The environmental campaigner Jon Dee has won his battle to rid laundry products of environmentally damaging phosphates, with the last manufacturers agreeing to phase them out.
PZ Cussons Australia, which makes Radiant, and Colgate-Palmolive, which owns Cold Power and Dynamo, have confirmed in writing that they will join the phase-out scheme revealed by The Sun-Herald in November.
Mr Dee, founder of Do Something and a former NSW Australian of the year, said: ”This means that I now have every detergent brand over the line for Do Something’s National Phosphate Ban.
”I hadn’t been able to get a single politician to take this issue on as it was in the too-hard basket, so it’s great that the detergent industry stepped up and voluntarily did the right thing.”
In a statement to be released today, PZ Cussons Australia was expected to announce Radiant would be phosphate-free by 2012, ”completing the final stage of their journey to remove phosphate from all of their laundry detergent brands”.
The managing director, Wayne Horrobin, said the time frame to become phosphate-free had been established to ensure the laundry powder remained effective and ensure it would still be manufactured in Australia.
Mr Dee’s campaign follows measures in place in the US and those recently begun in the European Union.
Many popular detergent brands in Australia still contain phosphates. Dishwasher tablets are particularly high in phosphates, with some containing more than 30 per cent.
The chemicals have been linked to algal blooms in rivers and to stifling aquatic life.
The supermarket chain Aldi was the first to back the campaign.
In April Aldi’s managing director of buying, Stefan Kopp, announced all laundry detergents sold in the chain’s 250 Australian stores would be contain no phosphates by 2013.
Two weeks later Coles and Woolworths pledged to make their home-brand laundry detergents phosphate-free by next year.
Unilever then introduced phosphate-free versions of Surf, Drive and Omo, Australia’s biggest selling detergent. Unilever’s research showed phosphates had a higher greenhouse gas impact than other ingredients.
Mr Dee said the ban was expected to reduce the environmental damage of the estimated 1.9 billion loads of laundry Australians do every year.
He is now in discussions with a detergent industry group about retiring the ”P” phosphate symbol once the full ban starts in 2014.
