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marketing, anything \"green\" or \"eco\" sells
marketing, anything \"green\" or \"eco\" sells
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What exactly is insecticidal soap? Why would you want to wash a kitchen counter with insecticide?
Well, I'm sheepish. Of course, I was never put on lawn duty at my parents' house when I was a kid, and now I live in an apartment, so I have no such experience with bug killing tactics.
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@pecan 3.14159265: ROFL!! It's not for kitchen counters. See the insect on the leaf in the picture? You spray it on the leaves, in the garden.
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@pecan 3.14159265: Actually you could do just that. Dawn mixed with water in a sprayer works well on tomato plants to kill insects.
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@pecan 3.14159265: It's a good killer of aphids and other small insects that may be resistant to pesticides like Sevin. It's good for plants like roses that may not like harsher treatments, as well. The insects eat the soap and it dissolves their stomachs (or something along those lines) and they die.
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@pecan 3.14159265: No... you spray it on your garden plants to kill insects without, presumably, poisoning yourself. 20 years ago, you made this stuff yourself with about five percent soap in water.
The small print says that the active ingredient is plain old soap. That's exactly what \"potassium salts of fatty acids\" is. (You can also have \"sodium salts of fatty acids\" which is basically the same thing, just soap.) The sodium kind is usually the bar soap, and the potassium kind is usually the liquid soap. It's nothing but a fancy way of saying \"waste fat from meat processing, plus either sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide lye solution\".
My best guess is they aren't willing to certify that the commercial-production-reject soaps they buy are eco-friendly. The \"other ingredients\" likely include random residual perfume and coloring agents, depending on what soap waste they bought for that run.
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People don't notice. People see thinks like the breast cancer pink ribbon or \"eco\" and green typeface and just ASSUME. Companies bet on people being uninformed consumers. They rely on it. It's just another marketing trick.
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Insecticidal soaps work well on soft-bodied insects like aphids. The soap breaks their waterproof coating like it breaks the bond between grease and your frying pan. They dehydrate and die. I use my hose-end spayer full of dish soap and set it for a fairly heavy concentration. I spray down my fruit trees and roses starting in mid Spring and every few weeks until the fruit is ripe.
Diatomaceous earth does a number on hard-shelled insects like ants and such. It abrades holes in their exoskeletons and they dehydrate and die. You do have to be a bit careful because it will abrade your lungs too.
@vorpal_hamster: I tried DE on my tomatoes last year here in the high desert of Colorado. It rained that night :(
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@oneliketadow: Obviously the insects must have learned to control the weather in your area. You must stop them at all costs!
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How is this not eco-friendly? It's just soapy water. Soap is an organic insecticide.
Since it's a pesticide, it doesn't need to disclose inert ingredients (in contrast to cosmetics, drugs, personal care products, etc). Pesticide are regulated by EPA, and - with some exceptions - don't need to list their inert ingredients. Most of the other product labels we encounter are FDA labels, and they have different standards.
This also doesn't seem like just soap - it has pyrethrins, which you may or may not consider eco-friendly.
The Federal Trade Commission has guidelines about green labeling claims, but they mostly specify what you have to mean when you say 'biodegradable' 'recyled material' and a few other claims. As far as I know, they haven't been clear about what products get to be called 'green' or 'eco' or even 'natural'.
That said, since this is a pesticide, the label was reviewed by the EPA, which has very different regulations (not just guidelines) than the FTC. Language is carefully controlled and this specific label had to be approved. Someone slipped up on this. Or Scott is running an un-approved label (which is possible).
Maybe the product manager for all the other Ortho brands were pissed and felt that the EcoSense brand implied that all other products would kill you, your family, and the planet? Seems like a typical corporate infighting result.
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I can't decide which I hate most: the people who come up with these ridiculous ideas or the consumers who buy into it.
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@acasto:
Well, I buy into it--it's just soapy water; it *is* an eco-friendly bug defense. The disclaimer is almost certainly there for legal reasons.
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Insecticidal soap can be used to fumigate flowers. I work at an art museum and if we bring in fresh-cut flowers from our garden, we have to make sure they're sprayed with insecticdal soap to prevent bugs from getting in the building and damaging the work.
Wonder if this 'EcoSense' (in green letters) product costs more than equivalent products with a different name? I'll guess probably. Markup for illusion.
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There was a glitch in the Matrix. A logic error caused the erroneous labeling.
It was supposed to be EchoSense, the echo being the sound between your ears if you buy this product.
Do you really expect something designed to kill living things to be eco-friendly? Or just eco-friendly to the parts of the local ecology that aren't trying to bite, sting, suck your blood, or ruin your garden?
@diasdiem: Being eco-friendly doesn't mean you're a hippie who wants to let everything live - you have to acknowledge that when ecologies are off balance, they have to be rectified. We kill non native species precisely because they would wreak havoc on our native species. We kill certain animals during certain times because it balances the population. In this respect, we merely try to be as least damaging as possible. Sometimes we fail.
