Invitation to Partner and Worksheet to Evaluate Alternative Ingredients

A Note to Industrial and Institutional
Laundry Formulators

Thank you for your interest in the Design for the Environment (DfE) Program's Industrial and Institutional (I/I) Laundry 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.

An Invitation

The DfE Program invites detergent formulators to partner in the design of safer, cleaner products for use in industrial and institutional laundries. Our goal is to assist laundry detergent formulators in developing products with a more positive environmental profile. For DfE, products with a more positive environ mental 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 or process, then you don't have to worry about it!"

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 I/I laundry team. EPA's scientists have reviewed and assessed thousands of chemical substances and developed systems to predict chemical characteristics and toxicity in the absence of data. The I/I laundry team can provide you with information on what is known and not known about the potential environmental and health effects of detergent raw materials and additives.

The Profiling Process

To begin developing an environmental and human health profile of the ingredients you use, please complete the Institutional and Industrial Laundry Formulator Ingredient Worksheet (PDF file, 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.

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.