ABCO Cleaning Products is a family owned, certified minority-business enterprise that manufactures a full range of high-quality mops and complementary tools used for everyday floor cleaning.

We recently transitioned our production facility to solar power, optimized our packaging to reduce corrugate box waste, and designed equipment to convert 100% post-industrial apparel waste into high-quality Natura Yarn cleaning products that are Green Seal Innovation Certified.

A key part of our business strategy is grounded in promoting circularity in the apparel sector by diverting more than 10 million pounds of material that would have been destined for landfills to Natura Yarns that are now used in more than 228 Green Seal-certified skus. 

Why do you partner with Green Seal?

We’ve seen a growing customer trend toward purchasing sustainable cleaning product alternatives. Aligning with Green Seal has elevated the brand equity of ABCO Products in the marketplace. Customers demand that products meet Green Seal’s standards – it has become a prerequisite for doing business. 

How do you use Green Seal in your customer marketing? 

Using the resources provided by Green Seal, including messaging, marketing materials and social media promotion, has generated increased business for ABCO Products on a national scale in multi-market segments, including industrial, fast food, educational and sanitary maintenance supply.

ABCO’s private label partners get access to all the same marketing benefits. They are able to use our Green Seal certification to sub-register products and use the mark on their labels, packaging and promotional materials. 

What’s next for ABCO? 

We’re focusing now on optimizing our PTS injection molding facility. This facility manufactures a variety of plastic cleaning tools that in 2020 converted more than 2.1 million discarded plastic bottles into brooms & brushes as part our portfolio of sustainable products. 

You can see it all in our new interactive timeline, here. 

It is stunning to remember that just 50 years ago, there were no legal limits on how much pollution companies could dump into communities. Then, a burning river, a major oil spill, and growing unease about worsening air quality spurred a nationwide uprising that prompted the creation of the EPA and an era of environmental regulation. 

This combination of public demand and government action drove big strides in cleaning up some of the heaviest sources of toxic air and water pollution in America. But by 1990, it was clear that government regulation alone could not adequately address critical global challenges like climate change, water shortages and natural resource depletion. The world needed a new era of action by businesses, institutions and consumers on everything from energy and water efficiency to greening the supply chain, to creating healthier, greener spaces in which to work, learn and play.  

To meet these needs, environmental leaders largely turned their attention toward voluntary market-transformation initiatives that have created the basis of a new brand of environmentalism – Sustainability.  

When Green Seal launched in 1989, there was nothing like it in the United States: a non-profit organization committed to independently verifying sustainable products. Environmental movement leader Denis Hayes signed on as our first Chair and CEO, two decades after organizing the first Earth Day. The New York Times, the L.A. Times, Time Magazine and other major outlets covered Green Seal’s launch as a critical moment in the burgeoning green consumer movement – and it was.  

Thirty years later, Green Seal has driven transformational change in the definition of and demand for sustainable products.  Each year, Green Seal standards and certified products save millions of metric tons of C02 emissions; hundreds of thousands of pounds of VOC pollution; and half a billion pounds of organochloride pollution – and that’s just a partial list.  

More than 7 million children reduce their exposure to toxic chemicals and asthma triggers every day because they attend schools cleaned with Green Seal certified cleaning products. And more than 120 million square feet of office space, hospitals and other commercial spaces are significantly safer for occupants because of Green Seal’s paints and coatings standard.  

The sustainability movement today has evolved beyond product ecolabeling to new frontiers like zero-waste, circularity, social equity and health and wellness – all areas Green Seal is capturing in our new standards, programs and initiatives.  

Even as we appreciate all that we have achieved in 30 years, anniversaries are also a time to look ahead. As we consider our path for the next 30 years, we are keeping some key values in mind:

We are doubling down on making it simple for consumers to make healthier, greener choices. We will be even more clear that Green Seal-certified means no carcinogens, no mutagens, no reproductive toxins, and a deep-dive look at the product’s sustainability from raw materials extraction all the way to packaging.  

