 New for Pollution Prevention (P2) Week 2024! EPA is offering resources to help organizations promote their work in preventing pollution. This year’s theme for P2 Week is "Together We Are One Planet," emphasizing the importance of preventing pollution at home, in communities, in industry and beyond to protect human health and the environment. The resources, including ideas for videos, social media posts, web content and more, are for organizations to tailor information to best meet the needs of their stakeholders and local communities. Follow us on social media, including Instagram and X, during P2 Week!
Learn more about P2 Week and view the outreach materials.
Register for Upcoming P2 Week Events:
2024 Regional Pollution Prevention Recognition Webinar
Sept. 17, 2024, 1-3 p.m. ET
Join us for a webinar to celebrate the winners of the 2024 Regional Pollution Prevention Recognition Program. This program recognizes the accomplishments and best practices of companies that have implemented P2 projects or process improvements at their facilities. Learn about the P2 award-winning accomplishments in five of our EPA regions, including reducing the use of water or energy, substituting high-risk chemicals with safer alternatives and cutting the generation of hazardous waste. The first hour will be dedicated to resource conservation projects and the second hour will be dedicated to chemical and waste projects. Dr. Anahita Williamson, Director of the Sustainability, Pollution Prevention, and Right-to-Know Division, will provide opening remarks.
 Sept. 19, 2024, 2-3 p.m. ET
Join Jennie Romer, EPA’s Deputy Assistant Administrator for Pollution Prevention, for a webinar on how EPA’s Safer Choice program helps people find and have access to cleaning and other products made with safer ingredients and works in partnership with a broad range of stakeholders to prevent pollution. Speakers from industry, a nonprofit organization, academia and EPA will discuss the growing impact of the Safer Choice program to increase use of safer ingredients throughout the value chain and how P2 practitioners can increase use and development of safer products.
Oct. 9, 2024, 2-3 p.m. ET
EPA will host a webinar about the 2025 Green Chemistry Challenge Awards and the nomination process. Nominations for the awards are now being accepted from companies or institutions that have developed a new green chemistry process or product that helps protect human health and the environment. Nominations are due to EPA by Dec. 13, 2024, and EPA anticipates it will announce the winners in fall 2025.
Learn more and submit a nomination.
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EPA Boosts Efforts on Cleaner Construction Materials with New Label Program and nearly $160 Million in Grants
EPA recently announced two important steps forward for its programs to help reduce embodied greenhouse gas emissions of construction materials, made possible by a $350 million investment in the Biden-Harris Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act.
On Aug. 7, EPA announced its framework for implementing a new label program for cleaner construction materials including concrete, asphalt, glass, steel and wood. The label program will help federal purchasers and other buyers find and buy more climate-friendly construction materials and products. The label program will define what constitutes “clean” construction materials in support of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Federal Buy Clean Initiative, which aims to grow the market and reward innovation for American-made, lower-carbon construction materials.
Read the press release.
Learn more about the label program.
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On July 16, EPA announced the selection of 38 recipients for nearly $160 million in grants to support reporting and reducing climate pollution linked to the manufacturing of construction materials and products. Ranging from $250,000 to $10 million, the grants will help businesses develop robust, high-quality environmental product declarations (EPDs), which show environmental impacts across the life of a product and can catalyze more sustainable purchasing decisions by allowing buyers to compare products. These efforts will help standardize and expand the market for construction products with lower greenhouse gas emissions.
Read summaries of proposed grantee projects.
Learn more about the grant program.
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On Aug. 8, EPA finalized updates to the Safer Choice and Design for the Environment Standard. These updates strengthen the criteria products must meet to qualify for the voluntary Safer Choice label, supporting the use of safer chemicals in the marketplace. This is EPA’s fourth update of the Standard since its inception in 2009 and the first since 2015. EPA periodically updates the Standard to keep current with the state of scientific and technological innovation, increase transparency and reduce redundancy, and expand the scope of the program as appropriate.
Read the press release.
Visit the Safer Choice Website.
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On Sept. 10, EPA released a proposed update to the Agency’s Recommendations of Specifications, Standards and Ecolabels for Federal Purchasing (Recommendations), which help federal government purchasers and other buyers utilize private sector standards and ecolabels to buy products that are more sustainable and climate-friendly and contain safer chemical ingredients. This is the first time in nearly 10 years that EPA has comprehensively evaluated standards and ecolabels to determine whether to add them to the Recommendations.
The Recommendations help to identify thousands of products and services across 35 categories that conserve energy or water, include more recycled content, or reduce the use of PFAS and single-use plastics. By helping federal purchasers identify and procure environmentally preferable products and services, the Recommendations can save taxpayers money, reduce climate impacts, and prevent pollution.
Read the press release.
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EPA’s Environmentally Preferable Purchasing program has published a new resource that outlines some of the key changes for procurement professionals and vendors and other stakeholders in recent amendments to the Federal Acquisition Regulation. The amendments streamlined, clarified and strengthened federal sustainable product and service purchasing requirements by establishing a clearer definition for what constitutes sustainable products and services. The changes also aligned purchase requirements with existing statutory purchasing programs and EPA required purchasing programs such as EPA's Recommendations of Specifications, Standards and Ecolabels for Federal Purchasing, Safer Choice and WaterSense programs.
Visit the webpage.
P2 in EJ Communities Project Recap: Plans, Pivots, Successes, and Metrics Webinar
Sept. 18, 2024, noon-1p.m. ET
Join the Pacific Northwest Pollution Prevention Resources Center (PPRC) for a webinar on its recent two-year project funded by an EPA P2 grant that focused on preventing pollution in auto body businesses located in environmental justice communities. Representatives from PPRC who worked on the grant will discuss key outcomes and results from the project, and the adjustments they made during the project to improve outreach and engagement to businesses.
Register for the webinar.
P2 Helpline
The P2 Hub Helpline offers information and resources about pollution prevention. Please contact the Helpline at p2hub@epa.gov or (202) 566-0799.
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