Dear CEH Community,
What an incredible year of accomplishments at CEH: the launch of our first third-party certification, legal notices sent to 95 sock brands to protect babies, children, and adults from BPA exposure, the passage of bills to ban PFAS in food packaging in states across the country, our environmentally preferable purchasing policies developed in partnership with CityHealth to reach 75 U.S. cities...and even more wins than I have space to name.
Our world is in a moment of profound transition. And yet, our economy is still based on digging up “million-year-old plants and animals” (the acronym I use is “myopas”) out of the ground and burning them, knowing full well the health, toxic, and climate impacts of those decisions. The fossil fuel sectors and their friends (this means Exxon, Dupont, Koch, and Coke) have been doing this for hundreds of years for their short-term financial gain. It needs to stop, and CEH is part of the solution. Here are a couple examples of how CEH is working to end the callous profiteering by the oil and gas sectors:
- CEH took legal action against Chevron Phillips Chemical Company and forced them to disclose the hundreds of millions of pounds of toxic chemicals that they are bringing into communities without their or the EPA’s knowledge.
- We’re choking off demand for toxic disposable foodware through innovative tools like the first-of-its-kind GreenScreen Certified Standard for Food Service Ware in partnership with Clean Production Action.
- CEH sued the largest apparel companies in the world, like Hanes and Adidas, for exposing us to the hormone-mimicking petroleum-derived chemical, BPA, in our clothing—including baby socks.
In addition to pursuing these initiatives in 2022, we intend to undermine the plastic industry's plan to protect their sector through fake recycling, and we will also advise some of the largest institutions in the country on how to eliminate plastics and “myopas” from their business practices. All of this will require monumental change, and CEH is playing a vital role in these efforts to protect the health of you, your community, and all living things. We can’t do this without our incredible staff, partners, and supporters—including you. Thank you for believing in our work. Warmly,
Michael Green Chief Executive Officer
