Consumer Products

Consumer product companies face unique challenges. They must continuously develop and launch new products and respond quickly to developments in a fast-paced marketplace. At the same time, environmental law and policy are increasingly focusing on the health and environmental effects of consumer products, especially those used by and around children. Consumer product companies are especially vulnerable to any suggestion that they are not fully committed to high health, environmental and quality standards, or that their products are unsafe. Beveridge & Diamond, P.C. has extensive experience helping companies in the personal care, food, consumer electronics, automobile, paper and fiber, plastics, packaging, soap and detergent and pesticide industries respond to these challenges.

• We help clients satisfy premarket R&D and product approval requirements (e.g., pesticide registration and premanufacture notification for new chemical substances).

• We evaluate product claims to identify those that trigger regulatory requirements (e.g., claims that make a product a "pesticide" or a "drug") and ensure compliance with required label or other warnings (e.g., Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) requirements, California Proposition 65) and standards for environmental marketing claims.

• We represent clients with respect to environmental management and reporting programs. For example, we have represented Fortune 100 companies in:

• creating an environmental, health and safety organization and an effective audit program, and avoiding liability risks during implementation of new procedures;

• evaluating a client's environmental management at over 130 facilities worldwide, providing detailed recommendations, and helping to implement them; and

• providing legal input for a client's environmental management manual and providing advice on updating the manual, environmental audit report confidentiality, and how such manuals and audit programs are considered under federal sentencing guidelines.

• We help clients respond to programs to identify product risks (e.g., testing of high production volume chemicals, substances to which children are exposed, and "endocrine disruptors") and defend their products in proceedings to penalize or limit product use, manufacture, or ingredients on the basis of health or environmental risks.

• We represent clients on "right-to-know" issues, including proposals to create a "chemical use inventory" to collect and circulate data about toxics in consumer products, and requirements to notify the government of new information about product hazards.

• We help identify environmental business opportunities (e.g., "green" procurement, eligibility for marketing seals such as EnergyStar) as well as advising on initiatives promoting "green" product design, recycling, reuse and source reduction and representing clients on issues such as manufacturer responsibility for end-of-life products (e.g., proposed EU directives on end-of-life electronics).

• We provide advice and representation on product packaging issues (e.g., limits on toxics in packaging, California's plastic recycling requirements, and European take-back programs).

• Since 1993, we have published a quarterly newsletter on environmental developments affecting the design and marketing of consumer products.