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NPPR News

August 2023

Message from the Chair

by Laura Henne

The results of the Board of Directors election are in. We are pleased to announce the re-election of Kurt Middelkoop (Region 6), Ben Jarvis (Region 10), and Alicia Wind (At-Large) and the election of previous interim appointees Kathy Black (Region 1) and Rayna Oliker (Region 8). Thank you all for agreeing to continue your service on the Board!

Pollution Prevention Week is also coming soon! The theme this year is "Pollution Prevention Works". Look forward to the upcoming P2 Week poster, MVP2 Awards, and a great online presentation September 18-24, 2023.

Pollution Prevention Reunion on Sept. 2

Cindy McComas and Terri Goldberg will be together again for P2 Reunion

On September 2, 2023 starting at 1pm (ET), there will be an in-person gathering of folks who have been in the past and/or are now involved in P2. This social gathering will take place at Look Park, 300 North Main Street, Florence, MA, and was prompted by a visit by Cindy McComas, former director of the Minnesota Technical Assistance Program (MnTAP), to Western Massachusetts. She reached out to long time colleagues in the region who decided to plan an informal gathering to get people together to catch up, have fun together, and connect. If you would be interested in joining, contact admin@p2.org so details can be forwarded to you.

2023 P2 West Roundtable on Oct. 10-11

The P2 West Roundtable will be held October 10th and 11th in Boise, Idaho, and participants will focus on creating a multi-state collaborative strategic plan to reduce the use, generation, and/or release of PFAS containing compounds through pollution prevention. Registration for the event can be found below:

For anyone interested in participating, please contact Ben Jarvis at ben.jarvis@deq.idaho.gov.

Registration for the Event

Pollution Prevention Jobs Available Across the US

There are new positions available at the K-State Pollution Prevention Institute. And a second attempt is just starting to hire a MnTAP Director who will replace the position's esteemed Laura Babcock. To see these and other great positions, check them out on the NPPR website at:

Current Pollution Prevention Jobs

Workgroup Updates

About NPPR Workgroups

NPPR's workgroups bring together P2 professionals from across the country to share ideas, information, and deliverables. The topical areas coincide with EPA national emphasis areas and other areas of interest to the P2 community.

NPPR currently hosts six active workgroups. They are:

Food & Beverage

The Food & Beverage workgroup held their most recent meeting on July 20 hosting a webinar on Alternative Sanitizers & Disinfectants for the Food and Beverage Industry. The speakers not only gave helpful presentations, but also did a great job answering questions from NPPR members. If you missed the presentation or would like to watch it again, recordings of past webinars are available on the F&B workgroup resource page.

Also, the Food and Beverage Workgroup would like to hear from you about topics you would like to hear about or discussions you would like to have as a group. Send your comments to: Kathryn.Black@des.nh.gov or admin@p2.org.

NPPR Workgroups Page

From the States

Region 3

Honor for Environmental Excellence

Roanoke Cement Company, a subsidiary of Titan America, recently won a Governor’s Environmental Excellence Award for its successful and innovative efforts that improve Virginia’s environment.

The awards program is run by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality in partnership with the Department of Conservation and Recreation and recognizes organizations or facilities that can document the success of their sustainability program.

“We are pleased to recognize Roanoke Cement as our silver medal winner and top industrial sustainability program applicant for the 2023 Governor’s Environmental Excellence Awards,” said Meghann Quinn, manager, Office of Pollution Prevention, Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (VADEQ). “RCC was honored for its outstanding energy management accomplishments and other environmental initiatives like total waste reduction but the sustainability innovation and total involvement of workers from top to bottom really caught our attention.”

Region 5

Illinois Passes Paint Stewardship Act

Households and businesses across Illinois will soon be able to recycle their leftover paint due to a new law that was overwhelmingly approved by the Illinois General Assembly and signed on July 28, 2023 by Governor J. B. Pritzker.

The program is anticipated to go into effect in 2025 and will offer hundreds of conveniently located drop-off locations throughout the state. There will be no cost to residents and businesses when dropping off their unwanted paint for recycling; funding to run the program will be included in the cost of new paint.

Illinois Senator Paint News

Governor Pritzker Signs Bill Establishing Farm to Food Bank Program in Illinois

On August 3, Governor J. B. Pritzker signed HB2879 into law establishing the Illinois Farm to Food Bank Program to expand resources for food bank systems across the state while supporting local farmers.

