Don't Buy Your Loved Ones Toxins for the Holidays; Report Card, Dangerous Plastics and Chemicals
Photo: Shoppers visit Macy's department store on Black Friday, Nov. 29, 2024, Chicago, Ill. 🧸
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- 'Don’t Buy Your Loved Ones Toxins for the Holidays,' Common Dreams, Dec. 1, 2024.
A new report reveals that most of the biggest retailers in the U.S. and Canada need to do more to protect consumer health from dangerous plastics and chemicals.
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As the nation prepares for another holiday shopping season and we buy gifts for our loved ones, it’s more important than ever that retailers support efforts to reduce toxic chemicals and plastics in everyday products so that shoppers can choose safer products. A new Mind the Store Retailer Report Card that scores many of the biggest retailers in the U.S. and Canada provides new insights into which retailers are leading and which are lagging in efforts to better protect consumers and communities from toxics and plastics.
The report reveals that while some retailers are making progress, most of the biggest retailers in the U.S. and Canada need to do more to protect consumer health.
The newly unveiled 2024 Retailer Report Card is a comprehensive analysis of the efforts, or lack thereof, of 50 of the largest retailers to provide customers with products free of dangerous chemicals and harmful plastics. The retailers run the gamut from grocery stores to beauty supply retailers and include familiar names like McDonald’s, Best Buy, and Sally Beauty. This newest report is the sixth such analysis published since 2016.
While there’s been movement in the right direction overall, this year, the average grade was a pitiful D+, and 17 of the ranked retailers failed, landing in the Toxic Hall of Shame.
- The business community will never solve all of our problems, but if retailers want to keep their customers and investors happy, they will need to do more to protect our health. -
Plastics are considered in the report alongside dangerous chemicals because most plastics are made with hazardous chemicals. Because 99% of plastics are made from oil and gas and contain countless chemical additives and processing aids, many are harmful to our health and are increasingly recognized as inherently toxic. Some types of plastic, such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC), are especially harmful to human health. PVC is made from vinyl chloride, a known human carcinogen associated with liver cancer, brain and lung cancers, and cancers of the blood...
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/retailers-toxic-plastics-chemicals