Dollar Tree Commits to Safer Chemical Use
Dollar Tree Stores Inc. has joined the Chemical Footprint Project (CFP), which creates a common reporting framework to assess a company’s risk, and its ability to capture market value, from safer chemical use.
An initiative of investors, retailers, government agencies, nongovernmental organizations and health care organizations, the project focuses on chemicals that are a material risk for companies because they are recognized by authoritative bodies to cause harm to human health and the environment. According to a 2017 study by Philippe Grandjean, of the Harvard T.H. School of Public Health, and Martine Bellanger, of the EHESP School of Public Health, in Paris, the health costs of chemically related health conditions, among them cancer, infertility and learning disabilities, come to $11 trillion worldwide, or 10 percent of global GDP.
Organizations such as the Campaign for Healthier Solutions are working to reduce the use of harmful chemicals used in consumer products sold at retail. Reporting standards for investors like the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board now include chemical risk and product safety as a part of their materiality index for retailers. The CFP provides common data and metrics that companies can use to report to these standards.
By taking part in the CFP survey, Dollar Tree joins Walmart and Target as the third retailer participant.
“The Chemical Footprint Project Survey provides businesses with a roadmap to reducing chemical risks and capturing market opportunities,” explained Mark S. Rossi, co‐founder of the CFP and executive director of Somerville, Mass.-based nonprofit Clean Production Action, one of the founding organizations of CFP, along with the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and Pure Strategies. “We welcome Dollar Tree’s participation in the CFP survey and look forward to working with them on product safety and consumer health.”
The fourth annual CFP survey results, including Dollar Tree, will be published in the third quarter of 2019. CFP signatories represent more than $2.8 trillion in assets under management and $700 billion-plus in purchasing power.
Clean Production Action’s mission is to design and deliver strategic solutions for green chemicals, sustainable materials and environmentally preferable products. GreenScreen for Safer Chemicals, Chemical Footprint Project, BizNGO and Investor Environmental Health Network are all programs of Clean Production Action.
Chesapeake, Va.-based Dollar Tree operates 15,237 stores across 48 states and five Canadian provinces under the Dollar Tree, Family Dollar and Dollar Tree Canada banners.
