Is Mrs. Meyer's Really Natural? What the Certifications Actually Mean

The bottle is beautiful. Garden-fresh lavender, a farmhouse-y label, “plant-derived” language everywhere you look — the same kind of packaging story we unpack in the real cost of greenwashing. You’ve probably already decided Mrs. Meyer’s is one of the good ones. Most people have.

So let’s actually check — not vibes, not label design, the real certifications and what they say.

Is Mrs. Meyer’s really natural? Partly, and its own FAQ says so directly: the products are made with “plant-based ingredients, as well as other thoughtfully chosen ingredients.” That second phrase is doing a lot of work. Let’s unpack exactly what it means and what the certifications on the bottle actually certify.

What Mrs. Meyer’s itself says

I want to start here because it’s the most honest source: the brand’s own words. Mrs. Meyer’s official FAQ states that its cleaners are made with “plant-based ingredients, as well as other thoughtfully chosen ingredients,” and notes the products are “USDA Biobased and Leaping Bunny certified.”

Read that plant-based line again slowly. It’s not saying “100% plant-based.” It’s saying some ingredients are plant-based, and the rest are “thoughtfully chosen” — a phrase that could mean almost anything, including synthetic preservatives and fragrance compounds. That’s not a lie. It’s just not what the garden-label aesthetic implies.

What USDA Biobased actually certifies

This is the certification people misread most.

The USDA BioPreferred Program explains that the Certified Biobased Product label “indicates that the product has been certified by USDA to contain the percent biobased content as shown on the label.” That’s it. It’s a content measurement — what percentage of the product, by weight, comes from renewable biological sources like plants.

It is not a safety certification. It doesn’t test for toxicity, allergenicity, or whether the remaining percentage — the non-biobased part — includes synthetic fragrance, preservatives, or dyes. A product can be, say, 35% biobased and still contain plenty of ingredients most “clean beauty” or “non-toxic” shoppers would want to avoid. The label tells you about the plant math. It doesn’t tell you about the chemistry.

What Leaping Bunny actually certifies — and what it doesn’t

The Leaping Bunny Program is a genuinely meaningful, independently audited certification. It verifies that a brand and its ingredient suppliers don’t conduct animal testing anywhere in the supply chain. Mrs. Meyer’s carrying this certification is a real, earned claim, and I won’t pretend otherwise.

But cruelty-free and non-toxic are two completely different questions. A product can be 100% cruelty-free and still contain synthetic fragrance, preservatives, or ingredients someone with asthma or sensitive skin needs to avoid. Leaping Bunny tells you nothing about what’s actually in the bottle — only how it was tested. For that, you want an EWG-verified rating, which actually scores ingredient hazard rather than testing practices.

If the animal-testing question is the one you actually came to settle — including what the full Leaping Bunny standard demands, what PETA’s database says, and why “cruelty-free” isn’t a legally defined term — we answered it on its own page: does Mrs. Meyer’s test on animals?

The fragrance question nobody puts on the label

Here’s the piece that ties it together. Like the vast majority of scented cleaning products — including plenty of “natural-adjacent” brands — Mrs. Meyer’s lists “fragrance” as a single ingredient on the front of the bottle. Under FDA rules, that one word can legally represent a mixture of individual chemicals a company doesn’t have to name, protected as a trade secret.

Scent names like Lavender, Basil, or Lemon Verbena describe the idea of the scent, not necessarily its chemical source. A “Lavender” fragrance can be built from synthetic aroma compounds engineered to smell like lavender, real lavender essential oil, or some blend of both — and the front label won’t tell you which. That’s not unique to Mrs. Meyer’s; it’s the same standard we found when we ran a Method ingredient audit — it’s the entire fragranced-cleaner category’s default. It’s just at odds with the garden-fresh story the packaging tells.

So is it “really natural”?

Here’s the honest verdict: Mrs. Meyer’s is a legitimately better-than-average conventional cleaning brand on two specific, verifiable claims — cruelty-free (Leaping Bunny) and partial renewable-source content (USDA Biobased). It is not a fully natural, fully plant-derived product, and the brand’s own FAQ says as much if you read past the marketing.

If “natural” matters to you as a genuine ingredient standard — not just a feeling from the packaging — the thing to look for is a brand that tells you every single ingredient, including exactly what makes up its fragrance, rather than a certification that measures something adjacent to the question you’re actually asking. It’s the same due diligence we recommend before trusting any label claiming to avoid hidden toxins in cleaning products.

