Since 1995, Women’s Voices for the Earth has been amplifying women’s voices to eliminate the toxic chemicals that harm our health and communities. Executive Director Erin Switalski explains how their network of advocates has moved some of the country’s largest companies.
After Rachel’s Network Member Adriana Hayward’s family became sick from black mold, she and her husband launched Hayward Healthy Home and built a state-of-the-art sustainable, toxic-free regenerative house. Now, she’s sharing the hard-earned lessons she learned with others so that healthy buildings become the norm.
The Forsythia Foundation believes it is much more efficient to prevent disease-causing chemical exposures than it is to treat diseases. This is why it invests in projects that create safer, greener products—and projects that drive demand for those very products. To that end, Forsythia is proud to be a part of Healthy Babies, Bright Futures (HBBF), an alliance of donors, scientists, and nonprofit organizations that build and support initiatives that reduce exposures of neurotoxic chemicals in the first thousand days of a baby’s development.
We aren’t effective health and environment donors if we aren’t also supporting the innovation and commercialization of truly safer alternatives to toxic chemicals. To address this situation, Rachel’s Network Member Alison Carlson and her Forsythia Foundation studied how to invest in scaling green chemistry solutions—also known as “benign by design” solutions or safer alternatives. Thus, Safer Made was born.
A shocking 80 percent of antibiotics sold in the US are given to livestock. These “sub-therapeutic” antibiotics are contributing to the emergence of drug-resistant bacteria in humans. Now, a new partnership between Rachel’s Network and As You Sow is working to address the overuse of antibiotics on farms. Through shareholder advocacy, we’re targeting large food companies that have the greatest potential to make a difference.
