Clorox Goes Green

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Sumi Cate, R&D group manager, Clorox: "The natural and sustainability trends are really starting to gain momentum within the chemical industry. I think that nature can teach us a lot. It's an area I've always had a lot of passion for." | photo by Jason Madara

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Carl Pope, executive director, the Sierra Club: Clorox's Knauss says of Pope, "Both Carl and I start with one foundational belief: Corporate America and environmental groups must start working together. We really do have the best interests of the consumer and the planet at heart." | photo by Jason Madara

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When Clorox approached him, Pope had already been pushing for a shift in mind-set at the 116-year-old Sierra Club for some time -- from a mandate to "stop bad things," as he puts it, to one about "making good things happen."

"Instead of just saying, Let's boycott somebody who's making a toxic product," Pope explains from his San Francisco office one recent summer day, "let's find a good product and help people who are trying to help consumers." To that end, the club passed a resolution in 2001 to pursue more corporate relationships, and in 2005, it plugged the Mercury Mariner Hybrid SUV. That raised a few eyebrows both within and outside the Sierra Club, but nothing compared to the uproar over the Clorox deal.

Pope mentions a few times that the Sierra Club's due diligence during the Clorox deal included the "toughest scrutiny" of the products themselves. (Knauss also makes a point of the Sierra Club's "severe vetting process.") In an internal email obtained by Fast Company, Pope told Sierra Club leaders, "We consulted with the executive committee of the board of directors, the corporate-relations committee, the toxics committee, the energy committee, and the environmental-quality committee. None of these entities found fault with Green Works as a product line."

But that isn't the whole story. Jessica Frohman, the volunteer cochair of the club's toxics committee, says her panel never took the standard vote on the Clorox products: "The Green Works proposal said CONFIDENTIAL all over it. My committee never saw it. My cochair and I did ask [Clorox] a lot of questions -- we wanted to know what was in the product." They reviewed the EPA's report on the Green Works ingredients and asked about the environmental effects of other Clorox products such as bleach. But, Frohman says, "the people who serve on these committees are more policy wonks than chemists. There isn't anyone in the Sierra Club who's going to guarantee anything about those products. If it were up to me, I would have done a lot more investigation down that path... . It doesn't make me thrilled, to be perfectly honest."

The club's volunteer corporate-relations committee did vote on the Green Works deal -- and rejected it. One member, Stuart Auchincloss, a retired environmental lawyer, says he felt strongly that "we shouldn't be in the business of taking money for endorsing products." But Pope and the national board of directors rejected the rejection, and the executive committee promptly signed off on the Clorox proposal.

The Sierra Club brass further rankled the base by taking the unprecedented step of removing the heads of its 35,000-member Florida chapter on March 25, and suspending the chapter for four years. That chapter's leadership, which had publicly and vocally rejected the Clorox deal, accused the national leaders of exacting revenge. Sierra Club president Robert Cox has publicly stated that the suspension resulted from long-standing complaints by members and had nothing to do with Green Works.

Still, environmental blogs and the club's own Clubhouse Web site have been burning up for months with comments from angry members, some asking for a national referendum on the Clorox decision. In May, chapter leaders in northern Michigan resigned over the deal. Emails exchanged by a list of past members of the club's board of directors, obtained by Fast Company, voice dismay at the decision and the way it was handled internally. "It is not the club we have known in the past -- it is sad to see some leaders tired with it all and leaving," wrote one committee leader. A past director wrote: "They are destroying the club's credibility. They should all be ashamed of themselves." Another former director: "[Sierra Club founder] John Muir's birthday will be a sad one this year."

Further fueling the controversy, the club has refused to release financial details of its arrangement with Clorox to the public or its members, citing the terms of its contract with Clorox as well as its own rules. "The Sierra Club has a long-standing policy of not giving specific details about individual sources of funds from donors," says spokesperson Orli Cotel. "Our supporters can be assured that it is a significant contribution and is not restricted, which means that we can use the funds for any branch of our work."

With no independent scientific assessment of Green Works products, and with an undisclosed amount of money changing hands, what does that Sierra Club seal on the back of the bottle really mean?