I’m feeling inspired.
You see last week, our Mind the Store Campaign held a national week of action to call on Walgreens to phase out toxic chemicals from their products once and for all.
Customers tweeted and posted messages to Walgreens’ Facebook wall asking them to get tough on toxics. Advocates took selfies of themselves outside stores and uploaded them to Instagram, while tagging #Walgreens. Hundreds o
f supporters flooded the company’s 1-800 customer service line. Concerned parents even held events and passed out flyers to customers coast to coast, from Oakland, CA to their brand new flagship store in Chicago, IL, not too far from the company’s corporate headquarters. The week of action came on the heels of our first grassroots action for the Mind the Store campaign, which featured events at over 60 Walgreens stores nationwide.
On Thursday last week, I myself joined our allies at the Center for Environmental Health outside of the company’s flagship store in the heart of Wall Street passing out flyers and talking with stockbrokers, customers and tourists walking by. Even traders on Wall Street agreed with us – if other major retailers like Target and Walmart can begin addressing toxics, why can’t Walgreens?
Guess what – they’re finally listening to us!
Less than one week before the actions, we got a letter from Walgreens stating they are “taking a number of initial steps that will help us address chemicals of concern in our products” and are “studying” Alliance Boots efforts to ban toxics on their store shelves. This was good news to hear and certainly a step in the right direction that we welcome, though not quite enough. American families deserve toxic-free products, not assurances that they’re merely “studying” the issue. Even so, we are hopeful Walgreens will finally move forward to adopt a comprehensive chemicals policy as other retailers have done.
You can read all about the week of action over on our blog, check out our news release, and see all the photos folks posted to Instagram. Here are a few highlights in this week of action slideshow we’ve pulled together.
[iframe src=”http://slide.ly/embed/a7c23bb58b6bca5ca67240ac8b3f22a8/autoplay/0″ width=”640″ height=”360″ frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no” allowfullscreen></iframe><p>Walgreens Week of Action by <a href=”http://slide.ly/show” title=”Go to Walgreens Week of Action” >Slidely Slideshow</a></p>“]
Special thanks to all of you that participated in the Mind the Store week of action. Together our message is getting through!
Here’s hoping that Walgreens will finally listen to our calls and Mind the Store — if not, you can bet we’ll be back for more action.
Back us up and send a message to Walgreens and other major retailers to Mind the Store!
Director of Mind the Store
Mike Schade leads Toxic-Free Future’s Mind the Store program, which challenges retailers to shift the marketplace away from hazardous chemicals and develop comprehensive safer chemicals policies.
