn't referenced in the article.

Whether you buy the product or not, it's good to see some action from a Cleaning Chemical company.

We have been using the new Clorox green products in our home for over a month now. They are wonderful. I feel they clean very well, and I am not overwhelmed by the fumes created by conventional cleaning products. My mother didn't believe the products would work, but she has examined my clean home closely and she is ready to make the switch to green products now.

[JackieD]

I would only purchase this product if their other products did not test on animals and were also environmentally friendly, which sadly is not the case. I am also disapointed that Burt Bees is now owned by Clorox. Won't buy their stuff any more either. Clorox is just another big, greedy corporation jumping on the "go green bandwagon" trying to create a better image for themselves by bulldozing their way in and pushing out those who truly are environmentally friendly and cruelty free. I will pay the extra to stay with the companies who are the real deal.

[Hannah Steiner]

Its great that Clorox recognizes the increasing consumer demand for environmentally friendly products, but it would be much more encouraging if they had released the product after recognizing their own responsibility to the environment. The later is much more genuinely motivated, and would demonstrate their internalization of sustainable business practices. Instead, they are motivated by chances to increase market share while utilizing established distribution channels. I feel that, just like many other companies, Clorox has found a way to capitalize on the "greening" trend without actually embracing the principals behind the movement.

[Städ]

Thank´s for sharing the green formula, i will keep using green products

[Fuller Brush]

Looks like an excellent product. Must smell wonderful with all of those great ingredients.

[nancy]

I just bought one of the green products. I think it works great.

[Jim Sochacki]

While Clorox was doing this, they bulldozed away 10 small mountains and 25 large farms in the Shenandoah Valley where I live to put in subdivisions of 5000 square feet and greater houses. They also put in scores of strip malls and luxurious medical centers. Of course, most of these buildings are made mostly of concrete, stone and metal; products that are mined rather than lumber, soy and hemp; products that could be grown on the farms they bulldozed away. Of course, Las Vegas is 100 times the environmental disaster and the Gulf Coast is 50 times the environmental disaster that the Shenandoah Valley is.

Unless, we demand that schools be built from products that are grown and children are taught to use products that are grown to make things and to live as simply as possible using these things the Earth will be a complete cesspool soon.

Isaac Newton predicted that in 2000 the Earth would be in turmoil. He predicted that the world would have incredible means of travel and communication. He predicted that around 2060 the Earth would basically be destroyed and then man would realize that they have to live like Jesus said; The Earth is your home, live simply and love always.

[Local Cleaners]

This a nice way to reinvent a product, especially Clorox. It has become a household name and it being environment friendly definitely would help increase their sales.