by Safer Chemicals Healthy Families Deputy Director, Lindsey Dahl
It feels good to be a part of something big. And that is exactly what happened yesterday as people like you and I visited Walgreens stores asking them to get serious about toxic chemicals. Yesterday in partnership with our members, we organized nearly 50 events all across the country.
As you may remember, Walgreens has become one of the “laggards” in our Mind the Store campaign. A year ago we asked the nation’s ten largest retailers to create and action plan on the Hazardous 100+ toxic chemicals. We’ve sent them letter from public health groups, over 60,000 grassroots emails, called and emailed them directly.
Some of the retailers have taken first steps to reduce and eliminate hazardous chemicals including Target and Walmart. Some are working with us on crafting a plan of action on the Hazardous 100+. And a few other retailers, like Walgreens, have felt they don’t need to respond.
In response we organized friendly events all across the country to let the nation’s largest drugstore that we want their leadership on toxic chemicals!
Highlights from our Walgreens Day of Action:
- 49 events took place in cities all across the country.
- Participants returned products that were recently tested by Healthy Stuff to have toxic chemicals.
- The meetings with store managers were friendly and they were receptive to our message.
- The participants asked the store managers to report their meeting to the corporate sustainability team in the hopes that they’ll sit down and talk with us about how to eliminate and reduce the Hazardous 100+ toxic chemicals.
- Actor and producer Jennifer Beals tweeted about the day, activating thousands to take action – Thank You!
- Our friends at Moms Rising delivered over 8,000 signatures to the corporate headquarters asking Walgreens to Mind the Store for safer chemicals.
- Events varied in size, some were led by bloggers and others by large groups of concerned citizens.
- Thousands of people signed our petition to Walgreens!
