Jeff Pozen • Jelmar

In today’s environmentally conscious market, consumers are increasingly seeking products that effectively clean their homes while minimizing harmful impacts on human health, pet health, and the environment. At Jelmar, home of the CLR family of brands, we positioned ourselves at the forefront of this movement. Many of our products, which are certified under the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Safer Choice program.

Jelmar is a multi-generation, family-owned business that was founded more than 50 years ago in Skokie, IL by Manny Gutterman. Manny’s granddaughter, Alison Gutterman, is the company’s owner/CEO today. Throughout its history, the company has prioritized efficacy and products that deliver real results. Decades ago, Jelmar also adopted a policy of using safer chemistry to manufacture products that minimize the potential for harmful interactions in our families, our homes and our planet.

Using safer chemistry—that is, ingredients that are bleach-free, nontoxic, biodegradable, and minimize indoor air pollution—and having our products certified as Safer Choice is part of Jelmar’s DNA. Indeed, we were one of the first companies, if not the first, to pioneer communicating our commitment to safer chemistry through advertising and marketing. In so doing, we paved the way for other players in the household category to do the same.

One of the company’s most trusted products, Calcium, Lime & Rust Remover (CLR), was introduced in the 1980s. When the Safer Choice designation came along in 2015, we did not have to change the formulation because we had already been producing a safer product. You might say the EPA’s Safer Choice program caught up to what Jelmar was already doing.

What Is Safer Choice?

The cleaning products industry has a complicated history with environmental claims. Consumers have been inundated with terms such as “natural,” “eco,” and “green” on labels that often lack substantive verification.

The EPA’s Safer Choice program is a voluntary labeling initiative designed to help consumers and businesses easily identify products with safer chemical ingredients that don’t sacrifice quality or efficacy. Products that bear the Safer Choice label undergo a thorough evaluation by EPA scientists to ensure every ingredient meets strict safety criteria for both human health and environmental concerns. The program covers a wide range of products, including household cleaners, laundry detergents, car care products and industrial cleaners.

What distinguishes Safer Choice from other environmental labels is its focus on chemical safety at the ingredient level rather than broad—and often unverifiable—environmental claims. Participating manufacturers must disclose all ingredients to the EPA for review and must reformulate their products if certain chemicals don’t meet the program’s strict standards.

The Safer Choice label is intended to provide consumers with confidence that products won’t contain chemicals that cause cancer, reproductive harm, respiratory issues or environmental damage. The program requires ongoing compliance and allows the EPA to conduct periodic product testing to ensure continued adherence to safety standards. Unlike self-declared environmental claims, this third-party certification requires transparency and accountability at every level. There are other labels out there, many of them very good, but we work to educate consumers that this designation is earned, not bought.

Protect the Safer Choice Program

This is why we, and hundreds of our colleagues, insist the Safer Choice program must be protected during these uncertain times. We joined 200 cleaning products companies in signing an open letter to the EPA encouraging the continuation of this program. While Jelmar continues to prioritize safer chemistry regardless, the program is critical in spurring industry-wide innovation around safety and effectiveness.

Jelmar’s R&D team continues to refine formulations that work for our customers while also ensuring the ingredients meet or exceed safety standards for people, pets and the larger environment. When we’re developing a product, our team constantly challenges itself to evaluate alternatives to traditional ingredients to ensure the product can be designated Safer Choice.

The Ethical and Business Case for Producing Safer Products

What began as a corporate ethos has over the years evolved into a competitive advantage. The Safer Choice standard provides a framework for evaluating ingredients that helps us stay ahead of emerging regulatory concerns. Ingredients flagged as potentially problematic by the Safer Choice program often become subjects of regulatory scrutiny years later.

This proactive approach has allowed Jelmar to avoid the costly cycle of reformulation that occurs when ingredients face sudden regulatory restrictions. Instead of reactively removing problematic ingredients, we’ve built a development pipeline free from substances likely to raise concerns in the future.

As we look ahead, we’re exploring how the principles behind safer chemistry can extend beyond our formulations to other aspects of our business, including improvements such as lightweighting, reducing water in product formulations, and developing new form factors, such as pods. This commitment to retail and supplier responsibility was recently acknowledged with the “Sparking Change” recognition from Walmart’s Project Gigaton, an initiative designed to engage suppliers in climate action to reduce CO2 emissions. Jelmar has also received Amazon’s Climate Pledge Friendly designation.

While environmental benefits are a key part of our corporate philosophy, building a solid business case based on consumer preference and retail advantages is crucial for sustaining organizational commitment. The safety engineers at the facilities that use our PRO and PRO MAX products understand the value of their workforce using safer materials. Although retailers aren’t going to kick bleach off the shelves any time soon, those same retailers are keenly interested in safer products.

And then there’s the consumer. When we ask focus groups if they like safer products, they invariably say, “Yes.” When we ask if they’re willing to pay more for safer products, the conversation changes a little. They’ll say something along the lines of, “Well, we want something that works.” And the corollary to that, they believe, is that if you’re making something safe you’re giving up efficacy. That does not have to be the case. We design our products to comply with Safer Choice, and because they carry that label, we know they have to work. They have to be as good or better than our competitors’ products.

The cleaning products industry is at an inflection point. Consumers increasingly demand products that are both effective and environmentally responsible. Manufacturers that embrace rigorous, third-party verified standards like Safer Choice won’t just satisfy these demands; they’ll establish new benchmarks for the industry and build consumer trust.

Our experience has convinced us that meaningful environmental certification isn’t just good ethics, it’s also good business.

About the Author
Jeff Pozen is president and chief operating officer for Jelmar, where he leads the innovation, operations, finance, growth and strategy functions.