CLEAN Project

Euroconsumers today announced  its European members, Altroconsumo (IT), Test Achats/Test Aankoop (BE) and OCU (ES), with the support of DecoProteste (PT) –  build the CLEAN initiative, a new European Project which aims to help empower consumers with key knowledge about household detergents. The one-year project, funded by the European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (2014-2020), started in June 2020.

Euroconsumers is particularly excited about CLEAN because, as expressed in the Approved by Tomorrow manifesto,  we are convinced that informed and empowered consumers can play a central role in accelerating a successful green transition.  And a crucial first step is to ensure consumers have access to trustworthy information about sustainable products.

This new initiative aims to:

• Inform consumers about the performance and environmental impacts of detergents
• Warn consumers and report misleading or unproven environmental claims
• Advocate against misleading environmental and green claims at the EU and Member State levels
• Develop standardised testing methodologies  across all consumer organisations

In addition to being the right thing to do, it is what consumers want.  A recent study conducted by Euroconsumers among 4210 consumers in Belgium, Italy, Portugal and Spain on their behavior related to the environmental impact of household detergents, found the following:

• The majority of consumers indicated they pay attention to environmental aspects when purchasing household detergents.
• While consumers were concerned about the environmental aspects of detergents, a small number of respondents considered themselves well informed
• Consumers have doubts about the environmental claims, with more than half of the respondents reporting they  believe that environment-friendly claims are for marketing purposes