Green Chemistry Challenge: Pushing Companies Towards Greener Technologies Since 1996

The Green Chemistry Challenge Awards promote the environmental and economic benefits of developing and using novel green chemistry. In recent years, manufacturers in the cleaning industry have started making their mark for greener chemistry. 2021 was the first year of the Green Chemistry Challenge that a cleaning industry manufacturer won the Design of Greener Chemicals Category. Since the awards inception, only two manufacturers have won the award for developing consumer available cleaning and disinfecting products: Colonial Chemical for Suga®Boost surface cleaner, and the Clorox Company for Clorox EcoClean™ Disinfecting Cleaner.

Reducing the Hazards of Designing, Manufacturing, and Using Chemicals

The EPA started the annual Green Chemistry Challenge in 1996, and for the past 26 years, EPA has awarded 133 winners out of 1,800 nominations. To win, companies and academic institutions must demonstrate that their product or process has scientific merit, provides human health and environmental benefits, is practical and has great impact. Ultimately, this program advances EPA’s goal to significantly reduce the hazards associated with designing, manufacturing, and using chemicals. Among these accomplishments, winners of the Green Chemistry Challenge have contributed to¹:

• Eliminating 830 million pounds of hazardous chemicals and solvents every year. This is equivalent to removing 3,800 railway tank cars every year.
• Saving 21 billion gallons of water each year — the amount of water used by nearly 1 million people annually.
• Eliminating 7.8 billion pounds of carbon dioxide equivalents from entering the air each year. This is the same impact as removing 770,000 vehicles from the road each year.

Recognizing the Winners of the 2023 Green Chemistry Challenge

Below are the winners of the 2023 Green Chemistry Challenge and a brief description of the product they developed. Congratulations to the winners and thank you to the EPA for leading this awards program²!

• Design of Greener Chemicals: The Clorox Company for Clorox EcoClean Disinfecting Cleaner, a Design for the Environment-certified disinfecting cleaner that can be used without personal protective equipment, is formulated without alcohol and disinfects 99.999% of illness-causing germs in 2 minutes or less.
• Academic Category: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor for developing new ways to refind common agricultural waste into materials that can be used in lithium-ion batteries.
• Greener Synthetic Pathways: Solugen for developing the Bioforge™, a chemical manufacturing platform that converts plant-derived substances into a range of materials that have historically been made from fossil fuels, without resulting emissions or waste.
• Greener Reaction Conditions: Captis Aire LLC for the CAIRE technology that captures more than 90% of terpenes, a waste product from the wood manufacturing process, and converts it into valuable chemicals including those used in products such as biofuels, flavors, and fragrances.
• Small Business Award: Modern Meadow for developing a more efficient textile dyeing process called the Bio-FREED™ Powered by Bio-Alloy™ which uses a bio-based protein foam to dye any type of fiber.
• Specific Environmental Benefit — Climate Change: Air Company for developing a technology that mimics photosynthesis to transform the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into other organic chemicals, producing oxygen as the only byproduct.

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