An interview with Erin Switalski, Executive Director

RP

What is your organization’s most notable accomplishment to date in the field of toxics reduction?

WVE

I think broadly it’s the work we’ve done on the Safe Cleaning Products Initiative. We’ve gone from “this is impossible” to “we are actually going to stand up and support legislation that changes things.” It’s been a huge transformation.

We started the effort with nothing, no ingredient disclosure, not a lot of information or people taking on the issue. We hadn’t even heard about these harmful fragrance chemicals in cleaning products. We couldn’t push companies to take them out because we didn’t know about them. But we did know people were getting sick from cleaning products.

Disclosure of fragrance ingredients is just one component of the Safe Cleaning Products Initiative. By 2020 companies will have to disclose everything that’s in their products. As companies disclose, we’ll be able to investigate their ingredients, just like we did with the fragrance ingredient Galaxolide. Then we’ll see these harmful ingredients eliminated.

The effort has impacted more than cleaning projects because the right to know is so much bigger than cleaning products. Ultimately consumers want to know that the product they are using is safe. So, we’ll need to keep pushing.

RP

What was the plan you followed to achieve this accomplishment?

WVE

The effort to push for disclosure took about eight years. It involved identifying bad actor chemicals and calling them out to women through third party testing.

We scored some limited disclosure wins. One company would come out and disclose. Then companies would compete to have the best disclosure programs and show their leadership.

Once we saw the writing on the wall with disclosure, the next phase was to broaden our effort to focus on safety so the public can trust that the products they buy are safe. We’ve been focused on this phase for the last couple of years.

And now we’re helping to companies understand what women’s standards for health safety are through the Health First Roadmap. We’re pushing for broader disclosure around safety processes and how decisions are made within companies.

RP

What would you like your organization to be known for?

WVE

We’d like to be known for tenacious campaigning. There are a lot of short one-off campaigns that might get 50,000 signatures and that’s the end of the campaign.

When we plan our campaigns, we have a long-term goal to help make changes with a company. We are committed to getting the win. This is what produces the results.

And we make sure that we choose campaigns that resonate with women and their personal lives. If the issue is not exciting we won’t take it on. There has to be that emotional response.

We take complicated issues and make them understandable to every day women. As an example, we did a campaign to get Procter & Gamble (PG) to reformulate their laundry detergent because it contained an obscure chemical that was a common by-product. We had to figure out how to communicate to women that there’s a cancer-causing chemical on the hazard list being used in laundry detergent.

The PG product was Tide Free & Gentle laundry detergent and it was marketed to mothers with babies as safe and trustworthy for newborns. We decided to make the issue really clear to the public. We did a photo shoot of a baby in a laundry basket. The social media text read: “Is a little bit of cancer causing chemical in your detergent okay?” Then we had people post to PG social media outlets and comment. The campaign was accompanied by a news release and signatures.

To develop our campaigns, we identify the core emotion and value that people are going to identify with. Emotion is what gets people to take action. In this case, if I’m a new mom and I’m buying this product with the perception that it’s clean and healthy, that’s not okay.

We also like to make things fun. Getting rid of toxic chemicals is an overwhelming problem to tackle. We think about how to create content that is funny.

RP

What outlets are you using to communicate your mission to the public?

WVE

Social media has definitely been effective. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are our main channels. We do a lot of blogging and low-cost advertising on social media.

We partner with other organizations to do joint petitions and share content across social media channels. We share each other’s action alerts.

We use mainstream media and email marketing. And of course, our website is an important communications tool.

We’ve also created a network of action volunteers called Actionistas who tell their personal stories. This network uplifts voices that are not well represented. In the cleaning world that’s been domestic cleaning workers. We know a woman who started her own cleaning business because she was getting sick from the products she was required to use working for another company. She has an important story to tell. There’s a hair stylist who has been poisoned by formaldehyde from a hair-straightening product she used to use. She spoke in front of FDA and shared her story of how her life has been impacted because of toxic chemicals in the hair products that she used.

They are the best activists. They comment on social media and share social posts. They call companies. Some of them host green cleaning parties and take action by calling their legislators.

Right now, the Actionista network is organic, but they want to do more. We have 200 women across the country who we work with.

This communications outlet does take more time, but it’s worth it. They help us beat the noise and get toxic chemicals off the market. We just hired someone to reach out and care for this valuable group of activists.

RP

What are the most important actions you’ve taken within your organization to support your mission? Within your portfolio of strategic actions, which ones are getting the most traction?

WVE

We have four strategic focus areas: 1) market based campaigns that push companies to make change, 2) policy work which brings about regulatory change, 3) engagement that involves organizing and mobilizing women and 4) changing the narratives that perpetuate the problem of toxic products, like “the dose makes the poison.”

This last strategy is really important. It requires that we move away from the narrative that individual choice changes everything. It’s really the responsibility of companies and the government to change things. Most narratives only provide a “solution”, that an individual can do to fix the problem. For instance, “you should only eat organic and exercise all the time.” But in truth, personal choice can only do so much. The real solutions lie in the hands of product manufacturers– and in policymakers to hold them to higher standards.

Now Women’s Voices for the Earth is checking the narrative on our own website. Are we repeating the narratives that are barriers to our work?

RP

How has the Safe Cleaning Products initiative influenced other organizational initiatives or goals?

WVE

The Safe Cleaning Products Initiative brought us to the place of shifting all of the industries that we’re working through our Health First Roadmap.  We’re starting with cleaning products. But a lot of companies see the issue of safety impacting all their products that women use.

When we started the initiative, we didn’t know everything we know now. Now we look at fragrance as its own thing. It has to be addressed in other industries, beyond cleaning products, too. This work can now be applied to cosmetics. I think it’s really impacted the broader movement, especially around personal care products.

The Safe Cleaning Products Initiative has already influenced our communication with these companies on other fronts. We’re able to use our relationships to have discussions about their other products as well.

RP

What advice would you give other nonprofit organizations based on the lessons you’ve learned through your work?

WVE

One lesson is that we have tried quite a few new things, even things that we didn’t think would work. Some worked better than we thought. For a long time, we wanted to focus on disclosure and elimination. We felt guidance was the company’s job. But no one likes to be told what to do without partnership. As a result, we’ve developed relationships with people in the companies that we work with. That’s made our work progress.

We’ve evolved from an attitude that companies are bad to the understanding that there are a lot of good people who work in these companies and we can ask them some good questions.

At first these companies perceived our work as a campaign against them. Once we built relationships, progress was possible.

So, I would advise organizations to avoid the binaries of “us” versus “them.”

Be willing to hold your values but understand there is harder work that needs to be done. We need to roll up our sleeves, and instead of issuing a set of demands, we need to be willing to work with companies to help them achieve the ultimate goal which is toxic-free products and environments for all.