EPA Accepting Nominations For 2020 Green Chemistry Challenge Awards

On September 18, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is now accepting nominations for the 2020 Green Chemistry Challenge Awards for companies or institutions that have developed a new process or product that helps protect public health and the environment. Entries are due December 31.

“The Green Chemistry Challenge is an opportunity for EPA to recognize the latest and greatest in green chemistry innovations in chemical design, manufacture, and use,” said EPA Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention Assistant Administrator Alexandra Dapolito Dunn. “Innovations in green chemistry are an important component of pollution prevention efforts and keeping American businesses competitive in markets around the world. These innovations can turn waste materials into marketable commodities, reduce costs through material efficiency, and open new markets for products and services.”

Green chemistry is the design of chemical products and processes that reduce both the generation and use of chemicals that are hazardous to the environment and people’s health. Nominations for innovative technologies featuring the design of greener chemicals and products, greener chemical syntheses and reactions, or greener chemical processes are due to the agency by December 31, 2019. 

EPA anticipates giving awards to outstanding green chemistry technologies in five categories next June--

-- Greener Synthetic Pathways

-- Greener Reaction Conditions

-- The Design of Greener Chemicals

-- Small Business (for a technology in any of the three focus areas developed by a small business)

-- Academic (for a technology in any of the three focus areas developed by an academic researcher

Since the inception of the awards more than two decades ago, EPA has received more than 1600 nominations and presented awards to 118 technologies, which reduced the use or generation of hundreds of millions of pounds of hazardous chemicals and saved billions of gallons of water and trillions of BTUs in energy.

An independent panel of technical experts convened by the American Chemical Society Green Chemistry Institute will formally judge the 2020 nominations and make recommendations to EPA for the 2020 winners.

For more information, visit EPA’s 2020 Green Chemistry Challenge Awards webpage.