Restore Products: Greener Cleaners

Many people have learned the “inconvenient truth” about global warming thanks to Al Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary. What may also be inconvenient for many in today’s society is learning about all of the harmful and toxic substances used in everyday, mass-market household cleaners.

Take a look—what is underneath your sink? While the ingredients may or may not be listed on your household cleaners, if there is a toxic warning label or instructions on calling poison control if ingested, you know it can be harmful to you, your family and the environment.

Luckily, there are natural and environmentally friendly alternatives, including products from local businesses such as Restore Products.

“I feel like I’m ‘on-time’,” said Laurie Brown, founder and CEO of Minneapolis’s Restore Products. “If you are ahead of your time and can wait around, you will be on-time. It is a good time for me – I’m really enjoying it.” She says this with a knowing laugh, since Brown and Restore have been around since the early 1990s. After a career filled with politics, lobbying, and computer software sales, Brown decided it was time to “revolutionize the use of consumer environmental products through a retail store.”

The Restore the Earth Store opened in March of 1991 and natural, plant-based cleaning products were among the items on offer. “It was just one of those serendipitous events that connected me and my chemist,” recalled Brown. “He was in Missouri at the time. He really was one of the foremost chemists in plant-based cleaning products—those derived of bio-based materials. It was one of these quirky deals. I was looking for products and we had a long, long-term relationship with him and the business.”

Brown’s Restore line includes fourteen different products. The key ingredients are:
• Palm kernel and coconut oils: surfactants that make the water wetter to dissolve dirt, instead of petroleum-based surfactants
• Orange oil: a solvent squeezed from the orange peel, which helps clean food-based stains
• Soy: made into a solvent that helps clean petroleum-based stains
• Corn: used to derive citric acid, which replaces the phosphoric or sulfuric acid found in many national brand cleaners

From a strategic standpoint, Brown chose not to patent the cleaning formulas (there are thirty). “In a formula patent you need to disclose [ingredients]. Because we knew that we were really creating technology that others didn’t know about, we didn’t want to disclose that.”

In the intervening years, Brown closed the store but continued to produce and market the cleaning products, which include All Purpose Cleaner, Dish Detergent, Laundry Detergent, Gentle Soap, EnzAway Spot Remover, Toilet Bowl Cleaner and more.

She has seen the marketplace expand and change, but that hasn’t worried her. “All in all, I think the more the merrier. The more people want this, the better it will be for our business. The cleaning category is a $17 billion industry and maybe a couple hundred million are natural cleaners. We all have a long ways to go.”

Educating consumers and changing the minds of skeptics is something Brown’s company tackles every day. “How do you attract the cynic and the person who is willing to give it a try? How do you look natural and non-toxic and still look like you work?” she asked rhetorically. “It is a bigger challenge for us than it is for food. It is easier to look natural and delicious, harder to look natural and be a killer cleaner. We are trying to bridge that gap. One way we do that is to offer a money-back guarantee: remove the risk.”

Brown has also done something else to entice consumers; she’s taken natural, earth-friendly cleaners a step further with the Restore Refill Stations that can be found at Linden Hills Co-op, as well as many others throughout the Twin Cities. It was a part of her business plan all along. She admitted there’s been a lot of trial and error along the way and some embarrassing moments, but that part of the Restore business just might be the biggest and brightest spot of all in the months and years to come. “We see [the Refill Stations] as the future for our brand and for other people’s brands potentially. We view competition as future potential partners,” she stated. “We know that as the world moves more in a sustainable way, that people are going to not only want better products, but also a way to refill them.”

Refilling Restore Products has caught on with consumers. The packaged products and Refill Station are typically in the same aisle, and while it depends on the store, Brown said the percentage of her product sold as “refill” is anywhere from 45-75%.

“We live our mission. Our customers trust us. We stick to our guns in terms of what we say we are going to offer more sustainable products. We try to take it as far as we can. We have tried to find a way to refill those containers. I like that we stretched, that’s something I’m really proud of.”

Restore Products are available at the co-op, and Linden Hills Natural Home carries several other brands of environmentally friendly nontoxic cleaning products.