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 About Us > About the Campaign
About CHEJ’s PVC Campaign
The Center for Health, Environment and Justice coordinates the PVC Consumer Campaign. This is part of CHEJ’s BE SAFE Initiative. CHEJ’s PVC campaign is focused on preventing harm by shifting decision makers from producing, using and disposing of PVC consumer products and packaging and substituting it with safe materials. Through the campaign CHEJ is supporting communities hardest hit by environmental injustices from the PVC industry and lifecycle, shifting the market away from poisonous chemicals in consumer products, and supporting model policy efforts to reform chemicals policy.
Since CHEJ’s campaign was founded, we have worked with and convinced Microsoft, Johnson and Johnson, Target, Sears Holdings, Wal-Mart, Crabtree & Evelyn and other companies to develop PVC phase-out plans and policies. We have also played an important role in enacting state and federal legislation to ban lead and phthalates in kids’ toys. We are leveraging these victories to build a toxic-free future.
About the Center for Health, Environment and Justice
The Center for Health, Environment and Justice is a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization that provides organizing and technical assistance to grassroots community organizations nationwide. The center was founded in 1981 by Lois Gibbs, who together with her neighbors won the relocation of more than 900 families from their neighborhood after it was contaminated by chemicals leaking from the Love Canal landfill in Niagara Falls, NY.
CHEJ's mission is to build healthy communities, with social justice, economic well-being, and democratic governance. We believe this can happen when individuals from communities have the power to play an integral role in promoting human health and environmental integrity. Our role is to provide the tools to build strong, healthy communities where people can live, work, learn, play and pray. CHEJ's overarching objective is to shift the terms of the debate from the acceptance of risk to the prevention of harm and achieve fundamental practice and policy shifts that reflect this shift. About BE SAFE
The BE SAFE Initiative is working to empower the grassroots movement for long-term systemic change that transforms the way we approach environmental regulation and decision making at all levels of government in this country. This systemic change is rooted in a paradigm shift from risk/benefit and cost/benefit decision-making that asks, "what level of harm is acceptable?" to a precautionary approach which asks, "how much harm can we prevent?" Through this shift we will create a society that demands the safest products and practices to protect human health and the environment, and leave for our children and our children's children a safer, healthier world in which to live, learn, work, play and pray.
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