Sears and Kmart Join Trend Away from PVC Plastics

Sears Holdings, the publicly traded parent of Kmart and Sears, Roebuck and Co., said Wednesday that the company is working to reduce and phase out PVC in its packaging and merchandise and encouraging vendors to label their PVC-free merchandise.

PVC contains lead, which can damage the brain and nervous system and cause behavior, learning and developmental disabilities. Testing has detected lead in a broad range of PVC consumer products including toys, lunchboxes, baby bibs, jewelry, garden hoses, mini blinds, Christmas trees, and electronics.

Some PVC contains phthalates, a family of chemicals used as softeners. Exposure to phthalates has been linked with premature births, early puberty in girls, impaired sperm quality and sperm damage in men, genital defects, and reduced testosterone production in boys.

Sears Holdings' policy shift was prompted by a national campaign led by the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, CHEJ, and a coalition of health and environmental organizations.

Sears and Kmart join a growing list of companies including some of the nation's largest - Target, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Nike, and Apple - that are eliminating or reducing their PVC products and packaging as a result of the CHEJ campaign.

According to Stores magazine rankings, Sears/Kmart, Wal-Mart and Target have a combined annual sales total of over $460 billion. Wal-Mart is ranked as the nation's number one retailer, Target is ranked number five and Sears/Kmart is ranked number six with over $50 billion in annual revenues and some 3,800 retail stores in the United States and Canada.

"When you mention Sears to someone, especially at Christmas time, it elicits memories of the Sears catalogue and toy shopping; Sears holds a place in America's collective memory," said Lois Gibbs, founder of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice.

"It is fitting, right, and proper then, that Sears Holdings has been willing not only to recognize the potential dangers and harm caused by some of the products it currently sells, but has made the right decision to begin ridding its stores of this toxic PVC material," said Gibbs.

Following her successful effort to prevent further harm for the people living in contaminated Love Canal, New York, Gibbs founded Center for Health, Environment and Justice in 1981 in order to continue mentoring others seeking to prevent harm

Gibbs says PVC harms all who come in contact with it, from workers making the products, communities located near PVC manufacturing plants, and consumers purchasing them, and to those living near landfills and incinerators where the products are discarded.

"PVC plants have contaminated the air and water of surrounding communities with highly hazardous chemicals such as vinyl chloride and dioxins," said Professor Peter Orris, MD MPH, chief of service at the University of Illinois Medical Center Chicago. "These chemicals can cause cancer and other serious health problems for neighbors in surrounding communities."

"Money talks and I hope that the vinyl companies polluting my community of Mossville, Louisiana are listening to Sears and Kmart, who will stop selling vinyl products and using vinyl packaging," said Edgar Mouton, Jr., president of Mossville Environmental Action Now, an environmental justice organization.

Located in southwest Louisiana, Mossville is an unincorporated African American community that is surrounded by five vinyl production facilities, the largest concentration in the United States.

Health studies conducted by the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry show that Mossville residents are exposed to elevated levels of dioxins, a toxic family of chemicals emitted as a by-product of vinyl manufacturing that can cause cancer and harm the immune and reproductive systems.

Plastic toys can contain toxic chemicals (Photo by Nadine Yap)

In March 2006, CHEJ authored a letter signed by 60 coalition members, asking Sears Holdings to sign a PVC-free pledge. Since receiving the letter, Sears Holdings representatives began holding good-faith discussions with CHEJ and other coalition members.

Sears Holdings also was contacted by a coalition of shareholders led by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, who filed a shareholders resolution raising concerns about PVC plastic. The resolution was later withdrawn when the company signaled a willingness to engage in dialog with shareholders.

The company says its new policy is to, "Identify safer, more sustainable and cost-effective alternatives to PVC and incorporate them into the design and manufacturing process for private label merchandise and packaging."

The company will "show preference for PVC-free materials that do not contain highly hazardous chemicals and set a long term goal of sourcing bio-based polymers that are sustainably sourced, have higher recycled content, and can be reused, recycled, or composted."

The company also will show preference to incorporate the Society of the Plastics Industry labeling system on private label merchandise packaging to make it easier for consumers to incorporate packaging options into their purchasing decisions.

Mike Schade, who coordinates the PVC campaign for the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, said, "We welcome and applaud Sears Holdings' new PVC phase-out policy, which will go a long way in protecting workers, communities, and consumers from the poison plastic."

"Sears' decision signals a major trend in the retail sector as Target and Wal-Mart have also developed policies to reduce or phase out PVC. The writing is on the wall for PVC - it's on its way out and safer alternatives are in."

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2007. All rights reserved.