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Mind the Store is a national campaign that works to get major retailers to get toxic chemicals off of their store shelves. Major retailers across the United States sell thousands of products containing toxic chemicals. Every year, Mind the Store releases a report card grading some of these retailers towards their progress on getting toxic chemicals off of store shelves. The companies are scored in different areas such as accountability, policy and disclosure.

Our members are familiar with many of the aspects of Clean Water Action advocacy: promoting legislation, endorsing candidates, field and phone canvassing, educational outreach.

Several of our state offices also do direct engagement with the business community to promote best practices on issues like chemical policy and waste management. Our New England offices (Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts) have been working for over a year with management at CVS Health on developing a safer chemical policy.

The Mind the Store program had been talking with CVS on this subject for a few years

On March 31st this year, Clean Water Action and the Coalition for a Safe and Healthy CT, an advocacy group that aims to protect our children from toxic chemicals, held a press event to voice concerns over the use of recycled tire rubber as a ground cover in playgrounds and urge passing of the bill to ban its use. I saw firsthand the world in which the Coalition works and learned a few things about the legislative process, the science, and the impact of simply showing up to relay my concern. Here are three things I realized: