Luckily for new parents, Earth Friendly Products’ Baby ECOS Laundry Detergent and Stain & Odor Remover are plant based, pH balanced and petrochemical free—natural, nontoxic alternatives to traditional laundry products.

“Laundry is one of the most critically important cleaning products that we use for our baby,” Kelly says. “The skin is the largest organ of the body. We absorb things quicker through our skin than what we even put into our mouths. So especially when washing infants’ clothing and bedding, it’s critically important to have a laundry product that’s safe for that infant.”

And now Baby ECOS has partnered with Disney Baby to brand its infant-friendly laundry products with one of the most popular cartoon characters in the world, Winnie the Pooh. Winnie, who ranks sec ond only to Mickey Mouse among Disney’s most recognized characters and is the most popular for babies up to 18 months, will adorn Baby ECOS Laundry Detergent and Baby ECOS Stain & Odor Remover. The partnership links Disney, the second-most recognized brand name in the world after Coca-Cola, to Earth Friendly Products, a leader in green cleaning supplies whose ECOS is the top-selling green laundry detergent in the world.

NATURAL CONNECTION

As a means of increasing its own green credentials, it was Disney that approached Earth Friendly Products at the Natural Products Expo West in March 2011. Disney Baby offers “a whole slew of products that are aimed at the newborn-to-two-year-old category,” Eric says. Other Disney Baby products include blankets and clothing, car seats and strollers, bottles and bath toys. The brand was interested in adding laundry detergent and a stain and odor remover to its line and “looking to partner with a company that was truly green so that they could offer the Disney infant a really safe choice,” adds Kelly.

A year later, on the eve of 2012’s Natural Products Expo West, Earth Friendly Products and Disney finalized the deal and unveiled the new line of laundry products. Eric says Earth Friendly Products hadn’t considered collaborating with an entertainment brand like Disney before, but the partnership makes sense in an industry that sometimes struggles to reach the mainstream consumer.

“This kind of deal is critically important because Disney is a well-respected brand…that has placement in all of the mainstream markets,” Kelly says. “So it’s a chance for us to really expand our offering in those markets as well and to really reach out to people that trust and feel comfortable with Disney.”

Earth Friendly Products anticipates a 30 percent lift in sales due to the Disney branding based on Disney’s experience with other license partners. “Baby laundry detergent is not a huge seller for us,” Eric admits, “so, I don’t want to get too exuberant here, but there could be even more [of an increase] than that.”

As diligent as Earth Friendly Products has been to create a line of nontoxic, all-natural, affordable and high-performance cleaning products for families, Disney has likewise “worked hard to create such magic in their brand,” Kelly says. Earth Friendly Products made sure to preserve that magic with its Baby ECOS products. “You’ll never see an ECOS bottle inside Winnie the Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood,” she says. “We wanted to keep the magic of that alive.”

At the same time, Winnie’s home represents what Earth Friendly Products is trying to preserve with its eco-friendly cleaners, for protecting the environment from phosphates, dioxane and other pollutants is as important to the company as making safe products for baby.

“Those woods hearken back to what’s natural,” Kelly says. “We use in our products, especially the baby laundry, lavender and chamomile essential oils—natural, organic essential oils. Perhaps something that you would fi nd on a stroll through Hundred Acre Wood. So it’s a return to a simpler time, a gentler time, a time when things were really free of all of these different toxins.”

Earth Friendly Products’ partnership with Disney Baby is limited to laundry detergent and stain and odor remover for now, but success with these two infant-friendly products could lead to expanding the line. “We certainly hope to be able to offer the baby market an entire array of products,” Kelly says. “We have over 150 products in the Earth Friendly Products line. We have over 1,200 formulations in our database, so we’re well prepared to make a much larger offer available to the public.”

REACHING THE MAINSTREAM

In the meantime, Earth Friendly Products hopes that its partnership with Disney—along with the upcoming fi lm A Green Story, about Earth Friendly Products’ founder Van Vlahakis’ life and work—will reach consumers who may not have considered buying green cleaners before.

“There are going to be those people [for whom the] main thing is they just want to make sure that there’s not a speck of anything on the clothing or whatever, and they don’t care if they’re poisoning themselves or not,” Eric says. “One of the things we’re noticing, though, and Disney noticed too, is that fewer and fewer people are falling into that category. In other words, more and more people are becoming aware of the detriment that they cause themselves and their loved ones by eating food that has contaminants in it or carcinogenic substances and washing themselves and their clothes with the same thing. More and more people are becoming aware of this, and there’s a big change afoot.”

Disney recognized this trend and moved to capitalize on it by approaching Earth Friendly Products. “The partnership will really have a great impact on consumers who have yet turned to green and who must do so,” Kelly says. “We must do so for the safety of their children and for the continuation of our environment. Both are critical, and both are important parts of who we are.”

KEEP HUNDRED ACRE WOOD POLLUTION FREE

If manufacturers of regular laundry detergents had their way, Winnie the Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood would be awash in phosphates, dioxane, formaldehyde and other contaminants that pollute our water. Just check out some of the harmful ingredients traditional laundry detergents contain:

• Petroleum-derived surfactants, a suspected human carcinogen that contaminates blood and can damage to the immune, cardiovascular, reproductive and respiratory systems;
• Phospates, a major water pollutant;
• 1,4-dioxane, a carcinogen that may cause cancer and suppress the immune system;
• Formaldehyde, a skin, eye, nose, mouth, throat and lung irritant that can lead to skin allergies, asthma attacks and pulmonary edema;
• Caustics, which are skin and eye irritants and pollutants; and
• Chlorine bleach, a deadly, corrosive lung, skin and eye irritant.

When we wash our family’s clothes, the wastewater gets flushed out into our environment, along with these toxic ingredients. The average person produces between 60 and 150 gallons of wastewater every day, much of it from washing dishes and clothes, and municipal water treatment facilities can’t keep up, says E Magazine. Some pollutants inevitably get into our rivers, lakes and coastal waters.

Phosphates, in particular, can destroy entire ecosystems in a process called eutrophication, which results in algal overgrowth, oxygen depletion, loss of aquatic life and damage to agricultural soil. Recognizing these harmful effects, half of the states in the United States have taken steps to reduce or eliminate phosphates. But we can all do our part to protect our families and our environment by choosing phosphate-free laundry detergents like ECOS, which has never contained phosphates or other salts that contribute to water pollution, and keep contaminants out of our own Hundred Acre Woods.

Resources

For more information visit about Disney Kids, www.disneybaby.com. All members of the very pure, effective and competitively priced Earth Friendly Products line are available at health food stores nationwide. Be sure to also visit www.ecos.com.

Copyright 2012. All rights reserved.