The National Pollution Prevention Roundtable Announce: Safer Chemistry Challenge Program

March 12, 2012 - PRLog -- The National Pollution Prevention Roundtable (NPPR) has launched the 2025 Safer Chemistry Challenge Program (SCCP), a voluntary initiative to motivate, challenge, and assist companies to reduce the use of chemicals of concern to human health and the environment.  The SCCP also rewards companies for finding safer alternatives and builds on ongoing business efforts to make toxic chemical reduction a business reality.

Forward thinking companies are focused on achieving high levels of environmental performance through sustainable business practices, including moving toward safer chemistries in the products companies manufacture and consume.  It is also a way to address the ever-changing chemicals regulatory landscape. Jeffrey Burke quote: “Participating in the SCCP challenge not only gives companies an opportunity to cut costs but also a chance to become an industry leader in managing environmental responsibilities, reducing and preventing pollution, eliminating the use of toxic compounds, and substituting safer alternatives.”

The SCCP seeks to target reduction or elimination of the most toxic compounds that can be achieved by industry through pollution prevention or source reduction approaches.  Companies have the flexibility to select chemicals for reduction to meet specific business objectives to focus reduction efforts on, or use the SCCP list of priority chemicals as guidance.
Companies that participate will be asked to reduce their use of chemicals by:
•   Moving toward cleaner processes, including adopting greener, more sustainable technologies
•   Using green chemistry tools and designs that avoid the use and generation of toxic chemicals
•   Selecting and using safe alternatives, such as benign or low toxicity materials or those that degrade into innocuous substances

Another value of the SCCP is that companies are encouraged to partner with state and local technical assistance programs to help identify effective ways to reduce waste and emissions and adopt safer substitute chemicals.

The SCCP offers industry a unique leadership opportunity for public and private sector collaboration that fosters a cleaner environment, new market opportunities, improved competitive advantage, while enhancing corporate image Additional resources and application information can be found at www.p2.org/challenge.

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The mission of the Roundtable is to provide a national forum for promoting the development, implementation, and evaluation of efforts to avoid, eliminate, or reduce pollution at the source.