Nominations Open for EPA’s Green Chemistry Challenge Awards

The Green Chemistry Challenge Awards recognize companies and institutions that have developed innovative green chemistry solutions and products. Six awards are given: Greener Synthetic Pathways, Greener Reaction Conditions, the Design of Greener Chemicals, Small Business, Academic, and Specific Environmental Benefit: Climate Change. The EPA has added the latter award this year for technology that reduces or eliminates greenhouse gas emissions.

Nominations in these six categories are due to the EPA by Dec. 10. The ACS Green Chemistry Institute (GCI) will convene an independent panel of technical experts to formally judge the 2022 nominations and make recommendations to the EPA for the 2022 winners. The EPA anticipates giving awards to outstanding green chemistry technologies next June.

ACS “values its collaboration with EPA in recognizing outstanding green chemistry innovations through the Green Chemistry Challenge Awards program,” says Mary Kirchhoff, director of ACS GCI and executive vice president for scientific advancement at ACS.

Since the inception of the awards program a quarter century ago, the EPA has received more than 1,800 nominations and presented awards for 128 technologies that decrease hazardous chemicals and use of resources, reduce costs, and protect human health.

Winning technologies are responsible for annually reducing the use or generation of hundreds of millions of pounds of hazardous chemicals, saving billions of gallons of water, and eliminating billions of pounds of carbon dioxide equivalents.

More information about the award can be found at www.epa.gov/greenchemistry.