That’s the standard we built Ecolosophy’s plant-based concentrate to meet: every ingredient named, no undisclosed “fragrance” blend, real essential oils or nothing at all. One bottle makes 100+ spray bottles, so you’re not restocking a shelf of “thoughtfully chosen” mystery ingredients every month. If you want the deeper dive on the fragrance loophole itself, read this next.

How the two brands actually compare, side by side

One concrete, checkable difference. The ingredient lists for Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day Multi-Surface Concentrate include the preservatives methylisothiazolinone (MIT) and benzisothiazolinone (BIT). These are effective preservatives and they are disclosed, which is to Mrs. Meyer’s credit. They are also well-documented contact allergens — MIT was the American Contact Dermatitis Society’s 2013 Allergen of the Year — and if you or your child has known contact allergies or eczema, that is a specific, actionable thing to know about a specific product.

What that does not mean: that the product is unsafe for the general population. Most people use it without any reaction at all, and a disclosed sensitizer you can see and avoid is a better situation than an undisclosed one you can’t. We previously cited a specific EWG letter grade here; we could not retrieve and verify it at the time of this audit, so we have removed the grade and kept only the ingredient fact, which you can check for yourself on the label.

On biodegradability: the OECD 301F test (≥60% degradation within 28 days) is the meaningful international benchmark, and we think brands should publish results against it. We have removed a previous claim comparing our published data to Mrs. Meyer’s, because we could not substantiate a statement about what another company has or hasn’t tested.

On the fragrance question specifically, Anne Steinemann’s 2016 study in Air Quality, Atmosphere & Health surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1,136 US adults: 34.7% reported health problems — migraine headaches and respiratory difficulties among them — when exposed to fragranced products, and 15.1% reported losing workdays or a job because of fragranced product exposure at work (free full text). We previously dated this study to 2018 and described the 15.1% figure as “breathing difficulties”; both were wrong and are corrected here. It is survey self-report, not clinical measurement — worth knowing, not proof of harm from any particular brand. If the scent matters more to you than full disclosure, Mrs. Meyer’s is a genuinely pleasant product. If knowing exactly what’s in the bottle matters more, that’s the gap Ecolosophy was built to close.

Certifications are a starting point, not a finish line. Read what they actually measure before you let a label make the decision for you.

We run this same certification-literacy exercise across brands over on The Detox Journal — it’s worth the habit for any label, not just this one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Mrs. Meyer’s really natural? Partly. Mrs. Meyer’s own FAQ says its products are made with plant-based ingredients “as well as other thoughtfully chosen ingredients” — its own language confirms the formulas aren’t 100% natural or plant-derived. Some ingredients are plant-based; others, including fragrance components, are not disclosed as such.

What does the USDA Certified Biobased label on Mrs. Meyer’s actually mean? It certifies the percentage of the product that’s made from renewable biological (plant, animal, or marine) sources, as verified by USDA testing. It does not certify that a product is non-toxic, hypoallergenic, or free of synthetic ingredients — a product can carry the label and still contain synthetic fragrance and preservatives.

Is Mrs. Meyer’s cruelty-free? Yes — Mrs. Meyer’s is Leaping Bunny certified. This page is about the word “natural”; the certification itself, the full Leaping Bunny standard and PETA’s listing are covered in detail on our dedicated page, does Mrs. Meyer’s test on animals?

Does Mrs. Meyer’s disclose its fragrance ingredients? Not individually, on the front label. Like most conventional and “natural-adjacent” cleaning brands, Mrs. Meyer’s lists “fragrance” as a single ingredient, which under FDA rules can legally stand in for a mixture of undisclosed compounds protected as trade secrets — a full ingredient glossary is available separately, but the front label doesn’t spell it out.

What’s a truly transparent alternative to Mrs. Meyer’s? Look for a brand that publishes its complete ingredient list — including exactly what’s in its fragrance, or skips synthetic fragrance entirely in favor of real essential oils. Ecolosophy’s plant-based concentrate discloses every ingredient by name, with no undisclosed fragrance blend, and one bottle makes 100+ spray bottles.

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A pretty label isn’t a full ingredient list. See what full transparency actually looks like → The Pure Serenity concentrate names every ingredient and its source — no “fragrance” catch-all to hide behind.

#cleanwithlove #ecolosophy #nontoxichome #detoxyourlife #plantbasedliving