FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | September 18, 2019

Nominations sought for EPA’s 2020 Green Chemistry Challenge Awards

WASHINGTON, Sept. 18, 2019 — The American Chemical Society (ACS), in partnership with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is calling for nominations for the 2020 Green Chemistry Challenge Award from companies or institutions that have developed a new chemistry process or product that helps protect public health and the environment.

“The Green Chemistry Challenge is an opportunity for EPA to recognize green chemistry innovations that are having real-time results in making manufacturing processes and products that we use every day safer,” says Alexandra Dapolito Dunn, J.D., assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention.

EPA defines green chemistry as 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 that feature the design of greener chemicals and products, greener chemical syntheses and reactions, or greener chemical processes are due to the agency by Dec. 31, 2019.

Since the inception of the awards more than two decades ago, EPA has received more than 1,600 nominations and presented awards to recognize 118 technologies. The winning technologies have resulted in reducing the use or generation of hundreds of millions of pounds of hazardous chemicals and saving billions of gallons of water and trillions of BTUs in energy.

An independent panel of technical experts convened by the ACS Green Chemistry Institute (GCI) will formally judge the 2020 nominations and make recommendations to EPA for the 2020 winners. The ACS GCI hosts the award ceremony and reception for the winners, which is expected to be held in June 2020.

“The American Chemical Society is pleased to continue our support of the nation’s most prestigious award program for green chemistry innovations,” says Mary Kirchhoff, Ph.D., director of ACS GCI and executive vice president of Scientific Advancement at ACS.

More information on past award winners and how to submit entries can be found at: http://www.epa.gov/greenchemistry

The ACS Green Chemistry Institute® is an institute of the American Chemical Society dedicated to catalyzing the implementation of green and sustainable chemistry and engineering throughout the global chemistry enterprise and the Society. ACS GCI convenes industrial roundtables, holds an annual Green Chemistry & Engineering conference (gcande.org), and offers educational resources including grants, awards, webinars and workshops — encouraging scientific innovations to solve environmental and human health issues facing our world today.

The American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society, is a not-for-profit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS is a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. ACS does not conduct research, but publishes and publicizes peer-reviewed scientific studies. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

To automatically receive press releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.

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