P2 Project Award:  Vida Verde Women's Co-op (Brighton, MA)

The Vida Verde Women's Cooperative is a program of the Brazilian Women's Group (BWG). Their comprehensive training initiative helped Brazilian immigrant domestic cleaners transition from hazardous conventional cleaning products and disinfectants to safer, evaluated DIY alternatives. The program has successfully empowered participants to eliminate toxic chemicals from their daily work, exchange expertise within their cohort, and expand community access to translated recipes, outreach materials, and live virtual sessions.

Training included technical content on product labels, ecolabels, and microbiological concepts related to cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfection. Conventional products can be more expensive and contain chemicals of concern such as quaternary ammonium compounds (QACs) and synthetic fragrances

The DIY recipes taught through Vida Verde typically cost between $0.90 to $1.25 per 16-ounce batch to make, using commonly available ingredients like 5% vinegar, castile soap, baking soda, and water. While commercial product pricing varies, the simplified and affordable nature of DIY recipes offers a practical and lower-cost alternative. The program enhanced credibility and confidence among participants due to the collaboration with TURI to obtain laboratory performance testing data on their DIY recipes. Many women reported that their clients responded positively to safer cleaning practices, particularly when participants explained the health rationale and showed confidence in using fewer, more effective products supported by a state organization.

Vida Verde introduced innovative communication strategies by conducting live Portuguese language Instagram broadcasts and saving them as reels for future viewing. This not only met participants where they were but also extended the program’s impact nationally and across borders to Brazilian followers.

P2 Program Award:  Y-12 Stewardship Operations Services  (Oak Ridge, TN)

Since 1993 the Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge, which processes nuclear materials, has engaged in assiduous recycling efforts in order to reduce its waste volumes, but recently its Stewardship Operations Services program began preventing, not just recycling wastes. Every year now, Y-12‘s Stewardship Operations Services conducts several Pollution Prevention Operational Assessments (PPOAs) to identify opportunities for improvement, to reduce or eliminate a waste stream, to provide employees with hazard data, and/or find an environmentally preferable product substitution. In FY 2024, four PPOAs were conducted, focusing on preventing the generation of low-level radioactive waste, technological advances in machining, reducing the number of aerosols used on site, and building waste minimization into construction projects. The low-level waste reduction project was successful and has now been applied across all of Y-12’s production areas.

In addition to its normal activities of recycling 44 waste streams, inspecting 390 facilities, sustainably dispositioning over 293,000 ft3 of material, diverting 60% of Y-12’s waste from the landfill, sustainably processing more than 3,400 off-spec chemicals, and decontaminating 22,520 ft3 of now useable area; in Fiscal Year 2024, Y-12 implemented 105 pollution prevention initiatives, avoiding thegeneration of more than 8.32 million pounds of waste, saving American taxpayers more than $4.41 million.

The team has actively sought out partnerships to receive and share information about how to prevent pollution and reduce impacts, conducting visits to other US Department of Energy (DOE)/National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) labs, plants, and site, and participating in the Tennessee Green Star Partnership with industry partners across the state. Twice a year (during Earth Day and America Recycles Day), Y-12 employees nominate and vote on local charities to receive cash donations from the savings of the programs it conducts. In FY 2024, 74.6% of items/materials were dispositioned using pollution prevention strategies rather than being dispositioned as waste by the Team’s Clean Sweep Program, a result of promoting reuse with waste disposal as a last resort. Y-12 personnel try to identify another user within Y-12, within DOE, within the government, or in the public, before waste disposal. The Stewardship Operations Services PrYde Program is a Y-12-wide evaluation and rating system that promotes good housekeeping across the Site. The Stewardship Team also fosters climate literacy and the environmental performance benefits that come with a lean manufacturing approach, and provides training in P2, environmentally preferable purchasing, and carpooling.

P2 Multimedia Award:  Business Reducing Impact to the Environment (BRITE)  (Cook County, IL)

The BRITE program is an American Rescue Plan Act P2 program offering free technical assistance assessments and grant opportunities to help small businesses in heavy polluting industries (dry cleaners, auto body and repair shops, food and beverage manufacturers, metal finishers, metal fabricators). As of July 2025, they have conducted over 65 assessments and offered $3,831,843.12 in grants to small businesses, achieving estimated reductions of 5,576,252 kWh of electrical energy use, 600,526 therms of heat energy, 6,906 metric tons of Greenhouse Gas Emissions, 17,312 pounds of hazardous materials, and 6,664 gallons of fuel, saving these businesses $1,075,337.42 and reducing health and environmental risks in these workplaces and the neighborhoods where they are located.

By offering grant funding and training businesses on the upcoming federal regulations banning common chemicals like PERC and TCE, the BRITE program helped small businesses stay ahead of the regulatory curve and make their workplaces and neighborhoods safer. Because replacement can be a high-capital investment, the provision of grant money with the appropriate training and consultation helped overcome the often-insurmountable obstacles that such businesses face when considering transitioning to safer chemistries and practices.

