Clean Production and Toxics

Green chemistry calls heat up

While sipping lemonade on the lakeshore this summer, some of us had our bluetooth headsets on, intently listening to a telephone seminar series about safer, greener chemical products and processes that do not interfere with our health or, the health of our environment.

Supported by a grant from U.S. EPA, The Great Lakes Green Chemistry Network provides a free and informative telephone seminar series on issues around green chemistry. Great Lakes United provides technical and administrative support for this network. Here’s a recap of what we heard this summer:

» In June, Joel Tickner, Director at the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production described the work of the GC3—the Green Chemistry in Commerce Council—a business-to-business network dedicated to advancing safer chemicals and products. Dr. Tickner explained that companies who want to green their chemical products have to deal with many of the same economic, regulatory, and technical realities of implementing green chemistry and environmental design. GC3 steps in as a catalyst and forum for these firms. Through dialogue, the GC3 moves to implement green chemistry and green engineering solutions, promote education and information exchange on green processes and best practices, and identify existing information on toxics and hazards, risks, and alternatives. They do this in the frame of Anasta’s and Warner’s 12 principles of green chemistry and the tenets of the US EPA’s Design for Environment program.
The GC3 is online at www.greenchemistryandcommerce.org

» In July, Mark Rossi, research director at Clean Production Action, outlined the “Green Screen for Safer Chemicals” a tool that uses the principles of green chemistry to define chemicals that exist in products and processes today, how to measure a chemical’s potential for harm all along its lifecycle, and how to avoid or minimize these chemicals by substituting safer ones. Rossi emphasized the focus on human health effects in this process. Cancer, reproductive harm, and developmental harm raise red flags when evaluating whether a chemical should be used or restricted. Governments and environmental managers already used the Green Screen tool to guide the substitution of less hazardous and toxic chemicals. Moreover, the Green Screen is one of the first green chemistry metrics created; this is an important step in the process towards identifying the bad and bringing forward the good.
You can look at the Green Screen tool at www.cleanproduction.org/Greenscreen.php

» In August, Richard Liroff. Executive Director of the Investor Environmental Health Network (IEHN). explained the changing world of business governance and ethics as companies strive to respond to consumer demands for safe and environmentally responsible products. Liroff notes that the market has already spoken on many hazard-containing products—large multinational retailers are moving away from carrying products containing Bisphenol A and by doing so contributing to the phasing out of PVC and brominated flame retardants. The IEHN guides investor and company shareholders so they can hold companies accountable for environmentally responsible chemical policies. The IEHN focuses on open dialogue and transparency; shareholders and firms look at the facts about the chemicals in products and the best pathway to safer products, hazard substitution, and more economically and environmentally sustainable companies.
You can find out more about the IEHN at www.greenbiz.com

The Great Lakes Green Chemistry Network Phone Seminar Series continues this fall. To find out more about the call schedule, to download past presentations, to review green chemistry resources, and to learn more about the network, you can visit www.glgc.org.

© 2009 Great Lakes News.