MPCA-Statewide Green Chemistry Curriculum Grant

The purpose of the Environmental Assistance (EA) Grant Program is to provide financial assistance for researching, developing, and implementing projects or practices related to all aspects of materials management, waste management, and pollution prevention. This RFP specifically focuses on curriculum development for green and safer chemistry and engineering.
Adopted in 1980, the Waste Management Act established criteria for managing solid waste, including the development of the waste management hierarchy. Based on environmental factors, the waste management hierarchy prioritizes waste reduction and prevention over all other management methods. Green chemistry and design represent a high-level commitment to pollution prevention. It's more common for product makers to reduce pollution in the manufacturing process than to redesign the products themselves. But the product design stage is critical to reducing a product's environmental impact. Green and safer product chemistry is formulating or designing a new product (or reformulating an existing one) to reduce harmful environmental, workplace, human health, and energy use effects over the product's entire life cycle. A product's life cycle includes design and manufacture, sourcing and production of material and energy inputs, end use, end-of-life recovery, and all packaging and transportation between these steps.
Product chemistry should take into account green and sustainable chemistry and green engineering principles, which include preventive approaches, designing out toxicological effects (including at the molecular level), energy and water consumption during production and use, and recyclability.
The EA Grant Program was established under Minn. Stat. § 115A.0716 and is administered by the MPCA under Minn. R. 9210.0800 to 9210.0845.