SCJ is far from being deceptively green

By The Journal Times Editorial Board

Monday, December 29, 2008 7:16 PM CST

Howard Petlack is barking up the wrong tree.

In this case, it’s a carnauba palm.

We were dismayed to read last week that Petlack, of Boynton Beach, Fla., filed suit in federal court accusing SC Johnson of violating the deceptive trade practices act and receiving unjust enrichment from its Greenlist labeled products.

Petlack’s suit charged that SC Johnson “looking to profit off the growing environmental ‘green’ movement ... prominently displayed a deceptive seal of approval label on the front of its Windex product.”

We would hope that somewhere in the discovery process, Petlack would discover that Racine-based SCJ is hardly a newcomer to the green movement — it practically nurtured the spirit of corporate environmentalism from its own seed of conscientiousness more than a half century ago.

We would hope that Petlack finds out that SCJ was the first U.S. company to to eliminate the use of chlorofluorocarbons in its products and that it did so voluntarily — three years before the Environmental Protection Agency ordered other companies to follow suit.

We would hope that Petlack finds out that SCJ introduced water-based aerosols more than 50 years ago to boost safety and performance while reducing environmental impacts.

Or that it was one of the first companies in the nation to join the EPA’s Climate Leaders program to set voluntary goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions — and that it not only made its initial five-year goal of an 8 percent reduction, it doubled it.

Finally we would hope that Petlack “discovers” that the Greenlist process that he finds so deceptive was an SCJ innovation which rates raw materials based on their potential environmental harm and then tries to supplant the ones that do damage. We hope he hears that the Greenlist process resulted in a replacement for a solvent in Windex that reduced the volatile organic compounds in the window cleaner to 4 percent or that it resulted in the company’s phase-out of chlorine-based external packaging and a 16 percent drop in the amount of hydrocarbon propellants used in one of its aerosol brands.

Small wonder then that a little more than a year ago SC Johnson received two presidential awards for the Greenlist process — a program that it makes available to other companies and to universities royalty-free.

If there is any deceptive practice going on, we would suggest it is Petlack’s request for the court to order the company to pay at least $5 million in the class action suit.

Now that is green lust and the court should not stand for it.

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