We are invested in a new, service-oriented model that recognizes that none of our achievements would be possible without our partners.  It is their commitment to and investment in green chemistry and innovation that transforms our ambitious standards from an academic exercise into scientific breakthroughs that make their way into the products people use every day.  

We are committed to expanding our impact in the marketplace. From our Formula Facts ingredient labels, to our Environmental Innovation program, to powerful new partnerships in the works, we will continue to invest in market transformation initiatives that bring Green Seal’s certified products, services and expertise to an even wider audience.

As we look back at where we started, one thing is clear: The ecolabeling movement that Green Seal pioneered is flourishing today, driven by a rising tide of consumer demand for more sustainable products, especially among those who are now steering the economy. A full 78 percent of Millennials believe sustainability is important and say they make sustainable choices – higher than any generation before them. 

Millennials face a very different challenge to that of the 1989 green consumer: they have too many ecolabels to navigate. Today, there are meaningless ecolabels that allow companies to self-certify, and single-attribute ecolabels that examine only one product feature and ignore other significant environmental impacts. Thirty years after we started this movement, people still want to know what is good from an authority they can trust.  And that’s still Green Seal.  

We’ll be celebrating key moments in our history and the impressive achievements of our partners for the rest of the year. Be sure to tune in on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Thank you for joining us on the journey to a healthier, greener planet. We’re looking forward to the amazing things we can do together over the next 30 years – starting now. 

Tell us about your new chloride-free ice melt.

Entry® uses a potassium formate blend that spares homes, residential yards, campuses and corporate parks from the hazardous and corrosive effects of rock salt and other chloride-based deicing products. By breaking down the hydrogen bonds that form when water freezes, Entry removes thin layers of ice and snow and prevents new ones from accumulating up to a freezing point of minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit, colder than any other product on the market.

What was your biggest challenge?

I knew we were entering a figurative lion’s den. The unregulated North American ice melt market is awash in inflated environmental claims and blatant greenwashing. Even if research and development panned out as hoped, our as-yet-unknown de-icer might not endure among louder, win-at-all-costs products and brands.

Why did you choose Green Seal?

Green Seal’s criteria, designed to protect our planet and health, emphasize performance. It’s widely said – and I agree – that a product shouldn’t qualify as “green” if it doesn’t work as well as, or better than, other commercially available alternatives. After all, if a product’s better for the environment but doesn’t perform, have we really made progress or solved anything? And because Green Seal uses verifiable research and sound practices their benchmark becomes the market’s standard. 

How does being Green Seal-certified help differentiate Entry? 

If another product wants to make environmental or performance-related claims, we encourage them to pursue a similar certification. If they don’t, we can point to Entry’s Green Seal certification, and what it stands for, instead of engaging in evidence-free debates about a product’s environmental and performance claims.

How is the Entry de-icer better for human health and the environment?

Entry was designed from the molecular level to the final product packaging to reduce adverse environmental impacts, making it safer for families, pets, waterways, and floors. When rock salt and other calcium, sodium and magnesium granular chloride products seep into groundwater supplies or wash into lakes or streams, they reduce the available oxygen levels and threaten aquatic wildlife. Salt-based ice melters also can erode soil, kill plants, burn grasses, and burn the skin and eyes of people and pets.

How does the Green Seal standard support environmental innovation?

The prospect of investing in a worthy product, only to have it get lost in a whirlwind of dishonesty, almost kept us from moving forward. The unchecked marketing claims in the ice melt market are particularly troublesome given the number of ice melts that claim to be high performance, pet safe, and/or environmentally sound without any independent verification. Consumers depend on these assurances. Much is at stake and much can be lost when they don’t deliver. People understandably have differing opinions about government regulation, but as a well-intentioned brand in an unregulated market, I crave the accountability that regulation provides.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Green Seal verification of both environmental integrity and efficacy let Entry not only enter the market with a reputable ally behind it, but also let us introduce structure and accountability to the larger ice melt scene. Even with a Green Seal certification, Entry® chloride-free ice melt will face challenges. But carrying a highly regarded certification in a space that’s never had any standardization is, I think, a major step in the right direction – for our product and for us all. 

