Is “Safety” A Dirty Word for Procter & Gamble?
The Green Mamas
Cassidy Randall
September 15, 2010
Moms know that the ads we see are often the front lines for whether a product gets bought or ignored. A large and increasing number of greener moms may read up on blogs, read reports and articles and try to look up chemical names of material safety data sheets, but not everyone does this. Many moms are still influenced by ads that say “this will get your laundry smelling like a spring breeze!” and buy the bottle—along with the messages and ads that are sold to them.
That’s why I find it so unnerving that Procter & Gamble has issued a complaint to green company Seventh Generation, asking them to take down one of their online advertisements for the inexcusable crime of talking about safety.
The National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus’ ruling upholding Procter & Gamble’s claims against Seventh Generation’s commercial implies that companies can’t make claims based on the safety of their products, even though more and more research shows that consumers are increasingly making purchasing decisions based on product safety due to health concerns.
I can’t even comment on how much P&G annoys me due to this AND especially the fact that they animal test.
Okay, really it annoys me more that they test on animals. Sorry.
It greatly troubles me, too, that Procter & Gamble, rather than just cleaning up their products, choose to spend money to hire (uber-expensive, I’m sure) attorneys to try to get Seventh Generation to be quiet about safety in cleaning products! Why not just take out concerning ingredients so that no one would have to worry about this? Simple really…money. They don’t want to lose money on the products they have now and they don’t want to put money into building a new, safer product line. What character! (Poor character is still character, after all!) To them, money is much more important and valuable than human health. So, I simply refuse to buy from this company and other companies unwilling to disclose ingredients and I jump at the chance to let them know that what their doing is actually losing them clients! With enough of us raising our voices, someday they’ll have no choice but to listen.
Thanks for all of the great information, Cassidy and WVE!