Health First Roadmap Preliminary Review - Category 1: Chemicals Management
In June 2018, we committed to following the Health First roadmap and are ready to share the preliminary results of our self-assessment.
The Health First Roadmap is published by Women’s Voices for the Earth and contains specific benchmarks for company performance in four categories:
We'll share more details about each of these categories over the next several weeks. First, we'll discuss Chemicals Management.
Category: Chemicals Management
Current State: COMPLIANCE
Explanation for Current State
Our company was founded on the idea of making a product with better ingredients. This doesn’t automatically mean we are doing all we can do or that we are communicating this well to help our customers understand our ingredient selection processes. This self evaluation has helped us understand one area of needed improvement. Although we have great informal ingredient selection practices, this is not the same as having a published, publicly-shared policy that creates a company-wide standard.
In the case of chemicals management, our company and every team member is firmly committed to chemicals and product safety. We need to be more clear about this by issuing a formal policy regarding our approach. Without this formal policy in place and shared publicly, we are relying on individual decisions by our team regarding what ingredients are safer to use.
Specifically, the description for the benchmark of Compliance states that:
Company has no written chemicals policy addressing its approach to reducing chemicals of high concern. Has not completed Chemical Footprint Project survey to assess its current approach to chemicals management or track current use of chemicals of high concern. (via womensvoices.org)