P2 Research Branch Current Projects
Risk Reduction Engineering Laboratory
Office of Research and Development
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Cincinnati, Ohio 45268
Program Manager: Emma Lou George (513) 569-7578
This program is a series of projects to support the design and development of products whose manufacture, use, recycle and disposal represent reduced impacts on the environment. Ongoing and recently completed projects in this category are:
Each of these projects is discussed further on the following page, listing individual ongoing projects, with project officers and respective telephone numbers and projected completion date for each.
The Cleaner Products Research Program supports various activities to further the understanding of environmentally cleaner products and to provide information for the development and adoption of cleaner products in the United States. The goals of this program are to provide guidance for the design, manufacture, use and recyclability of industrial intermediate and consumer products, to evaluate substitutions, reformulations, and alternatives through demonstrations and case studies, and to transfer the results of all findings through reports, journal articles, technical seminars, workshops, conferences and other appropriate media.
Project Officer: Emma Lou George (513) 569-7578
This cooperative agreement with the University of Tennessee's Center for Clean Products and Clean Technologies is evaluating potential substitutes for products that are either toxic in and of themselves or rely upon toxic chemicals in their manufacture and production. Chemical-use trees have been developed for seventeen of the priority Toxic Release Inventory chemicals. Using these chemical-use trees, products have been selected for further evaluation and seven product categories have been identified as high priority areas for toxic chemical substitution, reformulation, or elimination. A chemical ranking and scoring methodology has been developed as a tool for targeting highest priority chemicals for substitution or elimination. Two reports are being published in 1994 covering:
This cooperative agreement with INFORM for pollution prevention, is researching source reduction and recycling initiatives in municipal solid waste streams and toxic chemical usage in manufacturing. The goals of this project are to identify and provide documentation of government and corporate policies that have resulted in source reduction in toxic chemical usage, raw materials used in production, packaging and marketing strategies and fate and final disposal. Four reports will be published in 1994 from extensive research in toxic and MSW initiatives both in the U.S. and abroad. The four reports in various stages of preparation are:
Project Officer: Mary Ann Curran (513) 569-7837
This cooperative agreement with the School of Natural Resources at the University of Michigan has developed and produced the Life-Cycle Design Guidance Manual (EPA/600/R-92/226), incorporating principles of total quality management, multiple criteria decision making, and life cycle assessment into design of processes and products. The second phase of the study is applying the use of the manual in demonstrating two case studies and evaluating its applicability for assessing environmental impact and risk reduction through product system design. The two case studies are with an AT&T business telephone system and an oil filter from the Aftermarket Filter Division of Allied-Signal. The case studies report will be produced in mid 1994. 10/94