Product Sustainability
When we formulate and manufacture Clorox® products, we keep you and our planet in mind. We conduct environmental safety assessments to help ensure our products will be safe for the environment when used as directed. These evaluations include such things as biodegradation and bioaccumulation, and impact on septic systems, aquatic life, birds, and other wildlife. We’re also constantly working on more efficient, sustainable solutions for our product packaging that include using recyclable or compostable materials.
For instance, it might surprise you to know that the lifecycle of our namesake Clorox® bleach, one of the world’s most effective and inexpensive disinfectants, starts and ends with sodium chloride, common table salt. Brita® filters provide great-tasting water without the plastic waste from bottled water. Glad® ForceFlex® trash bags are made in a way that we’re using one million pounds less plastic per year compared to our original trash bags. Burt’s Bees® earth-friendly products have set a high bar in natural personal care. The Kingsford® Products Manufacturing Company is an industry leader in environmental controls and sustainability for charcoal manufacturing.
For more information on the environmental sustainability of our product portfolio, please click on the links below:
At Clorox, we’re constantly seeking sustainable solutions for product packaging, while delivering superior products that meet consumer needs. We focus on the redesign and lightweighting of our packaging, decreasing the amount of plastic resin and increasing the amount of recycled content used in our packaging and enabling the packaging to be recycled. We do this without compromising the effectiveness or usability of the product.
Some of our packaging success stories are:
- Today, 90% of our U.S. product cartons are made from 100% recycled content (minimum 35% post-consumer content and the remainder is reused scraps and waste)
- More than 85% of the packages that house our products are recyclable.
- Most of our U.S. retail display materials are made from 100% post-consumer waste.
- By reducing the amount of HDPE resin, the "raw" form of plastic used in Clorox® regular bleach and our household cleaner bottles and canisters, we have cut our resin use by more than 5 million pounds a year.
- We reduced by an average of 45 percent the amount of packaging material used in many of our Glad® trash bag products.
- In 2010, our cat litter product lines moved from plastic pails to more sustainable cartons and bags. These newly designed packages are easier to handle, pour from and store, and save almost 6 million pounds of resin per year.
- We have moved to new more eco-efficient triggers on all of our spray cleaning products.
- The release of our concentrated Clorox 2® Stain Fighter and Color Booster led to a 36% resin reduction in packaging materials (saving more than 2.4 million lbs of resin annually). This reformulation also resulted in approximately a 54 percent water reduction (saving over 7.7 million gallons/year) and a 46 percent corrugate reduction. We also estimate that about 160,000 gallons of diesel are saved annually on shipping this smaller product.
- We have removed the PVC shrink wrapping packaging on all of our Burt’ Bees® Lip Balms and Lip Shimmer products, saving over 1800 miles of shrink wrapping film that would have otherwise found its ways to landfills.
