Private Label International - Autumn 2009

Store Brands Go Green

By Mary Davis

Leading French retailers including Carrefour, Monoprix, Casino, Systeme U, Leclerc, and Cora now offer consumers a growing assortment of green household products.

The major retail chains in France have a proud tradition of offering green private label products in their stores.

Monoprix, which began selling ecological items in the 1990s, introduced the Monoprix Vert line of household cleaning products, based on plant materials, in 2005. Other retailers followed suit. Carrefour grouped its responsible products under the name Carrefour Agir, which added Eco-planète as a sub-label. Auchan introduced a new generation of cleaning products under Mieux vivre environnement. Casino offered Casino écologique; Système U, U écologique; and Intermarché Apta écologic. In 2008 Leclerc introduced a nine-item line Uni Vert as a sublabel of its Marque Repère. Cora also sells private label “green” items.

Lines that started out with a few cleaning products are expanding. Monoprix Vert, originally composed of fourteen household items, now has more than forty items including products for gardens and animals. Henkel and other brand-name producers are playing catch up, and are unlikely to surpass the private label lines in variety or quality.

The certification on ecological products in France is generally in the form of the Eco-label européen, picturing a flower; or of the label NF Environnement, picturing a globe. The former is intended for the European Union market; the latter for the French market. The European label includes a statement that the product or services satisfy the environmental requirements of the European Union and summarizes the requirements that the particular type of product must meet. An independent agency called AFNOR certifies French products for the two labels.

On private label products, the European label is seen more frequently than the French label, but it is not found on all products in the ecological lines. This is usually a result of the fact that the European Eco-label is only available to certain product groups for which the requirements have been designated.

 

For washing dishes, the chains offer products to be used for hand washing and in an automatic dishwasher. The liquids for hand washing may be designed for normal skin or for sensitive skin. Auchan sells both, distinguishing between the types by color, pink for sensitive and green for normal skin. A 500 ml bottle for sensitive skin costs €1.53. FemmeActuelle.fr rates Monoprix vert for sensitive skin. The tester found it to be “very effective,” with a powerful degreasing action from a small quantity of liquid. Another plus, the large bottle could easily be completely drained. It is 500 ml for €1.65.

For dishwashers Leclerc is among the chains that offer boxes of tablets. Tablettes Lave-Vaisselle is in the Uni Vert line under the Marque Repere brand, in which all items are certified by the European Ecolabel. A box contains forty tablets, weighs 640 grams, and costs €3.20. A photograph, which serves as a background to the carton, depicts a stream running through a field and woods. The logo uses a green leaf to dot the “i” and is written against a picture of the globe. Système U offers a rinsing liquid for dishes. This liquid is not certified, but Système U notes that its product is composed of natural extracts without coloring or perfume. It is designed to dry dishes rapidly without leaving traces.

For washing clothes the choices include tablets, powder, and liquid. U écologique offers tablets with plant-based agents. Certified with the European Ecolabel, they have a lilac perfume and are sold 32 to a box of 1080 grams for €4.90. The tablets were introduced at the end of 2008, along with seven other new ecological products, because the initial seventeen products in the eco line were so well received by customers. Ecological washing powder is sold by Casino among others. Casino’s powder, of plant origin, costs €6.08 for 2.15 kg. Ecological liquids for clothes washing may be offered in large rigid bottles and in bags, from which the bottles can be reloaded. Système U is among the chains that sell both. A three liter plastic bottle of plant-based liquid costs €5.95. The bag contains 2 liters and sells for €3.78. The liquid in both containers cleans at low temperatures, an energy-saving feature.

 

Liquid water softeners are commonly seen among the laundry items. Auchan in Mieux vivre environnement sells a concentrated softener, which facilitates ironing. Softeners are a category not eligible for an eco-label, but the Auchan bird on the label is a dark green, indicating, together with the name and a statement on the back of the bottle, that the product is eco-friendly. A 750 ml bottle costs €2.00 and is sufficient for 30 loads of laundry.

Auchan offers an additional ecological laundry aid that we came across only in its stores, a “détachant avant lavage,” a spot remover to be used before washing. With enzymes, the product is designed to improve the performance of the product used for washing.

The ecological cleaning agents cover a wide range of products. Among the chains selling multi-purpose cleaners are Cora and Carrefour. Cora sells a Nettoyant ménager/Household cleaner with a lavender scent for all washable surfaces, one liter for €1.46. Carrefour sells a concentrated cleaner – the user needs only half as much as with a standard cleaner, thus saving on packaging and transportation. The price for a liter is €1.56. A liter of Alpine (not ecological) multi-surface cleaner from Carrefour costs €1.39 for 1.5 liters. As a general rule with private label, the price is higher for the ecological products than for comparable standard products, but not much higher, often less than one euro per item.

Among the window cleaners is Leclerc’s Uni Vert, 500 ml for €1.30. Clair, a standard private label window cleaner at Leclerc, costs €0.95 for 750 ml. Auchan sells window cleaner and also a Nettoyant dégraissant (decreasing cleaner), for in-depth cleaning, in particular in the kitchen. It is 100% plant based and costs €1.60 for 500 ml. Auchan also offers a specialized cleaner Nettoyant Anticalcaire, €1.57 for 500 ml, for deposits of lime.

