2020 Messages we Loved and Voices we Want to Amplify
2020 Messages We Loved and Voices We Want to Amplify
No year-end reflection is complete without looking around at the work you admire so much you wish you had done it yourself. As a startup just beginning to transition from pilot to growth, we are constantly humbled by the transformative energy our peers put into exploring safer chemistry and the search for alternatives, the circular economy and the equity it stands to unlock by making the world less toxic. Here are some examples of efforts that deepen our commitment and drive us to work even harder in the coming year.
How can we trust that plastic is fantastic if producers keep the ingredients secret? in ChemSec
“We shouldn’t stop cleaning beaches. But without exposing the secret ingredients hidden in the plastic sauce, we have no chance of making the production and use of plastics safer.”
This is true. But what we really admire about ChemSec’s work is that they didn’t stop at identifying the problem but worked with the European Environmental Bureau to compile a detailed report on how polymer registration under REACH, the European Commission’s regulation to register, evaluate, authorize and restrict chemicals, can maximize comprehensiveness and transparency.
It is a defining belief at ChemFORWARD that if an ingredient isn’t safe, it can’t be circular, and if you don’t know what it is, you can’t know that it’s safe. We are working to offer comprehensive ingredient information and we applaud ChemSec for amplifying the importance of ingredient transparency as a critical piece of successful polymer registration.
Michelle Gin on the role of government in advancing beauty justice in Agents of Change in Environmental Health
It is still too difficult to find diverse voices leading in sustainability, green chemistry and the circular economy and we applaud efforts to amplify the work that is being done by diverse practitioners and to create conduits for the next generation of diverse sustainability leaders to rise. The Agents of Change in Environmental Health fellowship program at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health is doing just that.
We wish we had said it as plainly and powerfully as program director Ami Zota when announcing the 2020 fellows: “Business as usual will not lead us out of this, we need fresh ideas that are grounded in science, community, diversity, and equity.”
We were specifically excited to see Michelle Gin included among the current fellows. Gin, who leads communications for the Toxic Free Kids program at the Minnesota Department of Public Health, is deeply involved in the state’s broad efforts to remove toxic chemicals from products and homes.
Gin is a first-generation American who is also the first in her family to go to college and looks at product safety with a clear focus on equity. When her team found concerning levels of lead and cadmium in off-brand toys, this showed her yet another example of a clear and persistent route for more toxic chemicals to enter lower-income homes. Looking at the toxic chemicals in skin-lightening creams, she emphasizes the importance of having the uncomfortable conversation about the Eurocentric beauty ideals that drive this market.
We strongly believe that work on safer products must acknowledge the outsized effect that hazardous chemicals have on poor and nonwhite communities and that real progress will have equity at its core and we are looking forward to putting this at the center of our work in 2021 and advancing alongside commendable work like Gin’s and this fellowship’s.
We couldn’t choose which of these Healthy Building Network projects we were more impressed by – a discovery that finding a safer paint to use is actually not that much of a burden and an extremely personal look at the chemicals that make it from our environment into our bodies, so we offer them both:
Picking a Safer Paint is Easier Than You Think
When HBN designated alkylphenol ethoxylates in paint as Transformation Targets, the organization knew that the surfactants known as APEs help paint ingredients mix and spread smoothly across your wall, but also break down into byproducts that don’t biodegrade easily and are believed to be endocrine disrupters.
What HBN didn’t foresee was finding six paint suppliers already providing many options that are both low in the volatile organic chemicals that have long been problematic in paint as well as free in APEs.
Often, the work of safer chemistry and alternatives assessment is difficult and laborious. So we found this example of discovering that transformation was already underway so encouraging. We are hopeful that as ChemFORWARD grows, chemical suppliers will readily offer up the safer alternatives that they already produce so that this type of discovery becomes more and more common.
There's What In My Body? A Look Into the Body Burden of HBN's Chief Research Officer
Teresa McGrath, HBN’s chief research officer, turned herself into exhibit “A” for regrettable substitution when she participated in the Silent Spring Institute’s “Detox Me Now,” study. The study tested for the two bisphenols that have become almost household names and shorthand for regrettable substitution: BPA and BPS, the plastic ingredients linked to negative effects such as reproductive, immunity and neurological problems.
McGrath’s samples were found to have lower levels of BPA than the average in the U.S. and in the study and higher levels of BPS, the similar chemical that was first lauded as a safer replacement and then discovered to have similar hazards. The timing of the study may have captured McGrath’s so-called “body burden,” at the moment right before this substitution was discovered to be regrettable.
As widespread as harmful chemicals are, the effect they can have on any individual’s body is still intensely personal, and we were impressed with McGrath’s courage to not only examine the chemicals in her body, but to share the information publicly and candidly.
HBN is ChemFORWARD’s fiscal sponsor.
New Upstream Innovation guide offers practical solutions to the plastic pollution crisis
We are unabashed fans of Ellen MacArthur and the work of her foundation and this upstream plastic guide is a sterling example of why: by offering real-world solutions.
Plastic pollution is among the clearest and highest-profile examples of the need to design safer from the beginning and the EMF has created tools, aligned a community, and mobilized global energy around actionable, measurable, durable progress.
The foundation aligns business incentives, community engagement, research and so much more to drive attention and action to identifying and overcoming obstacles to a circular economy. In 2020 alone, a small piece of the foundation’s work aligned 118 businesses and 17 governments across five continents to report on a common set of commitments to drive transparency on plastics.
This year’s Upstream Innovation Guide offers the practical guidance that the plastics supply chain needs to prevent waste from being created in the first place. We admire and endeavor to contribute complementary work that will accelerate the efforts of EMF’s global commitment signatories to achieve truly safe and circular single-use materials and packaging.