Transparent Requirements to Achieve Certification 

To understand Green Seal certification, anyone can download a specific standard (a free PDF on our website) and note each of the requirements for performance, human health protection, and environmental leadership. For example, purchasers know that a Green Seal-certified cleaning product has demonstrated a specific level of performance, that it is not formulated with certain hazardous substances, and that it has an overall reduced environmental impact compared to most other products on the market.

A Bit of Maintenance: Keeping Our Standards Clear and Accurate

The guiding principles of a Type 1 Ecolabel require us to keep each of our standards relevant to today’s market, to ensure that they accurately define environmental leadership, and also to verify that the requirements are practical for certification. Our periodic assessments of each standard also include a review of the market to identify if relevant technologies and best practices have evolved. Green Seal references many external sources in our standards that make a revision necessary: ASTM and ISO update the names and criteria of their test methods; the OECD updates their suggested methods for evaluating chemicals, and the US EPA often increases the size and complexity of its environmental databases in response to newly published scientific studies. Also, the market is continuously evolving. Manufacturers are always developing new technologies and re-designing their products. For example, over the years companies have expanded their offerings of environmentally-preferable packaging. Source-reduced packaging, packaging take-back programs, and packaging made from higher percentages of post-consumer materials are being used by environmental leaders in the cleaning industry now, but were not widely available a decade ago. For our standard revisions, we note these types of changes and gauge whether an update is necessary.

Our 2016 – 2017 Standard Revision: Improving Nine Cleaning Product Standards

On November 15, we published a document with the proposed revisions to our cleaning product standards and opened the Public Comment Period. As a Type 1 Ecolabel that provides an independent and life-cycle based evaluation, we actively engage the public in our revision process. When each standard is developed, and again when each standard is revised, we widely announce a Public Comment Period. During this eight-week period (sometimes longer!), we promote our “Proposed Revisions” and request feedback from any interested individual, organization, or company.  We often receive detailed comments from product manufacturers (some with and some without Green Seal-certified products), product evaluators, advocates in public health, and experts from environmental organizations. Many individuals stay tuned in to ensure that Green Seal’s standards maintain the same level of stringency, and others chime in to make sure that our requirements describe a practical evaluation. Institutional purchasers stay involved in order to ensure that they can still depend on Green Seal-certified products as a way of obtaining their group’s sustainability goals.

…And the Comments Pour In

During the Public Comment Period, we encourage comments that directly reference our proposed revisions (nothing outside of the scope, please); comments that are science-based; a realistic viewpoint of industry; and comments that helpfully reference scientific or technical information. We have received supportive comments, neutral comments about editorial improvements or the flow of a standard, and critiques, and all help us to evaluate our proposed revisions. After we close the Public Comment Period, Green Seal publishes our “Response to Comments” document which includes each comment that was submitted through our online forum, and provides our direct reactions. Sometimes we are able to respond to each submitted comment but in some cases we provide one response to a group of comments that touch on the same issue. In our responses, we try to clearly state: Yes, the comment resulted in a change in the standard, or, No, we’re going to proceed as we originally proposed. For both cases we describe our reasoning. Sometimes, we also get in touch directly with the commenter to provide a more elaborate reaction to help them better understand our perspectives, our goals, and also to hear from them about their concerns and their reasoning. These types of conversations are greatly beneficial, and help us to stay informed on the issues and perspectives of our stakeholders.

Stay Engaged, Add Your Comment, and Encourage Feedback

Do you have expertise in the performance, or environmental and health impacts of cleaning products? Do you have a specific interest in one of our proposed revisions? We welcome you to register on our online forum and provide your comments. This is your chance to help define environmental leadership for the cleaning industry. If you do not have expertise in these topics or a strong understanding of the issues that are being proposed, but you are strongly interested in promoting environmental leadership, consider reaching out to a health or environmental organization, or to your favorite cleaning product brand, and ask them to provide their input on our proposed revisions. Our standards and certification process play a major role in reducing the environmental impacts of your state governments and schools, and help drive environmental improvements in the cleaning industry.