‘At Boots we want our customers to have complete faith in everything we sell. And, since the vast majority of the products in our stores touch the skin or are taken internally, we believe that we have a special responsibility for ensuring that the chemicals in our product are safe, for both the user and the environment.

As the first UK retailer to publish a chemical strategy back in March 2003 we made a commitment to apply a ‘precautionary approach’ to the choice of chemicals in our products. That’s to say, we will stop using a chemical if we think there is a reason to believe it may be harmful, rather than waiting for definitive proof.

But our commitment goes much further than that. Our Chemicals Working Group (CWG) is made up of Boots experts who develop forward thinking and authoritative chemical policies for the company. Members of the CWG also play a key role in the wider industry, in public and political debate on chemical issues. Over the past 18 months members of the CWG have been working to influence the proposed EU Chemicals legislation commonly known as REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and restriction of CHemicals). Boots has been a supporter of the REACH proposal from its conception. We believe that many of the principles that it promotes (using a precautionary approach, substitution of the most hazardous chemicals and supply chain communication) are ones that we have been applying for many years.

We continue to work with both UK and European retail trade organisations to ensure that the retail perspective on REACH is properly understood. We hope the final legislation will provide our customers with a chemical regulatory system they can trust. Boots will continue to develop our own standards and policies on the use of chemicals and hope REACH will help the supply chain communicate technical information in a uniform manner.

Another part of our commitment is to ensure that we provide regular feedback to our stakeholders and to demonstrate that appropriate actions are taken. This report is intended as an overview of our activities over 2004 and 2005 and to provide further information on our current priorities.’