MADE SAFE is incredibly proud to announce our newest and biggest brand yet: Seventh Generation. This is a project very near and dear to my heart, which you can read more about here. We have been hard at work partnering with Seventh Generation to help bring these products to life for about a year.
I always say, MADE SAFE certified products don’t happen by accident. They are carefully, consciously, meticulously crafted. Ingredients are changed. Formulations are shifted. Things can get hard and messy. But in the end, after a lot of work a new, MADE SAFE product is birthed. That happens with every product that adopts the ecosystem approach and achieves MADE SAFE certification.
With our announcement, we wanted to talk to the company, the brand a bit more about why these products are such game-changers!
Q&A with Seventh Generation
What makes Seventh Generation different?
Seventh Generation is more than a brand. We’re a company that for more than thirty years, has been working to transform the world into a healthy, sustainable, equitable place for the next seven generations. That’s our mission, and it’s at the core of everything we do. In every deliberation, we consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.
Can you tell us more about how your mission comes to life?
As a mission-driven company, we believe that business can be a positive force in the world – that a business can & should do good – especially today when so many have lost trust in our institutions. We are constantly thinking about how we can achieve impact and influence beyond our size on the issues we care about, such as climate, ingredient safety & transparency, chronic toxins, plastic waste reduction and pay equity.
How did Seventh Generation’s mission inspire the personal care launch?
For this launch, we began by thinking about what we could uniquely bring to the personal care marketplace. Each year we set ambitious sustainability goals to keep us focused on our mission and priorities. Accelerating our pace of mission-driven innovation is an important pillar of how we push ourselves to be better.
One of our 2025 sustainability goals is Zero Waste To Water, meaning no water is contaminated or polluted during the life cycle of a SVG product. We think of water as an infinite resource. In reality, only 1%[1] of the earth’s water is the fresh, drinkable water that we all depend on. Yet, we’re contaminating it at an alarming rate. Pollution threats such as big agricultural pesticides, the fossil fuel industry, toxic manufacturing waste and even pollution from everyday consumer products, is a BIG problem. There’s even an entire generation of personal care products, millions of us use every day that we hardly give a second thought to after we use them. While they seem harmless, they still have an impact on our water. Full of non-biodegradable chemicals and packaged in virgin plastic, these products create waste that goes down the drain, isn’t always recycled, and can end up polluting our waterways.
[1] 1% of the planet’s water is fresh water that is accessible, not trapped in glaciers. 2.5% of the planet’s water is freshwater (i.e. not salt water)
Can you tell us more about the products themselves, given this intentionality around water?
All of our body washes & deodorants are 100% Biodegradable Formulas with readily biodegradable ingredients. What that means is we took into consideration not just if the formula biodegrades, but how fast it degrades. All our formulations achieve rapid and complete biodegradation (within a 10-day window), so when they are disposed of or go down the drain, they readily break down in the environment, instead of sticking around and potentially having a negative impact. In a world where water pollution is becoming a growing concern, it’s more important than ever to think about where products end up after use.
On the packaging front, we’re working with OceanBound Plastics – a company that partners with countries to collect plastic waste in coastal communities where that plastic waste is at risk of entering the ocean. By sourcing OceanBound Plastic, we’re helping to take plastic out, before it goes into the ocean. Our Body Wash uses 70% recycled OceanBound Plastic bottles helping to remove ocean waste.
We also strive to use packaging with high post-consumer recycled content vs. virgin plastic. Our Not Just Deodorant canister is made with 65% PCR plastic and is recyclable. And finally, we know the industry needs to go further toward a plastic-free future and we’re already working on new plastic-free alternative product options in the near future.
That is amazing! We want more companies to think about the impact of their products from the moment R&D begins all the way through to the final use and disposal of a product. With these Not Just Body Wash and Not Just Deodorant products, you are really focusing on ALL our planet’s water, not just our oceans which are getting a lot of press coverage these days, but also other waterways like our rivers, streams, lakes? Particularly those here in America. Can you tell us more about why?
Thank you. Yes. Clean water is the foundation of healthy communities. We want to raise awareness that water pollution impacts are unfortunately not just limited to ocean pollution – which is certainly a problem too – but our nation’s waterways. Too much of our water – almost half of rivers and streams, & more than one-third of our lakes – is still too polluted for fishing, swimming and drinking. We can’t take clean water for granted, especially when it comes to the water we drink. Yet, our clean water protections are being weakened at a time when they need to be strengthened.
That’s why Seventh Generation is donating $0.25 per pack of every Seventh Generation Body Wash and Deodorant purchase sold in the US (up to 1 million units) to Clean Water Action, a leading non-profit working to stop water pollution & to protect our nation’s drinking water. Together we’ll advance our common goal of fishable, swimmable, drinkable water for all, right here in the U.S.A.
Can you tell us more about what the consumer experience will be?
So glad you asked! We didn’t forget that. At the end of the day, consumers want plant-based products that work! With Not Just Body Wash, our rich and creamy formula creates a moisture-rich lather and helps maintain skin’s natural moisture as it cleanses. It comes in four scents made from essential oils and botanical ingredients – no synthetic fragrances, ever. We don’t use parabens, dyes, sulfates, animal testing or byproducts, formaldehyde or any of the thousands of other ingredients MADE SAFE bans from products.
Our Deodorants are aluminum-free (minus all the other ingredients MADE SAFE doesn’t permit) and proven to deliver 24-hour odor control thanks to our 5-ingredient odor control complex, including arrowroot powder.
We want to thank you for these products and for all the work that went into creating them. Is there anything we haven’t covered?
We’re so proud to be a MADE SAFE Certified partner!
We’ve long held the belief that consumers have the right to know the ingredients in the products they use. Seventh Generation is committed to ingredient safety and transparency across all our products, which is why MADE SAFE is the perfect like-minded partner. We believe strongly in the power and authenticity of third-party certifications and MADE SAFE will have an important place in our future portfolio along with the EPA Safer Choice seal and USDA Biobased certification.
For a current list of MADE SAFE® certified products from Seventh Generation, visit this page.
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