New report ranks food companies on BPA in packaging
This week the investment groups Green Century Capital Management and As You Sow released the second edition of Seeking Safer Packaging: Ranking packaged food companies on BPA.
This report surveyed companies about their packaging practices and analyzed them based on their disclosure of information, exploration of alternatives, and commitment to removing BPA from their packaging.
The results: our efforts to phase out BPA and replace it with safer alternatives are starting to move the market!
Most of the companies that responded to the survey acknowledged taking some steps towards removing BPA from their canned food packaging.The companies that received the best ratings were: Hain Celestial (includes Health Valley, Earth's Best, and Westbrae Natural), ConAgra (which owns brands such as Chef Boyardee, Hunt's and Healthy Choice), and H.J. Heinz. Each of these companies has started using BPA-free can linings for certain products, is committed to removing the chemical from all of its packaging products, and has a timeline to achieve this transition.
Who had the lowest rankings? Coca-Cola, Del Monte, Delhaize Group, Hershey, Hormel, Kraft, Unilever, Kroger, Safeway, Supervalu, Sysco and Wal-Mart. Some of these companies didn't reply to the survey (definitely an "F" for transparency). Of those that did reply, most are exploring substitutes to BPA to some degree but do not commit to phasing out the chemical, are not funding the exploration of substitutes, and fail to sufficiently disclose information about how they are addressing consumer concern on the issue.
Read more:
Seeking Safer Packaging - Executive Summary
Seeking Safer Packaging - full report
Compare to the 2009 report
More about BPA
Material for this article was provided by As You Sow.
