Foreign Policy
Summer 1998

. . . and Making Pollution Public

The Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) works because it spotlights pollution. As one chemical industry representative noted, "There’s not a chief executive officer around who wants to be the biggest polluter in the state." Seeking to intensify this focus, and thus the incentive to reduce pollution, a major U.S. environmental group, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), recently launched a free, online "Chemical Scorecard" (www.scorecard.org) that makes TRI data accessible to anyone with an Internet connection and a computer. Although other groups have previously posted TRI data on the Web, the EDF has taken the next step: incorporating information on the relative toxicity of compounds and providing rankings—by county and state, zip code, and facility—that focus on the biggest health threats. In addition, the scorecard provides user-friendly maps that display schools, major roads, and TRI facilities, as well as take-action tools that allow users to send faxes free of charge to high-ranking polluting facilities. It is too soon to know how much the Web site will affect corporate behavior, but the project is off to a strong start: The site received over 4 million hits in its first two weeks of operation.

—A.F.