Vizient, Inc. Joins Momentum To Measure And Improve Progress Toward Safer Chemicals In The Healthcare Industry
IRVING, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--As businesses around the world, including those in the healthcare industry, are beginning to recognize the negative impact that chemicals have on human health and the environment, Vizient, Inc. today announced a major step toward measuring and voluntarily phasing out toxic chemicals.
“The Chemical Footprint Project gives voice to the demands of consumers for companies to be on the path to safer chemicals in products. Major companies across all sectors are already asking their suppliers to use the Chemical Footprint tool to measure and improve their progress to safer chemicals.”
In partnership with the Chemical Footprint Project, the first-ever common metric for publicly benchmarking chemical use and management, Vizient is joining forces with other leaders in the healthcare industry -- including Kaiser Permanente, Partners Healthcare and Inova Health Systems -- to not only reduce the use of toxic chemicals, but to demonstrate that it is possible to operate just as efficiently using safer alternatives. (For a full list of signatories to the Chemical Footprint Project, click here.)
“The members we serve expect products that are safe and healthy, both for them and for the environment,” says Brent Gee, associate vice president, Strategic Programs. “The Chemical Footprint Project allows us, working together with our suppliers, to measure our progress on the journey to safer chemicals, contributing to the best possible care for our members’ patients and caregivers as well as the well-being of our planet.”
Similar to Carbon Footprinting, the Chemical Footprint Project aims to:
- Establish a common metric for assessing progress to inherently safer chemicals,
- Bring transparency to chemicals management practices, and
- Benchmark company performance.
The tool asks 20 questions in four key areas:
- Management: What are a company’s chemical policies and strategies?
- Inventory: How much does a company know about chemicals in its products?
- Footprint: What is a company’s chemical footprint, and what steps are being taken to substitute toxic chemicals with safer alternatives?
- Disclosure: How much information on chemicals does the company publicly disclose?
The Chemical Footprint Project’s Assessment Tool is the result of years of collaboration between the tool’s creators (Clean Production Action, The Lowell Center for Sustainable Production and Pure Strategies) and leading firms in the healthcare, retail, government, building product, electronics, apparel, cleaning, beauty and personal care, and investment sectors.
According to Dr. Mark Rossi, executive director of Clean Production Action, “The Chemical Footprint Project gives voice to the demands of consumers for companies to be on the path to safer chemicals in products. Major companies across all sectors are already asking their suppliers to use the Chemical Footprint tool to measure and improve their progress to safer chemicals.”
For more information about the Chemical Footprint Project, please visit www.chemicalfootprint.org.
About Vizient, Inc.
Vizient, Inc., the largest member-driven health care performance improvement company in the country, provides innovative data-driven solutions, expertise and collaborative opportunities that lead to improved patient outcomes and lower costs. Vizient serves a diverse membership and customer base which includes academic medical centers, pediatric facilities, community hospitals, integrated health delivery networks and non-acute health care providers and represents almost $100 billion in annual purchasing volume. The Vizient brand identity represents the integration of VHA Inc., University HealthSystem Consortium and Novation, which combined in 2015, as well as the recently acquired MedAssets’ Spend and Clinical Resource Management (SCM) segment, which includes Sg2. In 2016, Vizient received a World’s Most Ethical Company designation from the Ethisphere Institute. Vizient headquarters is based in Irving, Texas, with locations in Chicago and other cities across the United States. Please visit www.vizientinc.com as well as our newsroom, blog, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube pages for more information about the company.
About the Chemical Footprint Project:
The Chemical Footprint Project is a project of the environmental non-profit Clean Production Action. Joining Clean Production Action as founding organizations of the CFP are the research institute The Lowell Center for Sustainable Production at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and the sustainability consultancy Pure Strategies. The mission of the CFP is to transform global chemical use by measuring and disclosing data on business progress to safer chemicals.