Mike Schade Mike Schade is the Mind the Store Campaign Director for Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families where he coordinates a national campaign engaging the nation’s leading retailers to transform the marketplace away from hazardous chemicals and towards safer alternatives. For the previous nine years, Mike was the Markets Campaign Coordinator with the Center for Health, Environment & Justice (CHEJ), a national environmental health organization where he led national campaigns to phase out PVC plastic, phthalates, bisphenol A (BPA) and dioxin in consumer products and packaging. Prior to CHEJ, he was the Director of the Buffalo office of Citizens’ Environmental Coalition (CEC), a NY statewide grassroots environmental health organization where he worked on environmentally preferable purchasing and provided organizing and technical assistance to neighborhood organizations fighting chemical plants, landfills, and Superfund sites. He has also worked for the Coalition for Economic Justice (CEJ) and Equal Exchange.
Mike is the author or co-author of numerous reports including “Who’s Minding the Store? – A Report Card on Retailer Actions to Eliminate Toxic Chemicals”, “Buyer Beware – Toxic BPA and Regrettable Substitutes Found in the Linings of Canned Food”, “Hidden Hazards: Toxic Chemicals Inside Children’s Vinyl Back-to-School Supplies”, “No Silver Lining – An Investigation into Bisphenol A in Canned Foods”, “Volatile Vinyl – The New Shower Curtain’s Chemical Smell”, “Baby’s Toxic Bottle: Bisphenol A Leaching from Popular Baby Bottles”, “Toxic Toys R Us – PVC Toxic Chemicals in Toys and Packaging”, “Back to School Guide to PVC-Free School Supplies”, “From Cancer Alley to Your University – Environmental Injustice and the Campaign for PVC-Free Schools”, “Pass Up the Poison Plastic – the PVC-free Guide for Your Family and Home”, “The Wasting of Rural New York State – Factory Farms and Public Health”, and “Learning Not to Burn – A Primer for Citizens on Alternatives to Burning Hazardous Waste”. He is also the former editor and publisher of Hodgepodge magazine.
Mike has been quoted and featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Business, the Associated Press, CNN, ABC World News and other major media outlets.
Mike lives in Brooklyn, NY where he serves on the Newtown Creek Superfund Community Advisory Group (CAG), the Board of Directors of Neighbors Allied for Good Growth (NAG), and the Community Advisory Panel of the Greenpoint Community Environmental Fund (GCEF). He received a BS in Environmental Studies and minor in Physical Geography from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo.