Written on: October 17, 2017 by SprayTM
Om Oct. 16, the Consumer Specialty Products Association (CSPA) applauded California Governor Brown for signing SB 258, the Cleaning Product Right to Know Act of 2017. This landmark bill successfully balances consumer and worker demands for more ingredient information with complex implementation issues, including the need to protect certain proprietary and confidential business information.
“This bill brought everyone to the table,” said Steve Caldeira, President & CEO of CSPA. “CSPA prides itself on working with legislators in a bipartisan manner, not-for-profit NGOs, and regulatory agencies at all levels of government to provide the right information to consumers and workers that will better inform their product decisions. CSPA thanks Senator Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) and Governor Jerry Brown for their leadership on this issue.”
For the first time ever, cleaning products sold in the state of California will be required to list ingredients on product labels and provide additional ingredient information on product websites. The carefully crafted compromise was developed through intense NGO-industry stakeholder negotiations and has generated an unprecedented coalition of support made up of over 100 organizations and corporations ranging from breast cancer prevention and clean water advocates to janitors and domestic workers to some of the world’s largest multinational cleaning product companies.
“This bill represents many hours of productive dialogue,” said Caldeira. “The result is an ingredient communication proposal backed by both environmental advocates and name-brand consumer product companies, and which could potentially serve as a national model for other states and major retailers.”
“However, politically motivated and unfeasible regulations from other states, such as New York, could stand in the way. The recently released draft ingredient disclosure guidance from the state of New York is unworkable, costly and unscientific,” said Caldeira. “Pursuing the implementation of this guidance will lead to a complicated and increasingly contradictory set of ingredient communication rules. The New York approach will ultimately cost existing and future jobs, while stifling cleaner and greener product innovation that consumers and workers are increasingly looking for. This is in stark contrast to the comprehensive and transparent effort undertaken by the state of California to reach a broad consensus between public health advocates and industry. We respectfully urge New York and other states to work with all stakeholders towards our shared goal of safeguarding consumers and workers with responsible and understandable ingredient communication solutions.”
