ChemFORWARD Applauds Apple, Target, and Sephora for Safe-Chemistry Leadership
ChemFORWARD applauds Toxic Free Future’s fifth Retailer Report Card, highlighting the great work by leaders in safer chemistry including the report card’s two A+ grades, earned by ChemFORWARD Co-design Partners Apple Inc., and Target Corp., along with Sephora, with an A grade representing the list’s biggest improvement over time.
Apple Joins ChemFORWARD as Co-Design Partner, Boosting Sustainable Tech Innovation
The Cupertino, California-based technology giant is one of the world’s most innovative in sustainability, leading initiatives on clean energy and no carbon footprint and working to source 100 percent recycled materials. The company’s Smarter Chemistry efforts include regulated substances specifications, toxicological assessments of materials selected for Apple products, and a protocol for prioritizing chemicals of concern in the electronics industry.
Credo Beauty Joins ChemFORWARD as Codesign Partner, Accelerating Supply Chain Transformation
“Adding The Dirty List™ to our globally harmonized repository of safer alternatives makes it even easier for brands, formulators, and other decision-makers in beauty and personal care to eliminate chemicals of concern, avoid regrettable substitutions, and design safer from the beginning,” said Stacy Glass, ChemFORWARD’s executive director. “By strengthening our work with the partnership of a leader like Credo’s, we can make even more progress toward ending toxic chemical exposure and advancing health equity.”
Now You Can Future Proof Your Beauty and Personal Care Products with Clean Chemistry
ChemFORWARD’s team of seasoned safe-chemistry pioneers built this platform to offer an easy way to create safer beauty and personal care products which demonstrate leadership in this industry. The tool offers a simple, intuitive, and affordable route to eliminating chemicals of concern, avoiding regrettable substitutions, and designing safer from the beginning.
Chris Bartlett Joins ChemFORWARD as Staff Toxicologist, Supporting Scientific and Data Verification Capabilities
Bartlett has worked with ChemFORWARD as a consultant and verifier and will now add this leadership role to those duties. He will help ChemFORWARD advance the development and adoption of its platform as well as provide valuable judgment to ChemFORWARD’s unique verification and technical dispute resolution process, ensuring the highest quality data makes it onto the platform.
2020 Messages we Loved and Voices we Want to Amplify
From plastic to paint, from the most personal look at chemicals and health to one woman’s efforts to protect a state’s children, 2020 was full of meaningful and admirable work in the realm of safer chemistry and ingredient transparency. Here is a small list of some of the work that impressed and inspired us from the past 12 months.
The Science of Clean Beauty - Expert Video Collection
ChemFORWARD hosted a series of virtual coffee breaks featuring leaders from clean Beauty and Personal Care. These 30-minute sessions offered a targeted introduction to ideas you’ll want to explore further along with meaningful, provocative conversation.
ChemFORWARD, Collaboration and Safer Chemistry Featured in GreenBiz
"The work that ChemFORWARD is doing and proposes to do will provide important additional information to a community of organizations seeking real-world data to better understand the safety implications of their materials choices," said green chemistry trailblazer John C. Warner, a distinguished research fellow at synthetic biology startup Zymergen.
ChemFORWARD and ChemSec Marketplace Collaborate to Boost Availability of Safer Alternatives
“We foresee the synergies of this partnership potently accelerating industry adoption of safer alternatives across multiple sectors,” said Stacy Glass, executive director of ChemFORWARD.
ChemFORWARD’s comprehensive assessments of chemical hazards and alternatives complements ChemSec Marketplace’s superlative cataloguing and display of available alternatives. This exciting partnership will connect Marketplace’s users to full chemical hazard assessments while also linking ChemFORWARD’s assessments to Marketplace entries.
Kimberly Shenk Joins ChemForward Advisory Board, Bringing Data Science and Consumer Products Expertise
“Kimberly’s experience in growing companies that blend beauty products, data science, and expertise in working with complex chemical supply chains will provide unrivaled benefit to our work to build and curate a transparent, highest quality collection of safer chemical alternatives, clearing the way for safer products for everyone,” said Stacy Glass, executive director of ChemFORWARD.
