ChemFORWARD’s Ingredient Intelligence Reports Support Retailers to Achieve a Higher Grade in the Retailer Report Card
Each year, ChemFORWARD analyzes data from dozens of brands, retailers, and suppliers to produce custom Ingredient Intelligence Reports (IIRs) and year over year, metrics from data on thousands of SKUs with hundreds of thousands of ingredients. These reports can now be used to achieve points on the 2024 Retailer Report Card.
Ingredient Intelligence Reports are used to provide clear, comparable data for chemical management reporting. Reports are designed to offer insights to:
Verify the elimination of chemicals of high concern;
Quantify the use of safer chemistry; and
Target investment in chemical hazard assessments to fill data gaps and verify safer alternatives.
The Mind the Store retailer campaign aims to achieve these goals at scale.
The Retailer Report Card is a comprehensive evaluation focusing on how fifty of the largest retailers in the U.S. and Canada are moving towards safer solutions by taking action to eliminate toxic chemicals and plastics from their products and packaging. Published regularly by Mind the Store, a program of Toxic-Free Future, the report card highlights the sustainability trends among these retailers. A particular focus is their policies that restrict classes of toxic chemicals, such as PFAS, and efforts to bring safer products to consumers. This initiative is part of a growing movement towards safer chemicals and green chemistry solutions
Among the new features in 2024 are a revamped scoring rubric and a new list of high-priority chemicals and plastics. Through this work, the Retailer Report Card drives market transformation towards safer chemicals, products, and packaging.
There are several ways that a retailer can earn points by conducting an Ingredient Intelligence Report. These broad categories of action include:
Reduction/Elimination Goals. The retailer has active public, quantifiable goals that include clear and definite deadlines for reducing and/or eliminating chemicals or plastics of high concern.
Documentation: The measure of hazard band F chemicals in a ChemFORWARD Ingredient Intelligence Report.
Reduced or Eliminated Chemicals or Plastics of High Concern. The retailer has publicly reported the reduction or elimination over the past three years.
Documentation: The measure of band F chemicals in a ChemFORWARD Ingredient Intelligence Report year over year results.
Making Investment in Safer Solutions. The retailer has invested in the development, verification, and implementation of safer solutions and the results of this investment are made available on a shared or public platform.
Documentation: Sponsoring or co-sponsoring chemical hazard assessments with ChemFORWARD and populating the shared chemical hazard repository.
Implementation of Known Safer Solutions. The retailer has demonstrated that it has replaced a chemical or chemicals of concern with safer alternatives.
Documentation: ChemFORWARD chemical hazard assessment with a hazard band of C or higher.
Quantified Safer Products. Retailer annually measures and discloses the number or percent of UPCs within a major product category that meets hazard-based third-party safer chemicals standards or discloses a ChemForward Ingredient Intelligence Report.
Documentation: ChemFORWARD Ingredient Intelligence Report.
How it Works
Establish a Baseline Ingredient Intelligence Report. The report will utilize ChemFORWARD’s shared repository of chemical hazard assessments to provide clear, comparable information for chemical management reporting.
ChemFORWARD uses harmonized hazard bands based on leading chemical hazard assessment methods to provide actionable decision support.
To generate the report, the ChemFORWARD dataset is used to screen the ingredient list provided by the retailer. Hazard Bands are assigned to each ingredient. The results are reviewed by a toxicologist, and a summary narrative is developed. A summary report is developed highlighting insights and recommendations, including:
What is known and not known about ingredients in the assortment, including % of chemicals of concern (Ds,Fs), % of data gaps (grey ?), and % of verified safer chemistry (As, Bs, Cs);
Priority data gaps that are targeted for investment in chemical hazard assessments and
Recommendations to address functional hot spots (classes of chemicals) where safer alternatives may not be verified or readily available.
Reports are intended to be run annually and highlight year-over-year progress in verifying the elimination of chemicals of high concern, quantifying the increased use of verified safer chemistry, and demonstrating the impact of investment in chemical hazard assessments.
Each Ingredient Intelligence Report includes a 12-month subscription to ChemFORWARD’s shared repository of chemical hazard assessments to screen emerging chemicals in between reports and to follow new data available throughout the year.
Contact info@chemforward.org to learn more about Ingredient Intelligence Reports. Watch for the 2024 Retailer Report Card to be published later this summer.
