Truth Be Told ... It's Not Always the Truth We're Told

For a couple of years now, there has been rising concern about bisphenol-A (BPA), a chemical which is used to make hard, clear plastic, commonly used for food containers. Can BPA leach out of the containers, and if so, what does it do to humans? (For information on this question, click here for an NIH overview, here for a recent (June '09) Science Daily post, and here for the official "Bisphenol-A.org" perspective; note that the "latest news" on this site, as of 13 Sept 09 is from September of '08).

Concerns about health hazards, particularly for infants and fetal development, have led many to eschew reusable plastic water bottles such as those manufactured by Nalgene in favor of aluminum bottles by SIGG.

I'm not going to address the science and the safety -- that's not my area of expertise -- but I do want to address a question of ethics.

The BPA concerns were bad news for Nalgene but, of course, good news for SIGG sales. And while Nalgene started phasing out its polycarbonate containers with BPA in April 2008 (see company announcement, here), a great deal of damage had been done.

And now we learn that SIGG's aluminum containers had liners that, until August of last year, were made with plastic containing small or trace amounts of BPA. SIGG did not market its bottles as "BPA-free", but seemed content to let consumers assume that the bottles were BPA-free.

When the story broke, SIGG's CEO Steve Wasik posted an open letter in August (here) "explaining" the history of BPA use in SIGG bottles.

Many customers felt betrayed (see examples: here from Hartford's examiner.com, here from the Boston Globe's environmental blog, here from greenerdesign.com -- an article that was picked up by Mother Jones here, and here from Toronto's treehugger.com). And not surprisingly, many customers were not satisfied with Wasik's explanation. As the Globe's Beth Daley wrote, "Any parent would want to know if a drinking container contained such a controversial chemical. If you are going to bill yourself as an eco-friendly company, be eco-friendly. And that includes being straightforward. Otherwise you’ll lose customers. You've lost this one."

Greener Design's Simran Sethi pointed out that "at no point over the last few years, in the handful of conversations and email exchanges I have had with SIGG's PR company, Truth Be Told, were my perceptions that the bottles were free from BPA corrected." For that matter, according to Sethi, Truth be Told hadn't been told the truth either, quoting one of the PR firm's staffers as follows: "As you can imagine, we were surprised and disappointed as well -- we found out this information only a few days before you did."

A second letter from Wasik was posted on 1 September (here). In it, he acknowledged that "although SIGG never marketed the former liner as 'BPA Free' we should have done a better job of both clearly communicating about our liner as well as policing others who may have misunderstood the SIGG message." More importantly, he said, "I am sorry."

It took a while for him to get there, didn't it? That, of course, is where he should have started (at least, it's where he should have started as soon as he realized that people might get the wrong idea about SIGGs and BPA).

Wasik also announced an "exchange program", effective through the end of October, by which customers can turn in their old SIGG bottles for new ones (and by the way, you'll have to pay for shipping the bottle to North Brunswick NJ because, as the SIGG site explains, "this is a voluntary program -- not a recall." Can you say, "Adding insult to injury"? Sure you can.).

Wasik also said that "for over 100 years, SIGG has earned a reputation for quality products and services -- and we do not take that for granted." But it seems as though the company did just that, doesn't it?

And he ended his letter by adding, "All of us at SIGG hope that we will have an opportunity to regain your confidence and trust."

As I said in a previous post, trust is much easier to lose than to regain.