Expanding the PURELL® Brand Portfolio with DfE Certified Surface Sprays
In 2016, GOJO introduced a revolutionary line of new products from the PURELL Brand, designed to leverage our expertise in germ kill on skin, and apply it to surface disinfection and cleaning. Breaking into a new category brought a steep learning curve, including developing an Enterprise core competency in EPA surface regulations.
Through our development process, we created products that not only rapidly kill germs in as little as 30 seconds, but also achieved the EPAs lowest allowable toxicity rating, meaning they require no precautionary statements, handwashing after use, or signal words like “danger.” “warning,” or “caution.”
The EPA Design for the Environment (DfE) certification recognizes products that meet specific criteria with regards to ingredients, lifecycle analysis, environmental impacts and industry best practices. PURELL Surface Sprays were formulated to meet these requirements, and our commitment to creating a product that is both effective and sustainable allowed us to create an industry-changing product.
The audacious goal of “no trade-offs”—that is, products that are both safe and effective with no compromise—galvanized teams across the enterprise, including Healthy Places, Sales, Regulatory, R&D, Supply Chain, and Market Research.
Innovation on this scale takes a cooperative effort by everyone, and for this project, we implemented several new processes. “We embraced a culture of learning and growth”, said David Miller, Market Development Director, PURELL® Brand. “We not only had to educate our internal GOJO teams on the new products and EPA regulations, but also many of our distributor partners and end users.”
Dewain Garner, Product Development Principal Scientist II, played a role in developing these new formulations, and shed some light on the process, saying, “We chose ingredients for their low impact on the environment during manufacturing, and their low persistence in the environment after use.”
This sharing of knowledge helped us set a strong example for how to create Sustainable Value on a large scale. In doing so, we created revolutionary new products that uphold the safe, effective, and better for you pillars of the PURELL brand, without doing harm to the environment.