How did we create the first series of carbon-neutral, environmentally friendly household products? The question is often posed to us, and that’s why we are presenting our company history in question-and-answer format.
You first need to know that ATTITUDE products, available in about 20 countries, were not created overnight. The series owes its success to the work and genius of our small team of passionate staff. In an effort to create the most environmentally-friendly products, our team has succeeded in making its dreams a reality.
ATTITUDE products were conceived from a simple observation: nothing is more illogical than cleaning a home with toxic products. The more we thought about it, the more we noticed that it’s an absolutely unbelievable contradiction. Holding our breath while cleaning a kitchen counter? Protecting ourselves from what is supposed to protect us? Cleaning, all the while polluting?
There is something incredibly paradoxical in cleaning up the home environment using loads of chemical products. With ATTITUDE, we wanted not only to develop non-toxic products, but also to debunk this contradiction and change the way we clean. When we asked people in our inner circle why they did not consume in a more responsible fashion, we always got the same responses. Environmentally-friendly products don’t work! They are too expensive! I can’t find them in the supermarket!
Creating ATTITUDE products was above all to respond to the areas that interested us: the environment and public health. We wanted to offer a solution to a pressing issue, proving to everyone that it is possible to develop environmentally friendly products that are also effective and as accessible as their traditional counterparts.
In December 2005, we started to develop our surface cleaners. We were then a very small team working in a very small factory. Product development, production, bottling, distribution, marketing, compatibility--we were working on it all! We had to be particularly creative and efficient at the time.
The success – wow! – of our surface cleaners led us to the decision to enlarge the family by adding detergents for dishwashing and clothing as well as hand soap. It's worth mentioning that just before our products were put on the market, the green algae (cyanobacteria) crisis occurred in Quebec. Many streams were then contaminated. It was a terrible tragedy, definitely, but it did make people more aware of the problem. People could not bathe in the chalets anymore, something that affected consumers directly!
But while ATTITUDE expanded its presence on the market, more and more products purporting to be environmentally friendly flooded the shelves. Fighting against confusion while promoting the truth, the ATTITUDE team had lots of work to do. Does biodegradable mean environmentally friendly? Not necessarily! Does “phosphate-free” mean environmentally friendly? NO!
And we decided to make consumers’ lives easier while demonstrating our dedication to the environment by certifying our products through a particularly credible independent organization, EcoLogo.