Bingbing Shen

Guangzhou Liby Enterprise Group Co., China

The development of chemical industry brought great convenience to human life, but at the same time, it also created serious environmental issues. The concept of green chemistry which was firstly suggested by the American Chemical Society in 1991, came up under this background and it accessed to national government and chemists widely recognized. The research of chemical field started to involve the principles of green chemistry from then on. As one of the daily chemical products,detergent is closely related to people’s daily life. In recent years, the safety of household detergent has become the heated point of public concern. Fears for the safety of detergent grew continually because of public lack of chemical knowledge, and the excessive dependence on traditional chemical raw material.

Principle of green detergent design and development

There is no accurate definition of green detergent until now. Normally, green detergent means the detergent that complies with the Standard HJ 458, “Technical requirement of environmental labeling, household detergent” and get the certification. But the Standard HJ 458 only specified the prohibited materials for household detergent, without specific provision about the source of raw material, the process and the disposal after use. So obviously, it is not comprehensive enough to define the green detergent by the Standard HJ 458. As one of the daily chemical products, the development of green detergent should complies with the principle and core value throughout the whole lifecycle, including product design, process, usage and discard.

The keynote of green chemistry is to reduce and eliminate environmental pollution at the source, and the 12 principles of green chemistry were summarized based on this. In order to make the detergent more greener, the principles of green chemistry should be obeyed during the design and production. According to the principles of green chemistry, the following principles should be followed when developing a green detergent:[1]

Choose raw materials without negative influence to human being and environment, no materials with potential risk.

Try to ensure that all the ingredients contribute to the performance of the detergent.

Try to use renewable raw materials, less or no petroleumderived products.

Try to reduce the consumption of water and energy,less harmful waste.

Complies with the clean production law of the people’s Republic of China.

The wastes should be easy to be biodegraded, without environment pollution.

The package should be made as simple as possible,easy to be biodegraded or reusable.

Consumer’s cognition and attitude to detergents

The movement of the green environment has swept the whole world after 1980s. The environmental awareness of Chinese consumers built up gradually under the guidance of the Chinese government and social environmental groups.According to China Statistical Yearbook 2015, the number of mainstream consumers aged between 25 and 45 is about 0.45 billion, account for 32.5% of the population. Growing up in the rising era of green campaign, the mainstream consumers have strong environmental awareness.Meanwhile, the green consumption idea affects people’s consumptive habits. Most of the consumers approve that green products are better for the environment, comparing with conventional products.[2]

As a necessity in people’s daily life, detergent meets consumer’s need well in the past 20 years. However, the safety of food and chemicals has attracting great attention in China in recent years, and the safety of detergent has been a focus of public concern. Most consumers are ignorant about the safety of detergent and some media overstate the dangers of detergent, that makes the public concern over the safety of detergent growing day by day.

The awakening of environmental awareness provides a large potential market need for green detergent, and public concern for the safety of detergent will promote detergent manufacturers to make detergent more greener as soon as possible. However, the Chinese consumers concern more about the environmental benefits than the environmental responsibility, they think that the government and manufacturers should undertake the responsibility for the environmental issues, and lack correct understanding about civic responsibility for the environment. Most consumers accept the importance of environment protection, but awareness of green consumption has not been firmly established yet. Most consumers are not willing to pay more money for green detergents, so that the detergent manufacturers have to effectively control the cost to make the retail price of green detergents be acceptable to consumers. Only in this way, we may see the development of green detergent market.

Impact of policies and rules on the development of detergent

From the year of 2013, the Chinese government has begun to issue a series of green policies and rules, including environmental law construction, pollution preventing and controlling, energy-saving and emission-reduction, ecological protection, resource utilization and environment supervise.According to the latest version of environmental law, not only the illegal enterprise would be penalized severely, but also the local government regulator would hold responsible legally. In 2014, Office of the State Environmental Protection Department issued a document, in which, public’s right to know, to participate and superintendence are respected and protected.

The standardization of daily chemical products is changing from product quality to safety and environment protection in whole lifecycle of product in recent years. For product safety reasons, standards related to food processing,including relevant detergent and disinfectant, have been involved in the national standard system of food safety.[3]The new standard will begin to implement in September,2016. The standard General Rules for the Preparation of Cleaner Production Evaluation Index System, which is to make production process standardization, was issued in June, 2013.

The implementation of series of national green rules and regulations will increase the public engagement for environmental protection. These moves will make detergent manufacturers to consider the factors that affect human health and environment from the beginning of product design.

The present situation and challenges for development of green detergent

With the enhancement of environmental consciousness, the Chinese consumers concern about not only the performance of detergent, but also the safety for human and environment.The Chinese detergent manufacturers, noticed the new trends of consumption development and launched a lot of green concept detergents in recent years. According to the latest statistical data from Mintel, there are more than 500 detergents with green or botanic claim in Chinese market.There is no exact scope definition of green detergents because“green” is a relative concept, so that green detergents can’t be distinguished with conventional detergents by technical index. This may make the consumers confused about the green detergents, and even cause the crisis of confidence.

The development of green detergents relies heavily on green surfactants and builders, however, most of the green surfactants have not been widely used in the household detergents so far. There are several key reasons that prohibit the widespread of green surfactants. Firstly,the price of new-type green surfactants is much higher than conventional surfactants. Secondly, there are not enough safety evaluation data for some green surfactants.The most important reason is that the performance of conventional surfactants can’t be replaced by the newtype surfactants.

Conclusion

The raising of consumers’ green awareness and implementation of relevant laws and regulations established a good foundation for the development of green detergents,but there are still a lot of challenges such as high cost, lack of safety evaluation system, and confusion of consumer recognition. Detergent manufacturers and upstream raw material suppliers should make joint efforts to establish green detergent standard system and product certification system, and guide consumers to re-understand green detergents.

[1] Biao Zhang. The Development of Green Detergents. China Cleaning Industry 2012, 4, 73-78.

[2] Yunlai Chen. The Intension of Green Environmental Awareness in Ecological Civilization. Hubei Social Science 2012, 5, 112-114.

[3] Chenzhi Yao. The State and New Trends of Standards and Regulations in Daily Chemical Industry. Oral Care Industry 2011, 21, 37-38.