Who’s Minding the Store? — A Report Card on Retailer Actions to Eliminate Toxic Chemicals is the fifth annual evaluation of the safer chemicals programs of the largest retailers in the U.S. and Canada.
The report card was published in March 2021 by the Mind the Store campaign, a program of Toxic-Free Future. The campaign was launched in 2013 and the first report card was published in 2016.
This report highlights a growing sustainability trend among the largest retailers of the U.S. and Canada over the past year: major retailers are increasingly adopting and implementing policies that restrict classes of toxic chemicals such as PFAS in the products and packaging they buy and sell. This is helping to bring safer products into the hands of consumers all across these countries and catalyze the development of safer chemicals and green chemistry solutions.
In this report, you can learn about which of the evaluated retailers are leading the market movement to safer chemicals, how they can continue to implement and expand corporate chemical policies, and which of the evaluated retailers are lagging behind the other evaluated retailers.
Retailers that are not properly managing chemical risks can lose the trust of their customers, lose market share to competitors, and may even risk facing significant financial liabilities. Meanwhile, those businesses that manage chemical risks can reap great rewards.
As consumers, we have incredible power to drive positive change in the marketplace to build a toxic-free future.
You can use this report to help inform which companies you’ll support and those that you will avoid in the year ahead. For those evaluated companies that are lagging behind the other evaluated retailers, leverage the power of the purse and join us in raising your voice to call for urgent reform. You can use our take action feature to write to the dozen companies that make up the retailer report card Toxic Hall of Shame.
Our campaign’s theory of change is working – by publicly benchmarking companies, raising the voices of thousands of consumers, publishing new scientific research, and engaging companies in dialogue and sharing policy recommendations, we are driving a competitive race to the top in the retail sector.
Together, we can hold big corporations accountable to ensure the stores we shop at “mind the store.”
Lead Authors:
- Mike Schade is the Campaign Director of Mind the Store
- Mike Belliveau is the Executive Director of Defend Our Health
Lead Analyst:
- Jen Dickman is the Senior Program Associate of Safer Chemicals Healthy Families
Contributors:
- Jose Bravo is the National Coordinator of the Campaign for Healthier Solutions
- Sarah Doll is the National Director of Safer States
- Beth Kemler is the Mobilization Director of Safer Chemicals Healthy Families
- Liz Hitchcock is the Director of Safer Chemicals Healthy Families
- Melissa Lound is the Digital Communications and Fundraising Manager of Toxic-Free Future
- Patrick MacRoy is the Deputy Director of Defend Our Health
- Muhannad Malas is the former Toxics Program Manager of Environmental Defence Canada
- Kathleen Schuler is Strategic Advisor for Safer States
- Stephanie Stohler is the Communications Director of Toxic-Free Future
- Steve Taylor is the Program Director for Coming Clean and the Campaign for Healthier Solutions
- Laurie Valeriano is the Executive Director of Toxic-Free Future
- Bobbi Wilding is the Executive Director of Clean & Healthy New York
Partners:
We deeply appreciate the support of our coalition partners in the Mind the Store campaign and Safer States. Special thanks to the Campaign for Healthier Solutions, Defend Our Health, Environmental Defence, Getting Ready for Baby campaign, and WE ACT for Environmental Justice for their partnership on the fifth annual report card.