sustainability
the smartest smarty dish yet.
posted April 24, 2013 by meagan |
getting your dishes sparkling clean is no small feat. just ask anyone who has encountered that pesky, chalky film that happens in hard water areas. here’s the good news: we’ve recently developed some new, natural technologies that actually work. take that, hard water.
for years, we’ve been making smarty dish®, a little tablet that packs a big punch against stuck-on food. but in areas with excessively-mineralized water, we needed something stronger. we needed to call in the big guns, so to speak.
we’re exceedingly proud of what we created in our lab. smarty dish® plus puts the smack down on hard water and tough stains. even better? it’s plant-based, which means it won’t hurt the environment.
“in developing smarty dish® plus, we used a new hard water control agent derived from yeast that isn’t widespread in the industry. it’s one of the most sustainable ingredients we’ve ever used,” explains fred, our green chef who developed the technology. after smarty dish® plus does its job cleaning dishes, it’s readily degradable. EDTA (an ingredient found in many traditional dishwasher detergents) carries metals into the environment in a cumulative fashion, making them available to the food chain – think mercury in fish.
so what’s in this remarkable little guy? we call it “triple action power”. allow me to explain:
detergent: it dissolves sticky food like a dream. plus, it’s naturally-derived and EDTA-free, so it won’t harm the fishes.
rinse aid: smarty dish® plus has a rinse-aid built in. genius, right?
hard water resistance: polymers made from chicory starch disperse hard water deposits so they don’t end up on your dishes. in fact, we’ve found the formula to be effective in resisting over 95% of hard water in the US.
you can find smarty dish® plus right here or at most Target stores.
in the spirit of transparency
posted October 18, 2012 by rachel |
we want to clear the air about our ratings on the Environmental Working Group’s “Guide to Healthy Cleaning.” frankly, we were shocked to see grades of D and F assigned to many of our products, considering our commitment and innovation in developing effective, non-toxic products that are safe for the people, pets and the planet.
we immediately reached out to the EWG team to understand how our products and ingredients could have been dinged so badly by their ratings system.
what we found is that the EWG ratings system, although noble in its effort to provide meaningful product safety ratings to shoppers, is incomplete and too broad, which results in misleading conclusions. we firmly believe in what the EWG wants to do. where we don’t align is how they are going about it, from a scientific perspective.
we actively promote the transparent disclosure of ingredients, as you know from all the information we provide on our web site and on our product labels. in fact, we share considerably more than the government requires because we believe that we all have the right to know what is in the products that we bring into our homes. we’ve even taken a stand at state and national levels to bring greater transparency to cleaning product labeling.
we expect EWG’s results to be thoroughly researched, up-to-date and truly reflective of a company’s ingredients and products. unfortunately, we don’t feel the current ratings guide does this, but we hope the EWG will continue working to make its ratings model more scientifically accurate. in the meantime, we will continue to try to work with their team to provide information about method products so our scores truly represent the ingredients that we use.
we’re sorry if the EWG ratings guide left you feeling confused or concerned about any of our products. reach out to us directly if you have any questions regarding our products or ingredient scores on EWG’s site. we know you trust us to help keep your home clean and free of toxins. as people against dirty, we take that very seriously.
if you’re still curious, a better indicator of our commitment to product safety and sustainability is our Cradle to Cradle® certification, which we consider to be the highest standard available and includes extensive measures for safety, toxicity and environmental impact. learn more here: http://methodhome.com/greenskeeping/cradle-to-cradle-company/.
clean up for national oceans month
posted June 18, 2012 by alexis |
our oceans are faced with a dire problem. staggering quantities of garbage, much of it non-degradable plastic, is polluting the environment and harming marine populations. and the problem isn’t going away anytime soon. more plastic washes up on beaches everyday.
as a small soap company, we know we can’t clean up the world’s oceans. but we can raise awareness about the issue and use our business to demonstrate smart ways of using and reusing the plastics that are already on the planet.
we think the best way to do that is to prove that solutions exist, even at a small scale. later this year, we will be launching a product in the world’s first packaging made from a blend of PCR plastic and recovered ocean plastic. recovered from beaches by method employees, in fact.
so this saturday, june 23 we’ll be at it again, working alongside Oah’u-based groups Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii and Kokua Hawai’i Foundation to conduct a coastal cleanup at Kahuku’s James Campbell Wildlife Refuge.
we’ll also be filming and interviewing several community leaders and folks involved in the local awareness, education and prevention of ocean plastic pollution affecting hawaii’s beaches and communities.
if you’re interested in joining us at the cleanup, contact katie molinari at katie@methodhome.com. stay tuned for the release of our first ocean plastic bottles later this year.
happy national oceans month.
plastic ocean
posted May 29, 2012 by alexis |
last week we had the pleasure of meeting the illustrious capt. charles moore, pulitzer-prize winning environmental researcher and founder of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation. moore spoke to us about the effects of plastic in our oceans and his discovery of the great pacific garbage patch, “where plastic outweighs zooplankton, the ocean’s food base, by a ratio of six to one.”
really.
it’s estimated that several million tons of plastic make its way into our oceans every year, polluting the environment and hurting our marine populations. this is a serious issue. unfortunately, it’s one that many people don’t think about until they’re confronted with trash on their beaches.
capt. moore is committed to changing that by raising awareness for our ocean’s inevitable plight if we don’t change our relationship with plastic. a kindred spirit indeed. watch highlights from moore’s talk. and then read more in his book, Plastic Ocean, available here.
outsmart waste
posted April 10, 2012 by alexis |
here at method, we tend to look at challenges as opportunities for innovation. which is why last year we partnered with TerraCycle – the world’s leader in collecting difficult-to-recycle packaging and making it into new products – to collect and upcycle method laundry, dish and hand wash refill pouches. these packages are very efficient to make, yet aren’t widely accepted by curbside recycling programs. but with TerraCycle’s innovative processes, the non-recyclable becomes recyclable.
schools, community centers, youth groups, churches and more can set up TerraCycle collection locations to collect and send in typically non-recyclable waste to be turned into new products, i.e. upcycled, and earn money for their organization at the same time.
this year, instead of only collecting method refill pouches, we’ve expanded our TerraCycle Brigade to include the collection of our pumps, triggers, wipes, pouches and caps. and perhaps even more exciting, we’re now also collecting refill pouches, pumps, triggers, etc. from ANY cleaning product sold in the US.
by accepting packaging from all cleaning product companies, we can work to reduce landfill waste and replace the use of virgin materials while saving energy and carbon emissions. our goal for 2012 is to collect and upcycle more than method manufactures in the year. and we think we can do it.
to find out more about the TerraCycle program, find upcycling brigades in your neighborhood or find out how to start your own, visit http://www.terracycle.net/en-US/how-terracycle-works.html
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