Walgreens

Last year, Walgreens Boots Alliance issued a Chemical Policy Statement describing its new “chemicals management program that assesses and restricts the use of certain chemicals or ingredients in products sold in our stores and online.” The company stated it was taking action because of customer concerns and Walgreens’ own research, saying: “As a consumer-facing company we are aware that there is customer concern about the safety of certain chemicals that are not restricted by law. Additionally, our own product safety analysts may come to a different, stricter conclusion than some regulatory bodies.”

Walgreens Boots Alliance plans to apply the policy initially to Walgreens- and Boots-owned brand and exclusive consumer retail formulated products in the baby, beauty, personal care, and household cleaning product categories. The company intends to work with its suppliers to eliminate the chemicals on its (B)RSL from these products by the end of 2021 and plans to report on its implementation publicly going forward. The company has yet to report on progress in meeting the 2021 goal. The company also created a list of chemicals that it is monitoring and “over time…looking to restrict and/or minimize across [its] product portfolio.” For just the beauty and personal care subcategories, Walgreens plans to also monitor for chemicals on the Beauty and Personal Care Stewardship List. The policy applies to all of its stores.

The company has not developed a publicly available manufacturing restricted substance list (MRSL), and the policy does not appear to apply to packaging or operations. In its 2018 CSR report, Walgreens defines packaging, in the context of its CSR materiality assessment, as: “Working to reduce negative impacts of product packaging, including using recycled/recyclable packaging, eliminating chemicals of concern from packaging and other steps.” However, the company does not provide further details on “eliminating chemicals of concern from packaging” in the rest of its report or its Chemical Policy Statement.

In September 2015, Walgreens established the new role of senior manager, product sustainability within the Product Integrity & Corporate Social Responsibility Department. The responsibilities of this role are focused on three key areas of product sustainability: formulation, packaging, and vendor practices. The key component of the formulation pillar is the development of a safer chemicals policy as well as developing a product transparency program. A significant portion of this position’s performance metrics are dependent on this individual issue. In addition, senior leadership created a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Committee, chaired by the co-chief operating officer, that agrees on CSR targets, measures progress toward achieving them, oversees CSR policy statements, and formally approves the annual CSR report.

Walgreens did not provide further information on financial incentives for senior management to implement its safer chemicals policy, so we are only awarding partial credit for this component.

According to staff, Walgreens trains vendors on its safer chemicals policy through its supplier portal, SupplierNet, and this training is required. Staff also mentioned that vendors are notified if the formulation they enter into WERCSmart has any chemicals on Walgreens’s BRSL.

Walgreens’s policy notes that the company is monitoring certain chemicals that it is looking to restrict or minimize and expects all suppliers to monitor the use of chemicals on the six authoritative and regulatory lists that comprise the BPC stewardship list within their beauty and personal care portfolios.

In its 2018 CSR report, Walgreens does state: “We rigorously test our owned brand products on a regular cadence to help ensure they meet regulatory requirements and our own high standards related to safety.” However, the company doesn’t clearly tie “our own high standards related to safety” back to its safer chemicals policy.

Walgreens has not specifically disclosed that it incorporates its safer chemicals policy or reporting requirements in supplier contracts, that it requires suppliers to conduct testing in third-party laboratories and provide results to the retailer, or that it conducts its own testing to ensure suppliers comply with its safer chemicals policy.

Last year, Walgreens staff stated: “all [owned-brand] vendors are required to register and disclose all ingredients to the WERCS… which allows for full ingredient screening against our RSL.” The disclosure includes fragrance components, but not impurities.

The company’s previous 2017 sustainability report stated: “Walgreens Boots Alliance is building on the systems we have in place for our sourcing teams in the UK and Asia in order to achieve a consistent level of traceability with all of our product brand suppliers. During fiscal 2017, Walgreens acquired and began implementing tools to achieve greater traceability in its supply chain and products, a key step toward developing comprehensive policies around product sustainability. Walgreens began to use the UL PurView Platform, a customizable system to help enable the business to collect data across its supply chain and make more informed decisions about the sourcing of materials, ingredients and products. The tool will allow Walgreens to compare ingredients against sustainability standards for products registered with UL WERCSmart, a supply chain information system.”

In 2017, the company also stated: “Walgreens currently requires all applicable formulated products to register with the UL-WERCS. Walgreens also utilizes PurView in conjunction with the WERCS to appraise product formulations in targeted categories against a variety of evaluative lists of less desirable chemical ingredients.”

