Scents and sensibility

Think about how many times you’ve passed someone on the street and realized that all of a sudden you were transported back to high school, remembering that sweet, sandy-haired boy you let get away. Then you rummage through your brain wondering, “Where did that thought come from?” Your nose knows – that man you just passed was wearing his cologne.

And what about that feeling you get every time you step into a bakery, the warm, wafting aromas of freshly baked bread triggering memories from your childhood. Or even the musty scent from old classic you delightfully uncover at your local used bookstore.

Scent has a way of ultimately changing and enhancing our experience by taking us back, lifting us up, or simply allowing us to enjoy that “ahhh” moment. At method, it’s the reason we revel in it and see its importance in just about every product we make.

Method fragrances are inspired by nature and deliver a unique experience while being safe for people and the environment.

At method, we work closely with our fragrance houses to develop innovative aromatic experiences that exceed the strict internal health and environmental standards we have for all of our ingredients. In the development of a fragrance, like any other component of a product, the materials must be healthy in all respects – for people and pets, for the homes in which they are used, and in the environment. Any material that is used in a method fragrance must meet this minimum to even be considered as a formulation component. Specifically, all fragrance materials must be shown to be non-irritating, non-toxic and non-allergenic, and must be fully biodegradable.

Our fragrance blends contain both essential oils from natural sources and complementary components that are man-made. The essential oils are selected to best capture the essence of natural scents, while the man-made materials are selected to deliver the broadest possible pallet of aromas by enhancing or complementing the natural oils. Materials from either origin are healthy, environmentally friendly and have been responsibly produced.

To support our fragrance development process, method uses an independent environmental research institute (www.epea.com) to identify the optimal fragrance materials. Additionally, all of the fragrances that method has submitted to the US EPA’s Design for the Environment program have been approved as safe materials.

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In living colour

method uses a comprehensive evaluation to ensure the human health and environmental responsibility of each of its colorants. This thorough approach is overseen and executed by Dr. Michael Braungart, prominent design chemist and author of the landmark text Cradle to Cradle.

Each method dye is assessed for health and environmental performance on the following dimensions:

• Contains no heavy metals
• Degradable (biodegradable or photodegradable)
• Non-toxic to humans and wildlife
• Non-carcinogenic (known, probable or possible)
• Non-mutagenic
• Non-bioaccumulative
• Not toxic to aquatic systems
• Contains no halogenated hydrocarbon compounds
• Non-irritating

Regarding the question of natural content in our colorants, the answer in most cases is no, and there is reason for this. Many natural dyes, while having the positive trait of being from renewable resources, are ineffective or have unacceptable environmental and/or health profiles. Some of the issues that consistently arise in assessing natural colorants include:

• Bacterial content
• Heavy metal content
• Allergic response
• Animal by-product content (method is cruelty-free)
• Staining effects to skin and materials
• Inconsistency of color
• Rapid deterioration of color over time

These factors can contribute to health issues and/or environmental burdens, or can mean that the color doesn’t do its job – not cool! When considering all factors of sourcing, use, and disposal, colorants are a class of ingredient where man-made materials are often the overall best choice. All man-made colorants method uses are ecologically compatible, safe, hypo-allergenic, non-toxic, and degradable. In each case, Dr. Braungart validates the method colorant so that it can safely return to the environment.

As with every method ingredient or product you can be assured that not only is the product safe and effective but that it has been designed to the utmost standard of health and environmental responsibility.

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Ingredient Assessment – the right stuff

When selecting ingredients, method works with an independent environmental research institute to research and identify the healthiest and most environmentally friendly ingredients – the building blocks of green products.

When method selects ingredients, we start from the precautionary principle – that you should only use materials you know are safe. And the way to truly know if they are safe is to complete full research on each ingredient. This is the work that epea does for us, and below are the details on what information we look for.

First, we break the health and environmental characteristics down into a framework of the ingredient’s past (source), present (use) and future (return to the environment). By this, we mean that we concern ourselves equally with where the ingredient came from, what its behavior is during use, and what its fate will be after usage. This gives a full and comprehensive understanding that covers a much broader spectrum than most companies.

