SCJ Welcomes P&G, RB and Unilever to Transparency

It's not often when one multinational FMCG company compliments a competitor, but that's just what SC Johnson did, not once but three times, when Procter & Gamble, Reckitt Benckiser and Unilever announced they would increase their fragrance disclosure on products. A backhanded compliment? Sure, but you have to hand to SCJ. After all, ingredient disclosure has been a priority for Fisk Johnson and the rest of the folks in Racine, WI for years.


Here's the SCJ statement:


SC Johnson today applauded Procter & Gamble (P&G), Unilever and Reckitt Benckiser (RB) for their newly announced plans to increase their products' fragrance disclosure. SC Johnson has been disclosing product-specific fragrance ingredients since 2015. The company began its industry-leading, global disclosure program in 2009, and has been breaking new ground ever since.  

As SC Johnson Chairman and CEO Fisk Johnson said when announcing fragrance transparency in 2012, “We want all of our ingredients to be transparent, so consumers can make their own, informed choices on what to purchase. We also want to earn the trust and confidence every day of the people that buy our products, because we work hard on our ingredient choices and strive to continually improve our products.”

This was true when SC Johnson began its transparency journey by launching its WhatsInsideSCJohnson.com ingredient website—the first of its kind—in 2009. In 2012, it added a comprehensive list of fragrance ingredients used in its products. The SC Johnson Fragrance Palette excludes about 1,700 ingredients that don't meet the company's high standards even though they meet industry standards and are legal in commerce.

In 2015, working closely with its fragrance houses, SC Johnson added to its website product-specific fragrance disclosure – the type of disclosure since promised by P&G, Unilever and RB. Consumers with questions can already find on WhatsInsideSCJohnson.com the list of fragrances in individual SC Johnson products, across its categories.  In 2016, the company expanded its disclosure program to Europe, with Asia and Latin America to follow.

In 2017, SC Johnson broke additional ground announcing its plans to disclose, on a product-specific basis, the presence of 368 potential skin allergens that may occur in its products. The list of these allergens has already been published on WhatsInsideSCJohnson.com, and by 2018, the site will list the allergens when contained in a product. This move goes beyond regulations in the European Union and also in the United States, where there are no rules requiring allergen transparency.

As a company that wants to ensure families have the information they need to make the best product choices, SC Johnson welcomes similar moves by other organizations.

“We couldn't be more pleased that our advocacy has helped pull together our industry in a movement toward greater transparency,” said Kelly M. Semrau, SVP-global corporate affairs, communication and sustainability. “Transparency is something we're incredibly passionate about. We advocated for the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act (TSCA), we were the first company to publicly advocate for California's Cleaning Product Right to Know Act of 2017, which will require this level of fragrance disclosure for all companies. We continue to push ourselves in this area, and we celebrate when the rest of the industry comes along.”