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@diasdiem: The Army was proud, several years ago, that they were using \"eco-friendly\" bullets made of Tungsten, that (they claimed) would not cause ecological problems in the areas where they were shooting at people.
Trouble is, they found out later that spent Tungsten shells cause cancer.
Feh, you take the good with the bad. ;-)
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But... I don't want to wash my bugs. Can I just send them out to be dry cleaned?
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EcoSense. The Eco-nomical way to kill.
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This is called \"Greenwashing.\" There will never be a time when Ortho, Dow, Monsanto, or any other big chemical company will ever be eco-friendly.
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looking at this label i see one claim (\"kills insects fast\"), a product descriptor (\"Insecticidal soap\") and the brand name. then you have all the required net weight, ingredients and cautionary statements.
the master brand Ortho is topmost, then the sub-brand ecosense. the massive footnote isn't anything required, just a disclaimer.
Hook line and sucker.
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Insecticidal soap is, indeed, a greener option than almost any other garden product. The disclaimer is probably the result of nervous managers collaborating with under-employed corporate lawyers.
Consumers, this is an excellent product. It's a bit overpriced (it's just soap, after all) but it is effective and safe.
@StarkRavingMan:
It would appear that many of the commenters are a little naive as to the relation that disclaimers have to reality; this isn't a greenwashed product.
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@StarkRavingMan: Please tell me how anything which claims to kill insects is environmentally/ecologically friendly. It's either poison/insecticide or it's not.
@witeowl: You're conflating poison and insecticide. They are two different things. This is an insecticide -- it kills insects -- but it does not poison them.
Eco-friendly doesn't mean it has no impact on the environment, it means it has minimal impact. Ladybugs kill insects, and they're eco-friendly. Diatomaceous earth kills insects, and it's eco-friendly. BT kills caterpillars, and only caterpillars. It is eco-friendly. Squishing aphids with your fingers kills aphids, but it's eco-friendly. Pulling weeds that are hosts to pest insects kills both plants and insects, but it's still an eco-friendly practice.
On the other hand, if you spray something like ortho or carbaryl on your roses, it will kill the aphids. It'll also kill any bees that come wandering by in the next couple days. If you spill some and it gets into the storm drains or water table, it's a mess. That's not a minimal impact.
This stuff, you can spray it on your vegetables or flowers or berries or fruit, and then harvest and eat them.
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@witeowl: It's dishsoap and water. If you consider dishsoap or body soap to be environmentally unfriendly and dangerous, then I guess for you, it would be bad. Just b/c it kills aphids, doesn't mean it's a toxic or poisonous to US. Drinking soapy water might give us a bad case of the runs, but not much more.
@witeowl: What smiling1809 said, plus insecticidal soap doesn't encourage things like pesticide resistance in insects. And it doesn't harm beneficial insects like ladybugs or bumblebees.
Um, wait, let me get this straight. This is insecticide. Insecticide is supposed to kill insects. Insects are part of the environment/ecosystem. Um... huh?
By definition, insecticide cannot be eco-friendly.
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@witeowl: You are a bad consumer: you think too much. Just look at the label and assume it is what it is.
@witeowl: Actually, neither of you are thinking enough. All \"insecticide\" means is that it kills bugs - it doesn't mean it's necessarily a toxic chemical. The stuff is dishsoap and water, and is actually used in organic gardening. It's not dangerous at all.
.... hmm nobody realized that this product is to kill bugs .... bugs are part of the ecosystem, part of the environment ... why would you ask such a product to be green
or if green for you means \"do no arm to plants\" ... well i have never come across a product that would have been made deliberately to kill insects and the plants under the insects
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I work for Home Depot's merchandising arm and prior to that I spent two year in the seasonal department.
*** The ecosense label is in regards to the plastic of the packaging as it uses 15% less plastic than the prior container. ***
There's no laws about what can be labeled green or ecofriendly ... 15% less plastic helps not hurts but it's borderline.
There are no regulations on the use of the pre-fix 'eco' or the words 'eco-friendly' or 'sustainable' on packaging. The phrase 'ecosense brand' on this product means nothing to me and could probably be considered 'greenwashing.' However, insecticidal soap is highly recommended for more environmentally conscious gardeners because it is designed to kill insects harmful to your plants. It is nothing new---the company just gave the container a make-over.
The bottom line is this: Don't let the packaging or labeling fool you on any 'eco' product. Same thing goes for food and cosmetics. You can be a eco-smart consumer. Look at the ingredients. Research the ingredients. Is the bottle recyclable or re-usable? Does the company that makes the product have a sustainability plan?
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Probably because there is some labeling requirement that they have to meet in order to claim their product is 'green' or 'ecofriendly'.
@mythago: There's not any such requirements for insect killer. Actually, I don't know of any \"eco/green\" labeling requirements for any products, hence all the BS in the market.