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Amazon Playing Catch-Up in Push to Police Chemicals in Products
2017-11-14 15:38:11.418 GMT
By Lauren Coleman-Lochner
(Bloomberg) -- Amazon.com Inc. is developing a plan to
regulate the chemicals used by suppliers, but it still lags Wal-
Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp. and other retailers in the push
for greener products.
That’s the assessment of Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families
-- a Washington-based coalition that runs a program called Mind
the Store. Though Amazon is now developing chemicals procedures,
the e-commerce giant fared badly in Mind the Store’s ranking,
which tracks how well companies reduce the toxic chemicals in
the products they sell and disclose their presence.
As Amazon’s share of retail sales grows, its corporate
stewardship is coming under greater scrutiny. That’s raised
pressure to evaluate its products -- especially as rivals take a
stand on the issue.
“Companies are seeing there’s a market advantage to
demonstrating that they’re increasing the transparency of
products and taking meaningful action to getting the worst of
the worst chemicals out,” said Mike Schade, co-author of the
report and Mind the Store’s campaign director.
For now, Amazon’s efforts to police the ingredients in its
products are limited. It shuns certain “chemicals of concern” in
some of its private-brand products, such as its Elements baby
wipes, according to the report. Ty Rogers, a spokesman for the
Seattle-based company, declined to comment.
Corporate Grades
Apple Inc. received an A grade, putting it in the top spot
among 30 retailers ranked for their chemical-disclosure policies
by the Mind the Store campaign. It was followed by Wal-Mart (A-
), while CVS Health Corp., Ikea, Whole Foods and Target earned
B-pluses. Amazon, meanwhile, got a D and a rank of 14th, still
better than last year’s failing grade. Toys “R” Us Inc., Trader
Joe’s and Dollar General Corp. were among the nine retailers
with an F.
Wal-Mart and Target have introduced and expanded programs
to cut the presence of certain chemicals. This year, Wal-Mart
set a 2022 deadline for reducing potentially harmful substances.
It also broadened the list of chemicals it seeks to avoid. As
part of the push, the company started participating in the
Chemical Footprint Project, which helps companies track and
eliminate dangerous substances.
There is more to come, said Zach Freeze, the company’s
senior director for sustainability.
“We know our customers are interested in what goes into
products and how they are made,” Freeze said. “We will continue
to work towards strengthening our sustainable chemistry
commitment and setting concrete benchmarks to check progress
along the way.”
Other retailers are also responding, Schade said.
“We’ve seen a tremendous amount of progress among the
retailers we ranked last year,” Schade said in a phone
interview. Seven retailers have added or expanded chemical
policies in the past year, he said.
Work in Progress
Two-thirds of those surveyed, however, aren’t implementing
such programs. Amazon doesn’t have a public safer chemicals
policy, according to the report, but the company is “in the
process of developing and evaluating a chemicals policy.”
The report scored companies on a 135-point scale that
examined 14 metrics, including whether they got full ingredient
disclosure from suppliers and have policies to cut the presence
of so-called chemicals of high concern to minimal levels. Schade
co-wrote the report with Mike Belliveau, executive director of
the Environmental Health Strategy Center, with contributions
from other groups.
The report commended Apple for requiring that suppliers
provide safety assessments of materials swapped in to replace
chemicals of concern. CVS eliminated substances such as parabens
and phthalates from almost 600 private-label beauty and
personal-care products, while Albertsons removed BPA from more
than 80 percent of its own-brand canned foods. Sephora and other
retailers, meanwhile, have developed or are developing lists of
substances banned from their private-label products.
