EPA recognizes Wegmans for its store brand Safer Choice Cleaning Products

Rochester, N.Y.-based Wegmans Food Markets said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recognized the company as an outstanding Safer Choice Retailer under its Partner of the Year Awards program. The award, presented in the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C., was accepted by Dave Tantillo,Wegmans’ category merchant for cleaning products, and Jason Wadsworth, Wegmans’ sustainability manager.

EPA developed the Partner of the Year Awards to recognize Safer Choice stakeholders that have furthered the safer chemistry and safer product goals of the Safer Choice Program. In 2014, Wegmans introduced a line of private label cleaning products made with safer ingredients, the retailer said.

To qualify for the Safer Choice (formerly “Design for the Environment”) label, a product must meet EPA’s Safer Choice standard, which includes stringent human and environmental health criteria. When the Safer Choice label appears on a product, it means the EPA has evaluated each ingredient in the product for potential human health and environmental effects. Safer Choice works closely with companies to help them understand the chemistry of their products and to select safer alternatives to chemicals that pose potential health or environmental concerns, Wegmans added.

“I’ve been managing the cleaning product categories for several years,” Tantillo said. “If someone asked me, when I first started, if we could successfully launch a line of products that was safer for people and the environment, effective and priced attractively, I would have told you it would be impossible. But Safer Choice standards gave us direction. Combining that with our committed supplier, we had a formula for success. And our customers are the real winners.”