ChemFORWARD Publishes Safer Alternatives to Beauty and Personal Care Chemicals of Concern
ChemFORWARD worked with SEPHORA and other codesign partners to develop 11 portfolios of safer alternatives for preservatives, benzophenones, silicones, and ethanolamines. The collection represents the beginning of a comprehensive library of safer ingredients for beauty and personal care manufacturers.
HP JOINS CHEMFORWARD AS CODESIGN PARTNER, STRENGTHENING LEADERSHIP IN SAFER CHEMISTRY FOR ELECTRONICS
HP will contribute its expertise to ChemFORWARD and other technology leaders in an electronics-industry initiative to create a collection of chemical hazard assessments. The work will produce and assemble comprehensive information on safer alternatives to toxic chemicals used in items such as computers, printers, and cell phones, and make the information accessible to product manufacturers throughout the supply chain.
BASF PRODUCTS ADDED TO CHEMFORWARD PORTFOLIO, INCREASING ACCESS TO SAFER CHEMICALS
As an Industry Manager for Industrial Petrochemicals at the world’s largest chemical company, BASF’s Patrick Harmon spends his time at the crux of safer chemistry -- making effective products that are also safer for human and environmental health. The business case is clear: BASF’s customers formulating and selling products made from the company’s chemicals are eager to verify claims of safer chemistry and help their customers make good decisions about what they are putting in the marketplace.
Heine and Glass Present Better Chemistry Challenges and Solutions at ACS Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference
In this 20-minute presentation, Heine and Glass offer details about how a globally harmonized repository of trusted chemical hazard assessment information underpins the path to safer products. Watch the video here to learn about how ChemFORWARD is scaling chemical hazard information on safer alternatives.
Environmental Defense Fund Puts Safer Product Innovation to the Test
The information produced from this trial has the power to help companies go beyond simply avoiding chemicals of known concern to identifying and using verified safer ingredients.
“ChemFORWARD is exactly the type of data-driven resource that is needed to scale safer product innovation,” said Boma Brown-West, senior manager of consumer health at EDF. “With its readily accessible information, we can get closer to a future where every product, on every store shelf, is made with demonstrably safer alternatives.”
Apple’s Art Fong to Lead ChemFORWARD Technical Advisory Group
Data quality, process transparency, and scientific integrity are paramount to realizing a globally harmonized chemical hazard repository. Fong’s participation in this mission-critical group of global experts acting as thought partners and strategic leaders marks the next important step in the initiative’s evolution.
ChemFORWARD’s Free Portfolio Offers Users Trial of Safer Solvents
ChemFORWARD has published a free demonstration portfolio to allow product designers, manufacturers, and chemical formulators to explore our approach to presenting chemical hazard information. Anyone can log in to test-drive ChemFORWARD’s unique tool for understanding safer alternatives at a glance as well as in rich detail.
2020 Q1 Retrospective and Outlook
Our principal focus for this year is to populate our repository and we have made very exciting progress with 61 chemical hazard assessments of safer alternatives in progress and 100 funded against our full-year goal of 200. It is extremely rewarding to see the infrastructure we built last year functioning well. We have also deepened our bench, enriched our offering and strengthened our tools and processes. And the lessons we take from the first quarter offer clear and encouraging guidance on honing our attention for the balance of the year.
ChemFORWARD and Sephora Work Together to Discover Safer Beauty Ingredients
ChemFORWARD is thrilled to announce that Sephora has joined its collaborative effort as a co-design partner. Sephora joins leaders from diverse industries which share a commitment to creating a marketplace where chemistry is safer and the potential of circular design is fully realized.
As the first major prestige beauty retailer to establish a public-facing chemicals policy to proactively strengthen ingredient safety and transparency, Sephora is also investing in identifying safer alternatives and making those alternatives widely available to its supply chain and beyond. ChemFORWARD has also added Sephora’s restricted-substances list to its free MaterialWise screening tool, allowing anyone to screen their products for chemicals to avoid in beauty products.
Google’s Mike Werner Joins ChemFORWARD Advisory Board, lending Technical, Industry, and Circular Economy perspective
Werner contributes rich experience with the technology industry, chemical hazard assessment and circular economy to ChemFORWARD’S mission of enabling a safe, circular and more equitable economy. Werner’s mission at Google is to eliminate toxic chemicals from consumer products and drive higher environmental performance and sustainability of product design. Previously at Google, he led the product sustainability, biocompatibility, and environmental compliance team for Google’s consumer hardware division.