For the past three years, the Center for Health, Justice and the Environment has been asking Disney to implement a green cleaning policy at their parks, resorts, hotels and restaurants for the health and safety of employees, visitors and the environment.
Some progress is being by Disney, however slow. According to the CHEJ :
“Disney World Parks & Resorts has made progress since CHEJ began its Disney Go Green campaign by introducing some green cleaning products and reviewing current practices. “Disney World absolutely understands green cleaning. Since we began our campaign, they have made progress, but until Disney World shows real leadership and commitment by implementing a written and comprehensive green cleaning policy, their job isn’t done.” said Renée Blanchard, Program Coordinator at CHEJ.”
They’d waited long enough. It was time to act.
So CHEJ, environmental health advocates and Disney guests demonstrated outside of the annual shareholders meeting of the Walt Disney Corporation.
Power to the people!
At the demonstration, according to the CHEJ:
“As shareholders entered the annual meeting, activists handed out literature explaining how a comprehensive and transparent green cleaning policy has significant financial benefits through increased worker productivity and company‐wide savings. Chronic exposure to toxic cleaning chemicals can lead to asthma, allergies, certain types of cancers (including brain cancer and leukemia), and learning and behavioral disorders, resulting in long term impacts, millions of missed school and work days each year, and increased health care costs.”
The Disney parks, resorts, hotels and restaurants see hundreds of thousands of children each year (if not millions). The safety and wellbeing of these children (not to mention their parents, and the employees) is put at risk by the use of industrial chemicals that are known to be harmful to developing bodies. Disney has the opportunity to be a world-wide leader in the area of green cleaning. What are they waiting for?
photos by CHEJ
Hi Katy,
Thanks for spreading the message about this important campaign. As your readers already know, eliminating toxic cleaning products is extremely important to our health and environment. We are all taking action in our life to reduce our exposure to these unnecessary chemicals, but why isn’t Disney?
The release of Disney’s Healthy Cleaning Policy is a good step but it really leaves us wondering where the meat of their healthy cleaning is hiding. We have made several recommendations to Disney on improving this policy that we think your readers would be interested in knowing.
I’ll mention a couple right now, but you can check out our webpage and find out more: http://www.chej.org/disney. (1) Disney needs to set concrete goals and timelines for eliminating toxic cleaning chemicals and (2) Disney needs to list the chemicals that they are particularly interested in eliminating such as reproductive toxins and endocrine disruptors. Without these two improvements, this policy isn’t going to get them very far in providing a safer and healthier place for us to visit.
Thanks again for the shout out on this important campaign.
Renee Blanchard
CHEJ
Campaign Coordinator