Walgreens

In early November, Walgreens 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: “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 RSL from these products by the end of 2021. 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 monitor for chemicals on the Beauty and Personal Care Stewardship List.

Walgreens has also posted this policy on its Boots UK site.

The company has not developed a publicly available Manufacturing Restricted Substances List (MRSL), and the policy does not appear to apply to packaging or operations.

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 chemicals policy regarding chemicals of concern 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.

The company states: “The Board of Directors of Walgreens Boots Alliance is committed to sound corporate governance and sets high standards for employees, officers and directors. The Board exercises oversight of the Company’s strategic, operational and financial matters, including the elements and dimensions of major risks facing the Company which may include risk management with respect to CSR matters. The Board has charged its Nominating and Governance Committee with reviewing, at least annually, the Company’s policies and activities regarding CSR.”

It is not clear if there are financial incentives for senior management to implement safer chemical policies.

According to staff, Walgreens trains vendors on its 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’ RSL.

Walgreens’ 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. However, the company doesn’t specifically mention that it requires suppliers to test in third-party approved laboratories for chemicals on Walgreens’ RSL, or that the company itself routinely tests parts, materials, or ingredients provided by suppliers to ensure conformance with the chemicals policy. Walgreens has also not disclosed any initiatives to audit suppliers to ensure they are in compliance with the policy.

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

The company’s most recent sustainability report states: “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.” It will be utilizing PurView to appraise these formulations against various criteria in order to determine its approach to the development of various policies (including its Chemicals Policy and RSL).

Walgreens reported 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 offers 20 paraben-free sunscreen formulations (83% of all sunscreen formulations) and 15 oxybenzone-free sunscreen formulations (62% of total).

In its policy, Walgreens states: “In moving to eliminate [chemicals of concern], 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 RSL in early November.

According to its new policy, “Walgreens Boots Alliance encourages all suppliers of formulated products to endeavour 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.

On its website, Walgreens has search filters allowing customers to more easily search for products, such as those in the Bath and Body category, that are paraben-free or phthalate-free, for example.

No discernible progress on chemical footprint.

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.” Staff adds that Walgreens discusses the goals of credible certifications with suppliers and the company is working on identifying incentives for suppliers in this area.

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

Walgreens has shown significant improvement over the last year by finally creating and publicly releasing its safer chemicals policy and also publicizing its RSL. As an initial step, the policy currently applies largely to private-label products. 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 already 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.”

Walgreens is active in the Beauty and Personal Care Products Sustainability Project (BPC) and noted in its most recent sustainability report that “Walgreens and other major retailers have joined in the project along with numerous beauty brands and raw materials suppliers to develop a process for evaluating beauty and personal care product sustainability.”

No indication that company invests significant financial resources into independent research into safer alternatives to chemicals of high concern and/or green chemistry solutions.