Healthy Business Strategies: Benign by Design

Prevention, precaution, substitution and life cycle perspective are some of the core principles that leading companies have used to develop safer products. CPA’s report Healthy Business Strategies for Transforming the Toxic Chemical Economy showcases how companies can plan and design products that yield better environmental and economic benefits.

In 2006 CPA brought representatives from leading corporations, health care organizations and nonprofit environmental & public health advocates in the U.S. together as a model for how businesses and NGOs can work together to change the course of production. The Business-NGO Working Group is a unique collaboration to promote the creation and adoption of safer chemicals and sustainable materials in a way that supports market transitions to a healthy economy, healthy environment, and healthy people. This unique working group provides a mutual learning space for both sides and allows deeper appreciation of the business barriers to green chemicals adoption as well as their successes in moving a mutual agenda forward.

CPA’s Green Screen is the first free, publicly accessible screening tool to promote the design, manufacture and use of safer chemicals. It is an important roadmap to green chemistry and is already helping major companies and governments to substitute hazardous chemicals with safer alternatives. Click here to learn more about the Green Screen.

To start the journey of designing more environmentally benign consumer products, an assessment framework that drives innovation and that benefits human health and environment, social justice, economics, and technical performance is a necessary first step. While there have been many tools available to help businesses, the University of Massachusetts Lowell Center for Sustainable Production’s (LCSP) Alternative Assessment Framework is one of the most comprehensive open source frameworks to date. Click here to download the assessment methodology.