The toilet bowl cleaner in the Casino écologique line has been tested by FemmeActuelle.fr. The tester found that it has all the advantages of a traditional cleaner and also respects the environment. The price, €0.50 for 750 ml, was judged to be good.

The WC gel in Monoprix vert, according to its container, for water closets removes tarter and cleans and has a “pleasant natural pine odor.” A French housewife told Private Label International that she prefers Monoprix vert to other ecological lines because the perfume is generally less pronounced. The Monoprix vert logo shows a river winding through fields. The statement “Let us work for tomorrow every day” in green script is placed on the front and back labels. Monoprix states the purpose of the products as contributing to respect for people and for the environment. The packaging of Monoprix vert is completely recyclable.

In paper products, toilet paper and paper towels appear from chain to chain. Packages of towels from Casino and Carrefour are typical. Casino’s Maxi-rouleaux écologique, consist of 100% recycled material. They are marked with the cheerful red ladybird on a green leaf logo that appears on a yellow-green background on all of Casino’s écologique products. Carrefour offers two compact rolls of 100% recycled paper in one package. The label prints photos of a trunk of a very tall tree and of branches. All the paper products in Carrefour Agir are compact, for environmental reasons. The European Ecolabels on Casino’s and Carrefour’s packages state that the items [in manufacturing] cause little pollution of the water or atmosphere, emit little greenhouse gas, and consume little electricity.

Carrefour, which owns Champion stores, offered at a Champion in Paris, Agir Carrefour éco-planète toilet paper, four compact rolls, 100% recycled for €3.95. Auchan offers sixteen-roll packs of ecological toilet paper (228 leaves per roll). The packages describe the paper as double thickness and note that it is made from fiber taken from certified, managed forests and in factories that respect European environmental regulations.

At an Intermarché near Toulouse, Private Label International spotted a newly-introduced product that consists of twelve small packages of nine facial tissues each, made out of 100% recycled fiber. The label is Intermarché’s long-standing sublabel Labell to which has been added “ecologic.” The tissues bear the European Eco-label. A French environmentalist, who shopped with us, remarked that the packaging created by the division of the tissues into small packages and the very use of paper tissues rather than cloth handkerchiefs is not ecological. The same type of comment is sometimes made about other “green” products in stores.

A microfiber cloth for cleaning is available in Intermarché’s Apta écologic line, under the chain’s Sélection Mousquetaires. The cloth, which is composed 85% of polyester and 15% of polyamids, can be used, dry or moist, to clean windows, to dust, and to remove grease from stoves and counters. A rough texture increases the surface with which the cloth comes in contact. A package, which costs €5.03, contains one cloth, 32 x 36 cm, which can be washed in a machine and reused.

Moist cloths resembling baby wipes are sold by Système U in its écologique line as “lingettes/multi-usage/parfum eucalyptus.” The certification is from the Forest Stewardship Council as “Mixed Sources,” i.e. “from well-managed forests and other controlled sources.” The package bears the green-leaf label of Système U’s products made from plants and states that “more than 98% of the materials are of natural origin.” The very strong eucalyptus scent is, nevertheless, synthetic.

Among garbage sacks, there are bags made of recycled material and bags that decompose. Auchan offers both. It sells black garbage bags made out of 100% recycled polyethylene, bearing the environmental certification NF Environnement. As usual, the bags are sold in rolls wrapped in paper. A roll of twenty 30-liter bags costs €2.50 and ten 50-liter bags cost €3.00. It also sells white compostable sacks made of cornstarch in two sizes, 100-liter sacks for €6.35 and 20-liter sacks for €3.06.

Monoprix, Intermarché, and Carrefour also offer the compostable sacks. The description of the sacks is particularly detailed on the Monoprix wrapper. The corn-starch draw-string sacks are designed for fermentable organic wastes. They should be discarded seven days after use has begun, and hot waste should not be put into them. Under the effect of bacteria, heat, and humidity, these sacks and their content are transformed into compost. The certification is NF Environment and NF Quality. The certification and the name Monoprix Vert is printed on each sack.

Ecological items are generally shelved mixed in with standard products. One exception is the Casino store in Ivry, which devotes a special section to a group of “green” products. With the household products was an item that we found in no other chain, Anti-mites Alimentaires Ecologiques, a biological product designed to prevent mites from infesting cupboards that store such food stuffs as sugar, flour, and rice. A package, which costs €3.04, contains two traps based on sexual pheromones. The mites are attracted to the surface of the traps and stick there. According to the back of the package, the item represents a generation of ecological insecticides.

In 2008 Monoprix, in cooperation with a government agency, organized the first “Ménage Vert”: a program to train professional housekeepers. The training included tips on sustainable techniques and an introduction to cleaning products that respect the environment. Monoprix furnished the products. Some five hundred housekeepers employed by major firms attended. A new program is to be announced in 2009. In regard to green household products, Monoprix and private label are still leading the way.