Key ingredients: Science, certification and a healthy ATTITUDE

February 9^th, 2023

The lab at ATTITUDE

 Since its beginnings in a garage in 2006, Québec-based personal care and household product company ATTITUDE has been perfecting its recipes. Now it has a slew of EWG-certified products, a new state-of-the-art production facility and is innovating with packaging and refill solutions to minimize impact on the planet as well as human health. Raise the Voices recently spoke with Hans Drouin, the company’s Vice President of Research and Development, about the importance of science and certification in its formula.

Raise the Voices:

How long have you been with the company and what are your responsibilities?

Hans Drouin:

I’ve been with ATTITUDE since the beginning. In fact, JF (Jean-François Bernier, ATTITUDE co-founder and CEO) is one of my childhood friends. I’ve been with JF since we started in 2006 and now I’m in charge of all the R&D product development, regulatory affairs, quality, including our lab in Montreal and all the technical aspects of the factories. Of course, I’m not alone; we have a great team of highly qualified people working with us. It would be impossible to do it by myself.

Hans Drouin, ing., PhD. Vice President, R&D at ATTITUDE          © DavidBoyerphotographe0274

 RtV

What is the mission and focus of ATTITUDE?

HD

We want to make a difference in People Health and Planet Health, offering a clean product. And when I say “clean”, it’s very important that we understand the same definition, because we’re going beyond “clean”. We select the safest ingredients, making sure that there’s no ingredient of concern according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG) criteria. We make sure that we’re using natural product, vegan product – and by ‘product’ I mean ingredients. And we’re doing our best to be creative and find some innovations in terms of packaging. Now our new products are made in cardboard containers. We are trying to reduce our use of plastic, and when we don’t have a choice, we’re making our best effort. We decided to produce our own plastic bottle just to reduce the footprint. We really want to make a difference by making the best product possible, minimizing the footprint on people’s health and on the planet as well.

RtV

What achievement are you most proud of, since you’ve been there from the beginning?

HD

What I’m most proud of is our story. It’s crazy when I think about it. When we started, we were in an industrial garage in Saint-Eustache (Québec), and we didn’t have room, we didn’t have any money. I think people have bigger closets in their houses than what we had to make the product back then. I used kitchen tools to make cakes and stuff that I modified. We started with nothing, pretty much. And now, when I look at the factory, when I look at the lab -. I’m just amazed to see where we are now. So I’m so proud of that and the team we have built and the company culture we have now. And we’re not done yet.

RtV

Tell me about the product. How do you stay ahead of the science regarding harmful ingredients?

HD

That’s a good question. And that was pretty much the driver of our product development. When we were looking at what was on the shelf, you can find a lot of products with cancer-causing chemicals in them. For us, even if an ingredient is legally tolerated, because it’s a contaminant it’s not an ingredient we will use. We should go beyond that. We looked at the standards and regulations, and started to develop our own criteria. We were looking at different scientific databases to see, not only the ingredient list, because okay, that will tell you if it’s part of the database. But what’s more interesting is to see, is there some contaminant byproduct within the ingredient that you’re going to buy? And so we started digging and making our own criteria. How we stay on top of everything is just by doing research and being curious, making sure that what we’re using will fulfill our criteria. Will we be proud of this ingredient when we choose to use it?

RtV

What kind of quality control processes are in your supply chain to make sure that there’s no contamination through the sourcing and production process?

HD

First, we do have very talented and highly experienced scientists so they will first dig into the chemistry of the ingredient and analyze it. If there’s chance there might be some contaminant, we won’t be using it. We will do an analysis of each ingredient and then when the supplier is qualified, we will use their ingredients and we will test the finished product. We test for different criteria, and we keep on monitoring the finished product.

I’m not sure I can say we were the first company to write down ingredients and talk about the whole product, but since the beginning we wanted to be transparent with people. So we included all ingredients on our labels, and it was quite special for a company to do that. On other household products, it was very rare to see ingredients on labels. One time we were experimenting with a certain plant, and the outside of the plant was suspected to have some health impact. We were using the middle of the leaf, but just to make sure that we wouldn’t create any confusion for consumers, we just stopped doing our tests with it. We’re trying to always be one step ahead to make sure we offer the safest product.