The grants provided for the installation of: high-efficiency ovens at a metal finisher, an electric truck for a brewery, a major lighting project at another metal finisher, electric delivery vans, Professional Wet Cleaning Machines to replace toxic chemical dry cleaning, and a high-efficiency spray booth with water-based paints at an auto-body shop. Coupling the grants with training business owners about the reasons for the recommendations  made and regulatory details for regulation resulted in solid relationships with industry associations, municipalities, the Chicago Urban League, the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and other chambers of commerce, building visibility and trust. For example, some of the businesses have offered to help with connecting other sites and hosting trainings to demonstrate the success of various P2 projects.

Much of the program is easy to replicate. The BRITE program works actively with the Green Business Engagement National Network (GBENN), the Midwest Climate Collaborative, the Chicago Sustainability Task Force, local governments and private companies to foster similar activities. Cook County has plans to continue the program and expand it to new industries: large event facilities, grocery stores, medical facilities, and chemical manufacturers, and the BRITE program will continue to provide pollution prevention input into policy formation.

Ken Zarker Memorial P2 Champion Award:  Aimee Krivan

Aimee Krivan is not only a practitioner of P2 principles, but also a champion for making those principles relevant, real, and inspiring to the public she serves. Aimee's work brings pollution prevention principles out of policy documents and into everyday life, showing residents that they have the power to make a difference through simple, hands-on actions.

One of Aimee's contributions is her leadership of the “Fix It, Don’t Pitch It” events, which won the MVP2 Multimedia award in 2019 and addresses several core P2 areas including waste reduction, community education, and environmental behavior change. By coordinating free public repair fairs twice a year, she empowers residents to extend the life of their household items—from small appliances to furniture and textiles—diverting substantial waste from local landfills. The events are educational by design, with volunteer fixers not only repairing items but also teaching residents how to make those repairs themselves. This initiative supports pollution prevention by reducing the need for new consumer goods and the environmental impact associated with manufacturing and disposal. Aimee’s work in this space goes beyond logistics—she has cultivated a volunteer network, promoted local environmental action, and helped create a replicable model of grassroots sustainability programming that builds skills, reduces waste, and strengthens community ties. Her contributions sit squarely at the intersection of education, source reduction, and civic engagement, all of which are critical pillars of effective pollution prevention.

Aimee organizes large-scale, volunteer-powered repair events, she reduces waste, fosters lifelong learning, and builds community resilience. Aimee is both practical and inspiring.

Fred Granek Memorial P2 Ambassador Award:  Beth Halverson

Beth created Oregon’s first pollution prevention initiative aimed specifically at small food and beverage businesses, addressing food waste prevention, energy efficiency, and refrigeration. Her program not only focused on P2 methods and technical details, but also developed a comprehensive education and behavior change program from the ground up. Beth took time to understand the unique needs, barriers, and motivations of very small restaurants, cafes, and food manufacturing businesses to build the trust and ensuring that the program felt relevant and supportive rather than regulatory or burdensome by reaching out to more than 240 small businesses across the state. She created training modules and other resources and efforts which translated complex environmental information into simple, accessible actions that businesses could take right away, and direct, on-site technical assistance with regular follow-up check-ins, enabled continuous improvement of the program. Partnering with local and industry associations and non-profits expanded the reach of the project, “leveraging existing trust networks.” Beth helped dozens of companies adopt pollution prevention and learn about available safer products; mentored interns and taught them how to plan and conduct P2 projects; and in the words of her nominator, “shared her work with peers, offering tools and strategies that can be replicated across the country. Her approach blends technical expertise with deep empathy and an unwavering belief in people’s ability to change when given the right tools and support.”

P2 Student Award:  Cindy McLaughlin

Cindy was the leading laboratory assistant in the testing and training of other student-staff in the effort at the Toxics Use Reduction Institute of the University of Massachusetts at Lowell to evaluate the efficacy and health and safety of DIY cleaning recipes that helped make the Brazilian Women's Group (BWG) project a success. She also helped with the development of outreach materials for public distribution, which are being translated into Brazilian Portuguese to help address a significant gap in translated resources highlighted by the International Sanitary Supply Association (ISSA) working group on safer cleaners.

Cindy's timely and impactful contributions to the Vida Verde pollution prevention project as a student employee at TURI provided key data to the effort. She was a major help in raising awareness among disproportionately affected professional immigrant women in Massachusetts about how DIY cleaners can be safer alternatives to traditional products. The option of safer working conditions has to be perceived and understood to be implemented, and especially when validated ecolabel safer options are not readily accessible. The information from this project is also relevant to the broader population turning to DIY cleaners, helping to address misinformation about DIY ingredients and highlighting the risks of hazardous recipes that could increase user exposure.