Let Me Google That For You

On more than one occasion I have taken the easy road and asked a question of a colleague rather than do a little simple work with a search engine to find the answer for myself. Sometimes I get a quick response to my question that looks more like alphabet soup; "LMGTFY." "Let Me Google That For You" is a rather snarky way to respond, but, sometimes it's not a bad idea to tell someone they would be best served by looking up the answer themselves.

Google "product safety," and in about a third of a second, you get over 18 million responses. Above-the-fold in the search results Google returns the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) website, as you would expect. You also can find the website for reporting and researching unsafe products that we discussed in our last post here, www.saferproducts.gov.

Ethical conduct in manufacturing is one of the core points of focus for the Quality Certification Alliance. If you Google "ethical conduct," you get almost 800 million responses. "Child labor" returns 16 million responses, while "environmental stewardship" returns 500,000. Providing the promotional product industry's only non-profit independent accreditation protocol for suppliers, QCA is always looking for relevant comparable industry benchmarks. That's why I found the American Chemical Council's (ACC) Responsible Care Product Safety Code of particular interest.

The ACC makes it its business to recognize that the wonderful advantages of modern chemicals must still be used responsibly. That's why the ACC and its members developed the Responsible Care Product Safety Code to drive continuous improvement in chemical product safety as part of the industry's signature environmental, health, safety and security management system. With the number of chemicals used to soften plastics over the years in our industry alone, parallel ideas to learn from jump out at you.