The Ideal technical team know that it’s better to use less and fewer raw materials. It’s just good sense. Even in a lab, that means it’s best to choose options that have multiple functions and go further. The alternative is the chemist’s equivalent of that one ingredient at the back of the kitchen cupboard that you don’t remember buying and don’t quite have a use for, but you swear you’re going to use soon. We’ve applied the same principle of functional economy to our new range (check out our post that explains the Ideal twelve guiding principles of responsible formulation chemistry), packing as much of the tried and tested functionality of our old product range into as few products as possible. It’s taken a while, but we reckon we’ve got it down. After all, it’s not the nineties anymore: something for everyone doesn’t have to mean wading through endless pages of products, but it doesn’t have to mean zero options, either.

As such, the new, modern, responsible closed loop Ideal range is almost ready to reveal! It’s still got a core of old favourites like Unique for heavy soil and staples like emulsifier and hydrogen peroxide, but we’re constantly planning small changes to improve everything we make over time, both from our environmental perspective and yours. Benefits for our customers include:

• official third-party accreditations
• clearer technical information & ingredient transparency
• lower wash temperatures
• mix-and-match formulations
• concentrated liquids
• more specialist options (such as polymer-free and brightener-free formulations)
• alternatives for common ingredients that are of environmental concern

Oh, and of course equivalent or better performance compared to what came before!

Based on our twelve guiding principles for formulation chemistry, we’ve removed dyes from our product line-up, but also unnecessary fragrances, like with our classic Atlas Pro. It’s now certified as vegan and cruelty free and ensured to contain RSPO palm derived surfactants. As we’ve said in previous editions of LCT, we’re changing our classic Ideal spotter range on this basis, too. We really believe in spotting that works for this sector, and that means more than some marketing drive; it means bringing these old favourites into focus for modernisation. Our twelve principles mandate that for spotters, we should:

• Trial innovative raw materials that are better for the environment and people
• Create function from multifunctional ingredients, using less and fewer natural resources
• Derive as few product variants as possible, wherever possible

This means in place of our usual five colour-coded spotters, we’ll be showcasing three at CleanEx 2024: a greener Green Spot for the in-deep oils, a food and sweat combo lifter, and a bio-buster for the nasties. But who knows? If the bio-buster lifts food and sweat in our University-developed product tests, it may be down to two!