Geoscience Reference
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ward more sustainable practice by reducing or replacing x while preserving
some or most of its benefits?” Such a focus on solutions through alternatives
assessment processes can support the agency's dual science and engineering
goals: protection and innovation.
The Pollution Prevention Act of 1990 established the principle that all
EPA environmental protection efforts should be based on the prevention or re-
duction of pollution at the source. Pollution prevention was viewed as such an
important program for the agency that its coordination initially occurred through
the administrator's office (EPA 2008b). On the basis of the Pollution Prevention
Act's mandates, EPA's Office of Research and Development (ORD) and the
Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT) embarked on a wide array of
initiatives to develop tools, information sources, technologies, approaches, and
initiatives to advance pollution prevention. Those have resulted in making EPA
a global leader for the application of science and engineering for prevention.
Examples of those initiatives are the Cleaner Technologies Substitutes Assess-
ments, the Green Suppliers Network, and a suite of tools to integrate considera-
tion of pollution prevention into chemical design. With more resources and in-
creased coordination at the highest levels of leadership in the agency, EPA has
the ability to enhance its support for safer technologies and products. Some
mechanisms through which enhanced support can be accomplished include
funding research on safer chemistry; building tools so that designers outside the
agency can create safer chemicals, products, and processes; providing simple
data integration dashboards that will help companies identify and evaluate safer
alternatives to chemicals and materials of concern; and setting up consistent
guidelines, frameworks, and metrics for evaluating safer chemicals and prod-
ucts.
EPA has taken global leadership in three fields of innovative solutions-
oriented science: pollution prevention, Design for the Environment, and green
chemistry and engineering. This suite of programs compromises non-regulatory
approaches that protect the environment and human health by designing or re-
designing processes and products to reduce the use and release of toxic materi-
als. Green chemistry and engineering focuses on molecular design, Design for
the Environment focuses on evaluating the safest chemistries and designs for a
particular functional use, and pollution prevention focuses on reducing or elimi-
nating emissions and waste in the manufacturing process. The three programs
have evolved and changed over time and are overlapping in many ways, but they
address different parts of the production process, from chemical design to the
use of chemicals in product design to the application in manufacturing. Despite
the overlapping connections, the three programs have not been fully integrated
in EPA's administrative structures within or between ORD and OPPT, which
may ultimately limit the impact and effectiveness of the programs.
Pollution prevention, Design for the Environment, and green chemistry
and engineering share a number of common features. First, they have a strong
emphasis on education and assistance. To support the change in mindset from
“controlling exposure to hazardous materials” to “preventing generation of haz-
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