Invitation to Partner
Understanding the Environmental Profile of Your Formula
The Profiling Process
Partnership Benefits
A Word About Selecting Raw Materials
For More Information
A Note to Cleaning Chemical Formulators
Thank you for your interest in the Design for the Environment (DfE) Program's
Formulator Initiative. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's DfE
Program is a voluntary, partnership-based initiative that works directly
with companies to integrate health and environmental considerations into
business decisions.
Invitation to Partner
The DfE Program invites cleaning chemical formulators to partner in the
design of safer products. Our goal is to assist formulators in developing
products with a more positive environmental profile. For DfE, products
with a more positive environmental profile are those whose ingredients,
when compared to conventional formulations, are less toxic, less persistent
(i.e., they biodegrade faster), and less bioaccumulative (i.e., they do
not tend to build up in living tissue—human or animal), and whose
ingredient byproducts have similar beneficial characteristics. We focus
on advancing pollution prevention and limiting potential risk. The DfE
motto: "If it's not in your product, then you don't have to worry
about it!"
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Understanding the Environmental Profile of Your Formula
The first step in improving a product's environmental profile is to understand
the characteristics of your current formulation. Knowing the environmental
and human health attributes of your product's ingredients allows you to
compare the profile of potential substitute ingredients and decide whether
a switch might have a net health or environmental benefit. To help with
this process, DfE offers the scientific and technical expertise of its
formulator initiative team. EPA's scientists have reviewed and assessed
thousands of chemicals and developed systems to predict chemical characteristics
and toxicity in the absence of data. The formulator team can provide you
with information on what is known and not known about the potential environmental
and health effects of raw materials and additives.
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The Profiling Process
To begin developing an environmental and human health profile of the
ingredients you use, please complete the Formulator
Ingredient Worksheet [PDF] (83KB). With it, DfE will prepare a
preliminary assessment profile of your ingredients as a baseline for considering
safer alternatives. We typically invite a potential partner to meet the
DfE technical assessment team and discuss our findings. This meeting is
also an opportunity to review the elements of partnership and begin crafting
a memo of understanding. DfE will consider all information you provide
to us proprietary and will handle it in a strictly confidential manner.
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Partnership Benefits
In addition to technical consultations with the EPA, a partner receives
public recognition for formulation innovations and improvements that help
protect health and the environment. DfE also helps extend recognition
to partner customers, without whom the benefits of reformulation cannot
be realized.
A Word About Selecting Raw
Materials
Building a cleaning formulation with a more positive environmental
profile may require extra care and scrutiny, especially when selecting
raw materials. Structural and other differences in chemicals of
the same general class and chemical make-up may not be apparent
from product literature or labels. In fact, even a Chemical Abstracts
Service number may not tell the whole story about a chemical.
For example, a single CAS number may reference a surfactant that
has either a branched or linear carbon chain structure. A key
distinction from an environmental standpoint since linear chains
biodegrade more rapidly than branched. Formulators should be attentive
in selecting ingredients and get confirmation from their suppliers
if they have any doubts as to the precise structure, composition,
or properties of the chemicals that they plan to use.
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For More Information on the DfE Program and the Formulator
Initiative
Contact David DiFiore at 202-564-8796; e-mail: difiore.david@epa.gov or Mary Cushmac at 202-564-8803; e-mail cushmac.mary@epa.gov.
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