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About the Formulator Program
Formulator Program Home | About This Project | Findings & Accomplishments | Safer Detergents Stewardship Initiative | Publications | Partners and Recognized Products
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The DfE Program offers formulator companies the opportunity to partner with DfE to design or reformulate products with a more positive environmental and human health profile. DfE also recognizes formulators and products with improved environmental and health characteristics.
Steps to Partnership
The DfE Program has prepared this guide for formulators who are building a DfE partnership, thinking about building one, or just curious about the process. DfE wants to make the partnering process as simple and easy as possible and looks forward to working with you to formulate products that are good for your business and for the environment!
A partnership with DfE has three basic elements:
- Teamwork. Working together to improve the environmental and human health character of your product.
- Trust. Sharing with DfE, in confidence, information on all product ingredients.
- Innovation. Being willing to make formulation changes now and to consider improvements over time.
A typical path to DfE partnership follows these steps . . .
STEP 1. Become Familiar with the Project. Read over "Design for the Environment Formulator Program: A Discriminating and Protective Approach to Cleaning Product Review and Recognition" (PDF) (12 pp, 145K) to get a sense of the project goals, framework, and criteria.
STEP 2. Chemical Profiling of All Formulation Ingredients (PDF) (2 pp, 33K). In addition to a full disclosure of all ingredients, applications for partnership should include ingredient profiles. A profile is a compilation of all hazard information available on a chemical and includes detailed structure, physical-chemical properties, human health and environmental toxicology, and regulatory/administrative status. DfE believes that only a qualified third-party profiler has the expertise and objectivity needed to ensure a quality review, with high confidence in the accuracy and reliability of the profile information.
STEP 3. EPA Assesses Your Ingredients/Identifies Alternatives. DfE will assess the potential health and environmental effects of each ingredient in your formulation and may identify areas for improvement, safer alternatives, or additional information needs.
STEP 4. EPA Discusses its Assessment with You. Once complete, the DfE team will review with you its assessment, recommendations, changes needed to qualify for recognition, and the elements of a partnership agreement.
STEP 5. Entering into Partnership—the Partnership Agreement. The Partnership Agreement documents changes you make in your formulation and plans for future improvement. A sample Formulator Partnership Agreement (PDF) (10 pp, 44K) appears on the DfE Web site (section 8 covers EPA recognition and support). A Partnership Agreement should be tailored to your company and product. DfE will work with you to draft a suitable agreement.
STEP 6. Partnership Begins. DfE and your company decide how to announce the partnership and plan near-term activities. DfE welcomes additional products for review, as well as your ideas on how to improve and strengthen the partnership program.
Please Note: Submission of data under this program is voluntary. More information is provided below.
PRA Notice: According to the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) (44 USC 3501 et seq.), and the implementing regulations (5 CFR 1320 et seq.), a Federal agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, certain collections of information involving identical questions to 10 or more persons unless the agency has obtained approval from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). For each such collection activity, the agency is required to "inform" the respondent that they are not required to respond to the collection of information unless it displays a valid OMB control number. Failure to display a valid OMB control number permits a respondent to raise the affirmative legal defense provided by the "public protection" provision in section 3512 of the PRA (see also 5 CFR 1320.6).
The Agency has not yet obtained approval from OMB for this information collection. Until such approval is obtained, these activities are solely intended to provide the Agency with information to be used in the Design for the Environment (DfE) Formulators Project. Until approval is obtained, the PRA's "public protection" provision will prevent the Agency from using any information you provide under this DfE project in a compliance or enforcement context to impose any penalties.
EPA will be announcing the availability of the draft Information Collection Request (ICR) to solicit public comments on specific aspects of the collection activities before submitting the ICR to OMB for review and approval. Once available for public review and comment, EPA will provide a link here to the document and the related docket.