Cleaning products are getting greener

Greening and cleaning

19 June 2008 00:00  [Source: ICB]

Eco-friendliness has become a fundamental consideration throughout the cleaning products value chain. And companies must take account of it

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Consultant's Corner

Bruce Boynick/Kline & Co.

GOING GREEN or getting greener is the central and preoccupying theme in household and away-from-home cleaning products. Companies all the way along the value chain are actively promoting green initiatives.

For marketers of consumer and commercial cleaning products, this is the new era of sustainability, and cleaning companies must anticipate heightened consumer and user awareness of environmental sustainability and the impact their products and services have on the future good of the planet. Sustainability is not a fad, something in vogue - it is a new imperative that will itself persist into the future.

Truly green cleaners currently account for only about 2-5% of the US market for household and away-from-home housekeeping, kitchen, and laundry products, which Kline & Co. estimated at $17.5bn (€11.14bn), at the factory level, in 2007. But much of the business has green elements, including cold-water laundry detergents and concentrated cleaning products, which lower energy costs by shipping less water and reduce packaging volume.

In the away-from-home setting, standard cleaners, if paired with effective training programs, can improve productivity, which is critical to janitorial staff and management. Facilities managers are challenged to clean efficiently and effectively, whether with a building service contractor crew, or housekeeping staff at a hospital or hotel. Chemicals are a small percentage of cost, fractional to labor. Choosers consequently want products and programs that promote efficacy and safety.

IF IT DOESN'T WORK, IT WON'T GAIN ADHERENTS

Eco-friendly products may have green appeal, but unless workers and consumers can clean with ease and effectiveness and expend comparable time and effort the products will not gain sustained usage. Away-from-home and household customers are highly receptive to sustainability, but require products that clean and sanitize effectively and promote productivity.

Sustainable practices are about the process, not just the product. Greener products have an environmental and possibly an economic benefit. For example, a suite of concentrated cleaners and sanitizers, paired with microfiber flat mops, might reduce water, chemical, and energy costs.

Furthermore, if the cleaning program addresses ergonomics and promotes worker safety, it makes legitimate claims to promote human sustainability - an environmental benefit. There are also economic benefits, certainly in the form of lower insurance costs, but also in the more difficult to quantify realm of productivity. Again, the cleaning chemistry might not be truly green, but the program has promoted sustainability by reducing consumption of resources and enhancing worker safety.

Champions of green cleaning must instill eco-friendly values into the company culture, promote sustainability in the value chain and align with channel partners that also embrace sustainability. Successful players can nurture these values internally, or they can reinvigorate their firms by acquiring eco-friendly companies.

KEYS TO GREEN CLEANING SUCCESS

Suppliers of cleaning products are not the only potential source of environmental sustainability within the marketing channel. Large retailers, distributors and end-users are implementing eco-friendly measures that include cleaning or other areas in which greener approaches can promote sustainability. Prominent companies are not only talking the talk, but walking the walk.

The most important catalyst in the marketing channel is probably US retail giant Wal-Mart. It is taking major strides to become greener and promote sustainability in the value chain. Wal-Mart is cutting fuel consumption in its trucks, installing solar panels in its stores, and pushing vendors to reduce wasteful packaging.

Based on its size, this behemoth can have an impact just by making small adjustments. For example, Wal-Mart wraps four types of produce in a polymer derived from corn rather than oil, purportedly saving the equivalent of 800,000 gallons of gasoline. Redesigning boxes on just one line of toys so that they are just large enough for contents and packing materials can save $3.5m in trucking costs, and an estimated 5,000 trees.

Wal-Mart's early leadership on this front is an important barometer for the rise of environmentally friendly solutions. Wal-Mart has been applauded for its forward-thinking and transformative approach to environmental sustainability, which can only burnish the image of a company that has endured criticism for its labor practices, influence on small competitors, and effect on the character and economies of rural areas.

Indeed, Wal-Mart shows that a leader in supply chain management can also be in the vanguard of environmental leadership. Firms can practice good corporate citizenship - just as citizens can adopt eco-friendly practices in households and in communities.

For Wal-Mart and other companies, there are the intrinsic rewards of good corporate citizenship and favorable public relations. Cleaning product companies, in turn, can establish eco-friendly requirements of vendors, suppliers, distributor partners, and others in the value chain.

Other prominent channel intermediaries are implementing sustainability programs as well. US Housing supply and repair giant Home Depot has applied a new Eco Options system to more than 2,500 products carried in its stores, including cleaning supplies such as glass and general-purpose cleaners, water-saving washing machines and other fixtures.

Eco Options labeling includes five performance areas: sustainable forestry, energy efficiency, clean water, clean air, and healthy home. Cleaning products are among the fastest-growing eco-friendly categories, according to company management.

The McDonald's fast-food chain, which is less focused to date on green cleaning, has joined the US and World Green Building Councils and has directed its own stores to optimize energy, water and packaging consumption, and to implement recycling programs. McDonald's also has an environmental scorecard for providers of key ingredients such as beef, chicken, pork, buns and potatoes. Vendors are rated on water usage, energy consumption, production and disposal of solid waste and air emissions.

Even as major firms can develop an eco-friendly culture internally, they can also bring it in by acquiring smaller players. Some of these eco-friendly mavericks are new and innovative competitors that have infused the markets with a new competitive dynamic. Acquisition opportunities exist that may strengthen a company's greenness in terms of product portfolio, market reach, and eco-friendly culture.

KEYS TO SUCCESS FOR GREEN CLEANING

1. Embrace sustainability and invigorate the company culture with its precepts

2. Promote green cleaning and sustainability in the value chain

3. Align with channel partners that practice sustainability and share these values

4. Devise programs that instruct users on sustainability - green cleaning encompasses products and programs

5. Quantify and articulate the environmental and economic benefits of green cleaning

6. Address the human element - sustainability incorporates worker and consumer safety

7. Demonstrate efficiency - an ineffective green cleaner requires more product, water and labor, which isn't green

8. Evaluate eco-friendly acquisition opportunities

9. Devote research and development expenditure to developing truly green chemistry

10. Seek to develop truly green products to have a transforming impact on the industry

Source: Kline & Co.

Bruce Boynick is a Senior Associate with Little Falls, New Jersey-based Kline & Co. He primarily serves clients in the industrial and institutional cleaning and maintenance products industry. Boynick specializes in market analysis, competitor assessment, benchmarking, strategy development and channel analysis. He led the recent Kline FlashPoint study examining the market for green cleaning products. www.klinegroup.com

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