RtV

You mentioned EWG, and I see you also use ECOLOGO and the PETA logo. What is the importance of these certifications?

HD

When you put so much energy into how you are going to develop product and how you are going to pick the ingredients, and you want to claim that you are choosing ingredients to minimize the impact on health and the planet – what’s the proof of it? It’s pretty hard for consumers to say, oh, it says it’s biodegradable – but is it truly biodegradable? Consumers will not start paying for tests just to prove that it is or not. So to give the sense of confidence to consumers, we decided we’re going to back all our claims with a certification. So everything related to the environment is ECOLOGO; and everything that is related to your health is EWG. 

EWG does a ‘risk for your health’ analysis, then they’re going to give their rating for every ingredient and tell if there is a contaminant or not and what kind of concern it could have. So for us, EWG was kind of a perfect match, because their main focus is health – it was the same for us. We were one of the first companies for cosmetics. For the household products, they started to do the EWG verification not that long ago and we were one of the first companies to do it. For us that’s the proof for consumers that we’re telling the truth; it’s not greenwashing but something that we back up with scientific facts, and people that are independent that will certify it.

RtV

Let’s talk about packaging. You mentioned it’s a challenge. Do you have a goal to ever be 100% plastic free?

HD

Yeah, that’s somewhere that we’re going for sure. Plastic-free is the goal. And all our new products are made in cardboard containers. We’re also going to launch a new line of products and the bottle will be aluminum to allow refills of the bottle for a very long period of time. Coming back to the plastic, we decided to manufacture our own bottles and to use HDPE because first, it’s one of the most recyclable plastics and second, it’s very very strong and it will last for a long time. And we offer refills as well. So you can refill the aluminum bottle, but you can also refill your plastic bottle.

We are also going to open a store. The first ATTITUDE store will be open in March, and there you’re going to be able to fill your bottles at the refill station. For people that are not in the Montreal area, we offer the refill pack; that’s a small bag inside the cardboard box that will retain all the liquid, and there’s a little valve that you open to fill your bottle so you can do the refill at home.

You’re going to have a bit of packaging, of course, to carry the refill. But we’re opening the first store to get started and see how it goes. But for sure we’re going to plastic-free, and we will pick packaging that will be innovative and that will allow people to use less plastic. 

RtV

Your website claims that throughout the whole production process, you’re minimizing the carbon footprint. How does the new factory contribute to that?

HD

The factory is another thing I’m proud of. We decided to build this factory based on three principles. First, sustainable development. Of course, energy management was very important for us. We do have a lot of strategies here to make sure that we’re going to minimize our energy consumption, for example we do have a lot of processes that will run when everything is stopped, to accumulate energy. Then when we need it, we can use it without taking too much energy. So that’s one principle. The second one was technology. We wanted to have smart management of the factory connecting equipment, making sure that we have an efficient process. And the third one was employees’ well-being. We have large windows;  it’s quite uncommon to see that in a factory. Sometimes it’s funny because you see wildlife running beside the factory. I have a bunch of pictures where people have called me over – Hans, come and see this! So that’s something that is very important for us, the wellbeing of people that work here. And also if you use daylight, you need less energy to light the buildings, so that’s a two-for-one. And we recycle heat to heat up the warehouse. So there’s a bunch of strategies like that to optimize the energy. 

RtV

Is the energy itself using renewable sources?

HD

We’re fortunate. Here in Québec we do have hydroelectricity so yes, that’s from renewable sources.

RtV

In closing, what do you want consumers to be aware of when they’re buying cosmetics and household products?

HD

That’s exactly why we created ATTITUDE. I would like consumers to be aware that there are ingredients of concern in many different products on the shelves, but it’s kind of hard to be aware of all of them. But there are some independent organizations such as EWG which is doing an amazing job and is a very good reference for them. Of course, I could tell people just to always use ATTITUDE products! But I don’t want to say that, I want people to be autonomous and use credible independent sources like EWG to evaluate products and be sure there’s no ingredient of concern in it. So that’s something I wish that consumers could be more aware when they’re making choices, when they choose product for them and their family. If we as a society are smarter and make better choices, I think everybody will win.

Find out more about the company here.

Learn more about the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and explore their consumer guides here.