Past:
We believe in using materials that we know are produced in a healthy way, that use renewable resources wherever possible and that don’t compromise the health of an ingredient by converting it to its useful form. The factors we consider for the past of an ingredient are:

• natural origin
• cultivation and harvesting
• refining and processing
• transportation

Present:
Starting inside the home, method is out to prove that we can do away with all of the dangerous or suspect chemicals that we find around us. We have a team comprising green chefs, toxicologists, environmental chemists and engineers who make sure that all of the ingredients get put together in a way that means people don’t have to risk their health or their family’s health to get their home clean. the pieces we look at:

• Eye irritation potential
• Skin irritation potential
• Respiratory (lung) irritation potential
• Sensitization potential (allergic response)
• Acute oral ingested toxicity
• Carcinogenic (causes cancer)
• Mutagenic
• Developmental toxicity

Future:
We believe it is the responsibility of method, as the product designer, to make sure that our products don’t create negative environmental consequences. We design all of our products to biodegrade completely in the environment, to not accumulate in the organisms found there, and not be toxic to animals and organisms present in the environment. Our ingredient research considers the following:

• bioaccumulation potential (likelihood of an ingredient to accumulate in the environment)
• biodegradability
• aquatic toxicity (to fish, daphnia, and bacteria)

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SLS

SLS is mistakenly assumed to be a hazardous ingredient, but has been assessed and found completely safe in its use as a coconut-oil derived surfactant in method products.

SLS is frequently assumed to be a carcinogen, though this is simply incorrect – it is not classified as a known, probable or suspected carcinogen by either the International Agency for Research on Cancer (www.iarc.fr) or the American Cancer Society (www.cancer.org), which was gone so far as to issue a statement to this effect.

While the carcinogen concern is incorrect, SLS is a moderate eye and skin irritant when used in high concentrations and unbuffered. Method uses it only in formulations at sufficiently low concentrations that it is not irritating. With the exception of this irritation concern, SLS is a good ingredient – it is derived from coconut oil, it is biodegradable, and is non-toxic.

When deciding to use SLS (sodium lauryl sulphate) in some of our formulations, method made a complete assessment of the environmental and health aspects of these ingredients. This was done in cooperation with the EPEA, an independent environmental research institute led by Dr Michael Braungart, author of the landmark text Cradle to Cradle. The ingredient assessment concluded that SLS is safe in its intended usage, and that the carcinogenicity concerns are not relevant. A summary of EPEA’s assessment of SLS is available on request.

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The Dirty Ingredient List: our minimum bar

One of our green chefs’ key tools in designing health and environmental benefit into our products is the Dirty Ingredient List – the minimum bar below which no method ingredient will ever go. It is a constantly growing list of 60-plus ingredients commonly found in cleaning and personal care products, all of which we choose to exclude for a variety of health and environmental reasons.

In making the Dirty Ingredient List (and with our product design generally), method uses the precautionary principle –if we suspect an ingredient may not be fully healthy for people or the environment, we won’t use it. in many cases, the science behind the debate on the health of the ingredient isn’t fully settled, but we still choose to avoid them. parabens and phthalates are good examples of this precautionary approach – their have been some very real concerns identified about their effects on human health, but the precise mechanism by which either of them act is not fully understood. It is our firm belief that in these cases it is better to use ingredients that are fully understood to be healthy for people and compatible with the environment.

The Dirty List is in constant evolution - as we complete our ingredient assessments we sometimes find out that ingredients are not green enough to be used in our products, so we add them to the dirty ingredient list. This keeps our ingredient selection constantly shifting to greener materials, and keeps growing the distance between us and the companies that continue to use more questionable materials.

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Use of preservatives in method products

Preservatives are used in many method products so that they will not spoil and to extend their useful life. By ensuring that the products are effectively preserved we can avoid a host of health and performance problems resulting from the presence of pathogenic bacteria.

To preserve our products method uses three approaches. First, we seek to formulate them in innovative ways that do not require the usage of a preservative (for example in our all purpose spray cleaner) using the approach that simpler is better. Second, we are researching novel preservative technologies from natural sources that meet our performance and health criteria. Third, we use safe and approved conventional preservatives in a number of products when neither of the first two approaches can be used due to the specific formulation.

One of the preservatives we use frequently is Kathon, which is a blend of methylchloroisothiazolinone and methylisothiazolinone. We have rigorously investigated Kathon’s health and environmental characteristics, as we do with all method ingredients. It is biodegradable, non-carcinogenic (meaning it is not classified as a possible, probable or known human carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer – www.iarc.fr), it is not a formaldehyde releaser, it is approved for cosmetics use in the US, Europe and Japan, and when used at low levels (under 0.1% in our usages) it is not shown to have any adverse health effects such as oral toxicity, skin irritation or allergic potential. However, it is our preference to use only naturally derived ingredients, so we are constantly seeking ways to design our formulations to not use these preservatives.

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