Walgreens reported last year that it has reformulated most of its owned-brand sunscreens, including all of its baby, kid, and moisturizing sunscreen lines, to be paraben-free and oxybenzone-free. The company stated it offers 20 paraben-free sunscreen formulations (83% of all sunscreen formulations) and 15 oxybenzone-free sunscreen formulations (62% of total).

The company has not disclosed any additional progress since its safer chemicals policy was released last year, particularly in how the policy is now driving the reduction or elimination of other chemicals of concern in its private-brand products.

In its policy, Walgreens states: “In moving to eliminate these substances [chemicals on its BRSL], we encourage suppliers to select ingredients identified as Safer Chemicals by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Safer Choice program, or to use EPA Safer Choice criteria or ChemSec safer alternatives marketplace to evaluate and select safe substitutions.”

Walgreens published its safer chemicals policy and BRSL on its website in 2018.

According to its safer chemicals policy, “Walgreens Boots Alliance encourages all suppliers of formulated products to endeavor to publicly disclose intentionally added ingredients (either on package labelling or digitally).” Staff added that they are also encouraging the disclosure of fragrance components. The company also discusses these goals with vendors and is working on figuring out incentives for this disclosure.

In its 2018 sustainability report, the company stated: “In addition to removing certain chemicals, we believe in providing consumers with transparency and the information they want on ingredients in the products they use. As part of that commitment, we intend to list the ingredients in all owned brand household cleaners on their respective product labels by the end of 2019. In addition, we encourage all suppliers of formulated products to endeavor to publicly disclose intentionally added ingredients.”

The company was awarded three points for its efforts to encourage suppliers to publicly disclose ingredients because, although the company encourages this disclosure either on-pack or online, instead of “on-pack and online” as required by this point level in the rubric, the company goes beyond this point level by encouraging suppliers to disclose fragrance components. An extra credit point was awarded for Walgreens setting a deadline for disclosures on the product labels of owned brand household cleaners.

Walgreens has not made any discernible progress on measuring its chemical footprint via the Chemical Footprint Project.

In its policy, Walgreens states that the company: “will work to enable consumers to make informed choices by encouraging suppliers to obtain credible certifications (including third-party certifications such as EPA Safer Choice and Cradle to Cradle Certified) and will make it easy for consumers to find these more sustainable products.” In 2018, staff shared that Walgreens discusses the goals of credible certifications with suppliers, and the company is working on identifying incentives for suppliers in this area. Since then, the company has not disclosed progress in how it is implementing this.

Walgreens participated in a joint announcement with the Mind the Store campaign about its then-newly public safer chemicals policy in November 2018.

In its 2018 sustainability report, the company shared that it intends to “list the ingredients in all owned brand household cleaners on their respective product labels by the end of 2019.”

Last year, before the 2018 retailer report card was released, Walgreens showed significant improvement by finally creating and publicly releasing its safer chemicals policy and also publicizing its BRSL. Walgreens has set a goal of eliminating all of the chemicals on its RSL in baby, beauty, personal care, and household cleaning products by the end of 2021, and has made strides in reformulating sunscreens so that a majority of the formulations do not contain two chemicals of concern.

Walgreens allows its customers to more easily search for safer products on its website. On at least some pages that have a list of filters on the lefthand side, the filters include “Fragrance Free,” “No Phthalates,” “Paraben Free,” “Sulfate Free,” and “Dye Free.”

Partial credit is awarded since these filters represent a step in the right direction. We encourage Walgreens to go further by ensuring all of the ingredients in its products are genuinely safer, not just that the products are free from a limited number of toxic chemicals.

Walgreens is active in the Beauty and Personal Care Products Sustainability Project (BPC) and noted in its most recent sustainability report that: “Walgreens and a group of U.S. retailers and consumer goods companies announced in May 2018 that they had produced an ambitious series of metrics that guide principles of sustainability for cosmetics and other personal care products. This was the outcome of several years of work by the cross-industry Beauty and Personal Care Products Sustainability Project, an initiative coordinated by Forum for the Future and TSC.

The group has developed an assessment tool that includes 32 key performance indicators that fall into the areas of packaging, disclosure, human health and supply chain, and the environment. The aim of this tool is to evaluate the sustainability of products and to increase the availability of sustainable products. Retailers will independently apply this system, providing brands with incentives to achieve their sustainability goals.”

Walgreens has not clarified how it intends to utilize this new tool.