Case Studies

In 2009 SC Johnson, an American cleaning supply company, launched a “What’s Inside” initiative and website to inform consumers of the ingredients in their household products. The “What’s Inside” disclosure initiative increases product transparency and stakeholder accountability by making information about product ingredients easy to find and understand. This program goes beyond industry standards set by the household products industry “right-to-know” initiative.

The SC Johnson “What’s Inside” initiative lists all products ingredients, including dyes, preservatives and fragrance ingredients. All ingredients are defined and a plain language explanation of their purpose in the product is included. In addition, the What’s Inside” initiative focuses on ingredient names that are meaningful to consumers, using the personal care industry’s International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients (INCI) names and those in the Consumer Specialty Products Association’s Consumer Product Ingredients Dictionary. More comprehensive ingredient information, including toxicity and health effects, can be found on the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) available for each product as well as links to websites that provides additional information on the ingredient.

To ensure effective ingredient communication, the majority of product information in North America is available in English, Spanish and French. In addition, to ensure equal access information the company provides ingredient product information over their Toll-free Consumer Products Helpline and ingredient list on product labels.

SC Johnson is working toward continuous improvement of the “What’s Inside” initiative through increasing product disclosure. An example of this is in 2012, SC Johnson published a full list of the fragrance ingredients that may be used in their products.