Event Summary: BizNGO 11th Annual Conference and the Chemical Footprint Project workshop
December 6-8, 2016, San Francisco, CA. Carol Summers, NewGen Surgical Marketing Manager, is helping the design team create a Chemical Policy and a “Never Use List” as a tool in our Smart Sustainable Design™ strategy. This strategy guides decisions and design criteria – products in development, materials, manufacturing, packaging, performance and disposal.
BizNGO hosted their annual conference in San Francisco last week, with their first workshop on the Chemical Footprint Project™ (CFP). “After attending both the workshop and conference, and being surrounded by some of the smartest green chemists representing multinational corporations to leading health care systems, I believe there was no better place than this experience to motivate anyone to lead a safer chemical policy within their organization,” shared Carol.
BizNGO is a collaboration of business and NGO leaders whose mission is to promote the creation and adoption of safer chemicals and sustainable materials to encourage market transitions to a healthy economy and healthy environment. The conference is in its 11th year and attracted participants from businesses, NGOs, health care, investment firms, government, and academia. Keynote speakers included Joel Makower, Executive Editor of GreenBiz; Martin Mulvihill, Co-founder and Partner, SaferMade; and Gregg Renfrew, Founder and CEO of Beautycounter, and panels explored pain points, metrics and communication around moving to safer chemicals. Carol stated she was in good company with sustainability leaders and green chemists from Apple, HP, and Johnson & Johnson, as well as NGOs, consultants, and the California Department of Toxic Substances Control that are helping to drive or influence safer chemical alternatives within large organizations. “There was an impressive amount of talent, passion, and mostly importantly, commitment to safer and healthier chemicals policy reform, in the room,” Carol added.
The Chemical Footprint Project™ workshop was the first in-person class offered for the self-assessment survey. It was valuable to hear from those that reviewed and participated in the CFP as each module was presented against preferred practices, previous survey results, lessons learned, and points awarded. NewGen Surgical was founded with a vision that single-use medical devices could be designed with sustainable materials to reduce the amount of waste in the environment resulting from operating rooms and surgery centers. Carol remarked, “NewGen Surgical’s products are created with sustainability and the environment in mind; therefore, avoiding chemicals of concern on the onset. As an early stage company, we are creating a formal chemical policy around what our product designers already do. The CFP will provide an excellent framework and metric tool as we create the policy and the supporting infrastructure.”