Helping Our Consumers, Leading Our Industry

A letter to global thought leaders from Jane Hutterly, SC Johnson Executive Vice President – Worldwide Corporate and Environmental Affairs.

Dear Friend:

I am pleased to share that SC Johnson has recently made two major announcements about the company and the ingredients in our products. We have begun working with our suppliers to phase out phthalates from the fragrances they provide for our products. And, we have launched an innovative and expansive ingredient communication program.

Consumers are accustomed to reading labels on products when shopping for food or cosmetics. As a household and personal care products manufacturer with trusted brand names, such as Windex® and Glade®, we believe product ingredients should be widely accessible and easily understandable to consumers.

I wanted you to be aware of these actions and why we are taking them. Today’s consumers want to know what’s in the products they buy. They are becoming increasingly aware of product ingredients, and this awareness is beginning to affect purchases as well as perceptions of brands overall. We understand their concerns – and we support consumers’ right to know what’s in products so they can make the right decisions for their families.

Phasing Out Phthalates

SC Johnson continually conducts extensive research and testing to ensure our products meet health, environmental and safety standards, and are effective. We also listen to consumers, and at the end of the day, will consider making a change if it’s really important to the families that use our products.

The particular phthalate that raised concern – DEP – has been extensively researched and has been deemed safe by various scientific bodies. But the larger class of substances in the phthalate family has been more hotly debated, and we understand that sometimes whole categories of substances can erroneously be seen as concerning despite individual items being safe.

So for that reason, even though the chemistry was sound, we decided to have our suppliers phase out DEP in all our fragrances, starting in summer 2008. DEP was the only phthalate that was used in some of the fragrances in SC Johnson Home Cleaning and Air Care products. The effort is now well underway, with new and reformulated products being produced without phthalates. We expect to be out of phthalates completely within the timeframe of this plan.

This is an important point of difference for SC Johnson. Importantly, it is also a continuing demonstration of the leadership actions SC Johnson has taken repeatedly over the years, from voluntarily removing CFCs in the 1970s, to discontinuing PVC in packaging in 2002. We believe this latest action further exemplifies SC Johnson’s ongoing commitment to responsible leadership and to going beyond regulatory requirements to do what’s right.

Communicating About Ingredients

The decision to disclose the ingredients in our products supports an industry initiative announced last fall. We applaud the industry effort and intend to comply with it, but SC Johnson wants to go even further. Key leadership areas for SC Johnson include the following:

• SC Johnson product information is available through not one but three means – a dedicated web site, www.whatsinsidescjohnson.com, the company’s toll-free number (1-800-558-5252) and on product labels that will be phased in for all Air Care and Home Cleaning products.

• We intend to list all of our ingredients – an unprecedented move that includes dyes, preservatives and fragrance ingredients. Fragrances will be shared by listing all ingredients that could potentially be included in the fragrance, as a way to protect the proprietary details of the specific formulation of individual fragrances.

• While the industry initiative focuses on English-language communication, SC Johnson will populate its ingredient web site in both English and Spanish, with the Spanish-language information being added in the second half of 2009. Additionally, SC Johnson Canada will be joining the initiative in the next year, adding Canadian products and providing information about them in both English and French.

As part of this initiative, we launched www.whatsinsidescjohnson.com, a dedicated web site that offers easy-to-access and easy-to-understand information about the ingredients in SC Johnson products. It launched with information about Windex® Outdoor, Shout® Wipes, Glade® aerosol, Nature’s Source™ cleaning products and more. These products are included as initial examples of what the site will provide when fully populated by January of 2012.

A Continuing Commitment to Leadership

We firmly believe that SC Johnson’s ingredient communication leadership, as well as our move away from phthalates, extends the company’s long history of doing what’s right for people and the planet. These are more reasons why when consumers reach for our products on your shelves, they can feel good about it. We are communicating this news to consumers, and wanted you to be aware of it as well.

As a family company, nothing is more important to us than the health of the families who use our products. That’s why SC Johnson took these voluntary steps to make product ingredients widely accessible and easily understandable to consumers, so they can make the best decisions for their families.

We welcome your thoughts on these voluntary initiatives.