Could a Minnesota-based company’s approach in the laundry category mark the beginning of the next “clean” movement?

Ingredients Matter, Wayzata, MN, is promoting its laundry care product line as “without 1,4-Dioxane.”

The brand engaged third party testing lab Bureau Veritas to evaluate dioxane levels in laundry detergents in products including Tide, Gain, Arm & Hammer, All, Method, Mrs. Meyers and Seventh Generation.

The company says its study is the first of many from the brand as it intends to help consumers understand how much 1,4-Dioxane they unknowingly encounter.

Ingredients Matter has been sold in Target since 2019. And while very much a start-up in the $8 billion US laundry category, Ingredients Matter isn’t new to the category. Founder Jeff Breazeale has generational ties to the business.

His grandparents founded Valley Product Co., a laundry powder and household soap cleaner company, in 1943. His father was in the business, too, helping shift Valley Product from powders which were on the decline to bar soap in the late 1960s.

Breazeale joined the company in the late 1990s.

“I joined Valley Products Co. in 1998, and from then until 2014 my focus was on the bar soap business, which I acquired from my parents and named Vanguard Soap. In 2014 I became owner and CEO of Valley Products, the original family business, which still makes soap powders among other things,” he told Happi.

What’s Natural?

The impetus to launch Ingredients Matter came about a few years ago when Breazeale was at a natural products tradeshow.

“In 2015, I was at Expo West walking the show and I decided to take a look at the ‘natural cleaning’ section of the show. I picked up a ‘natural laundry’ product from one of the largest laundry brands and saw it was ethoxylated detergent made with petroleum,” he said.  “In personal care products like bar soap, which I had worked in for 17 years, no one would call a petroleum product ‘natural.’ But here, a company created the term ‘plant-derived’ which meant something could be 51% derived from plants and the remaining 49% could be petroleum.”

Breazeale said when he asked about the formulation, the company executive called it “natural lite.” 

He told Happi, “I thought it was misleading to tell people that petroleum ethoxylates were ‘natural’ or ‘plant-derived,’ and I was upset. I decided to start a company that would offer products like my grandparents made, laundry powders made from coconut oil instead of petroleum.”

Breazeale’s team spent three years in development and tested its products against leading liquid natural detergents.

Third Party Testing

“Consumers are trying to make better choices for the health of their families and the planet. Because our founder's family has been in the laundry soap business since 1943, we could spot greenwashing terms like biobased and plant-powered, leading people to believe they're safer than other laundry products. But they're still using ethoxylated detergents, which we know may leave behind residual 1,4-Dioxane. So, we tested for it,” noted Christiana Kippels, president of Ingredients Matter.

The Bureau Veritas study was conducted in the spring of 2022, and it detected 1,4-Dioxane in nearly all laundry detergents tested, according to Ingredient’s Matter (see chart below).

PRODUCT	1,4-Dioxane Test Result (in parts per million)
Arm & Hammer Clean Burst	4.28
Tide Original	3.67
Arm & Hammer Sensitive Skin Free & Clear	3.44
Gain Original + Aroma Boost	3.32
Mrs. Meyers Clean Day	0.40
Tide Free & Gentle	0.35
All Stainlifters Free & Clear	0.35
Tide PurClean Plant-Based	0.31
Method Laundry Detergent	0.18
Seventh Generation Free & Clear	0.00
Ingredients Matter Laundry Soap	0.00

                                                                                                       Source: Ingredients Matter

The presence of the 1,4-dioxane in detergent and other products has been taken up by legislators. New York State established limits on the amount of 1,4-dioxane that can be present in household cleansing, personal care, and cosmetic products sold or offered for sale in the state. The law states the maximum allowable concentration of 2 ppm of 1,4 dioxane on Dec. 31, 2022, and 1 ppm on December 31, 2023, for household cleansing and personal care products.

Detergent industry advocates point to the fact that 1,4-dioxane is a byproduct of the manufacturing process for cleaning products and detergents and is not an intentionally added ingredient.

Ingredients Matter knows that, too.

“We weren't surprised to find 1,4-Dioxane because we know it can be created during ethoxylation and remain in the final product,” said Kippels.

According to the testing, conventional laundry detergents from Arm & Hammer, Tide and Gain contained more than 3 PPM 1,4-Dioxane. Other products from Tide (Tide Free & Gentle and Tide Pur Clean) and products from Mrs. Meyers, All and Method tested between .18 and .40 PPM, making them acceptable under NY State guidelines.

Dioxane was not detected in Seventh Generation Free & Clear.

Kippels said the Seventh Generation Free & Clear detergent tested “does have ethoxylated detergents but did not contain detectable 1,4-Dioxane, which means they're likely vacuum-stripping the product after ethoxylation.”

According to the Household and Commercial Products Association, an industry trade group,  companies in the category continue to work diligently to adjust manufacturing processes to remove the trace amounts that have been found in these products.

Kippels contends the results prove that “unless consumers have chemistry lab equipment in their homes, they'll never know if 1,4-Dioxane is in their ethoxylated detergents. We're continuing to test and intend to produce more results.”

Ingredients Matter’s laundry soap is made from coconut soap flakes and salts that it is says are free from ethoxylates and 1,4-Dioxane.

The company says it also has in third-party testing that shows its detergent cleans better than natural and bio-based detergents currently on the market.

Ingredients Matter—which manufactures its products at its sister company Vanguard Soap’s facilities in Memphis, TN—hopes to spur a shift in the category by working with third-party labs to continually test ethoxylated detergents for 1,4-Dioxane content.