Dive Brief:

• Target Corp. has updated its “Sustainable Product Index,” its program designed to encourage suppliers to bring more sustainable products to market. The ingredients aren’t banned by the company, but suppliers enjoy incentives for any products free of them.

• This list now includes nearly 600 substances prohibited in Canada (including coal tars and bisphenol A) as well as triclosan, an anti-bacterial ingredient that was banned in Minnesota, Target's home state, and is being reviewed by the Federal Drug Administration. 

• Target has focused the program on beauty, baby care, personal care, and cleaning products. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. reportedly has a similar program.

Dive Insight:

Neither Target nor Wal-Mart advertise their respective programs to incentivize suppliers to cut down their use of chemicals deemed dangerous to human health.

There are many such chemicals, not always banned by the FDA, that are found to be problematic. The sticking point is that the government doesn’t prohibit the use of or regulate many substances until they’re proven to be harmful. That means they can go years without adequate testing, according to Andrea C. Gore, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin who has extensively studied the effects of PCBs, BPA, and other chemical compounds in the environment and is editor in chief of the scientific journal "Endocrinology."

Chemical-free products may enjoy more marketing and shelf space, Bloomberg reports, though Target hasn’t detailed its incentives.

Washington-based advocacy group called Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families is highlighting the retailers’ moves because, it says, they’re important and deserve public congratulations. The group details Target’s approach, though it also says that the retailer should also include cosmetics, something it has said it would do but so far hasn’t.

That could be a smart marketing move for Target, considering that some 60% of U.S. women read beauty product ingredient labels before they buy, nearly 40% say they’ll be buying more all-natural products in the next two years, and that they’re disappointed in the number of offerings of natural products at department stores, according to a Green Beauty Barometer Survey released last month by natural-beauty retailer Kari Gran.