A group of corporate and NGO leaders today released a new tool for assessing leadership in corporate chemicals management.
The Chemical Footprint Project (CFP) provides the first-ever common metric of its kind for publicly benchmarking corporate chemicals management and profiling leadership companies. The CFP will enable purchasers to preferentially select suppliers and investors to integrate chemical risk into their sustainability analyses and investments. Its results enable brands to market their progress and success in using safer chemicals.
Similar to Carbon Footprinting, Chemical Footprinting can apply to any business sector. Retailers, health care organizations, governments and investors all see value in a comprehensive measure of business progress to safer chemicals.
Business leaders are moving ahead of regulations to avoid chemicals of high concern to human health or the environment in their products and supply chains. They are meeting the needs of customers large and small who are concerned with toxic chemicals in products.
Purchasers are seeking products made with inherently safer chemicals; the new tool can quickly compare and benchmark suppliers. In addition, socially responsible investment firms can use this new tool to evaluate companies on their chemical management and select companies for investment.
In November, a paper was published in the journal Integrated Assessment and Environmental Management that evaluated common chemical evaluation tools. Each of these varied with respect to their intended use and purpose, using a series of independent evaluative criteria grouped into five categories.
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Founder & Principal Consultant, Hower Impact
Mike Hower is the founder of Hower Impact — a boutique consultancy delivering best-in-class strategic communication advisory and support for corporate sustainability, ESG and climate tech.
Published Dec 8, 2014 10am EST / 7am PST / 3pm GMT / 4pm CET