A straightforward look at one of the most common — and most talked-about — cleaning ingredients.

If you read ingredient labels closely, you may come across SLES (sodium laureth sulfate), and you may have seen it discussed in conversations about cleaning ingredients. We use it in some of our formulas, and we'd rather give you clear information about it than leave you to sort through the noise.

What it is

SLES is a surfactant — the kind of ingredient that does the actual work of cleaning. Like other surfactants, it has one end that attaches to oil and grease and another that binds to water, so it can lift dirt away and rinse it off. It's effective at this, which is why it's one of the most widely used surfactants across both personal care and household cleaning. It's plant-derived, and it's cost-effective — part of how we keep our products both effective and affordable.

What people ask about

SLES comes up in ingredient discussions for a couple of reasons, and here's the context on each.

On skin: surfactants in general — plant-based ones included — are formulated to be used at appropriate levels, and at those levels SLES is widely regarded as well-tolerated. As with any cleaning product, what matters most is how the overall formula is designed and tested, not any single ingredient on its own. Our formulas are made to be gentle, and their skin compatibility is supported by independent third-party patch testing.

On the environment: how a cleaning product affects the environment depends on the complete formula and how it's used. We pay attention to that at the formula level, and where a product carries USDA Certified Biobased content, it's noted on that product.

Why we're telling you

We choose ingredients based on how well they work, whether they're safe when properly formulated, and whether they let us make good products at a fair price — not on how a name reads on a label. When an ingredient we use tends to raise questions, we'd rather explain our reasoning than quietly avoid it.

If you'd like to see exactly what's in a specific product, the full ingredient list is available on each product page.