The bill creates mechanisms for acquiring and distributing fresh fruits, vegetables, meat and poultry, dairy, and eggs to organizations providing free food for those in need. The program initially began with a pilot in 2021 with grant funding from USDA and is made permanent through this bill.

The program, administered by the Illinois Department of Human Services with a $2 million investment in FY24, seeks to address the strain placed on nonprofits and other organizations due to increased food bank usage while also supporting local farmers. During the two years of the pilot program, nearly 2.5 million pounds of food were donated.

The Illinois Sustainable Technology Center is one of the partners in the Illinois Farm to Food Bank program.

Learn How ISTC Assisted Food Bank All Across Illinois

US News

DOE Announces Funding Selections for Onsite Energy Technical Assistance Partnerships

The US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office (IEDO) recently announced the selection of nine organizations—eight regional and one national—that will establish a network of Technical Assistance Partnerships (TAPs) to help industrial facilities and other large energy users increase the adoption of onsite energy technologies.

The Onsite Energy TAPs selectees will help facilities across the nation integrate the latest onsite energy technologies by providing specialized technical assistance, including initial site screenings, identifying onsite energy opportunities, offering more advanced analysis to support project installations, and more. The TAPs will have expertise to advise on a wide variety on technologies, including battery storage, combined heat and power (CHP), district energy, fuel cells, geothermal, industrial heat pumps, renewable fuels, solar photovoltaics, solar thermal, thermal storage, and wind power.

IEDO’s selections were made from the following topic areas:

Topic 1 - Regional Onsite TAPs: Funding for up to 10 entities to serve as regional Onsite Energy TAPs. Each TAP will represent a multi-state region and serve as the primary technical, market, and policy point of contact for end-users and other state and local stakeholders.
Topic 2 - Onsite Energy Technical Analysis and Support Center: Funding for one national entity to serve as the Onsite Energy Technical Analysis and Support Center (TASC). The TASC will centrally coordinate technical analysis and programmatic activities of the Onsite Energy TAPs.

The regional onsite TAPs are:

Pennsylvania State University | Mid-Atlantic & NY-NJ
University of Illinois Chicago | Midwest & Central
Houston Advanced Research Center | Southcentral
University of New Hampshire | New England
Cascade Energy, Inc. | Upper-West
North Carolina State University | Southeast
Optony, Inc. | Western

The University of Connecticut (UConn) joins DNV Energy Insights USA Inc., Analytical Energy Solutions, eSai LLC, Impact Energy, and RE Tech Advisors, LLC to run the national Onsite Energy Technical Analysis and Support Center.

EPA Seeks Input on Expansion of the Safer Choice and Design for the Environment Programs

US EPA recently announced a 45-day public comment period on a proposed expansion of its Safer Choice and potentially its Design for the Environment (DfE) programs to include certification of additional product categories beyond cleaners and disinfectants. The Agency will hold a listening session webinar on August 29, 2023, to gather feedback on the expansion.

As with cleaning products, EPA would evaluate each ingredient against a stringent set of health and environmental criteria outlined in the Safer Choice Standard. The availability of EPA certified products would help give consumers a choice of products that meet EPA’s high standard for human and environmental health and, as part of meeting these criteria, would not contain intentionally added PFAS.

Upon publication of the Federal Register notice, comments should be submitted to docket EPA-HQ-OPPT-2023-0311 on www.regulations.gov by September 11, 2023.

EPA Posts Pesticide Incident Data Publicly

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently posted ten years of pesticide incident data on its website. Sharing this information advances EPA’s commitment to environmental justice and aligns with EPA’s Equity Action Plan by expanding the availability of data and capacity so the public and community organizations can better understand pesticide exposures, including exposures to vulnerable populations.

The data sets, which pull information from EPA’s Incident Data System (IDS), allow users to access raw data on pesticide exposure incidents such as the incident date, the reason for the report (e.g., adverse effect, product defect), and the severity of the incident. It may also provide information on the location of the incident, the pesticide product, and a description of the incident(s). EPA has not verified the raw data for accuracy or completeness, so users should be aware of this limitation before drawing any conclusions from the data.

Biden Administration Announces New Sustainable Procurement Rules for Federal Government

The Biden administration recently announced a new Sustainable Products and Services procurement rule, which requires federal government buyers to prioritize sustainable products and services and expands the categories of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Ecolabel standards for federal purchasing to a series of new sectors.

The proposed rule would update the government’s Federal Acquisition Regulation to focus on environmental and sustainability matters and to require federal agencies to purchase sustainable products and services “to the maximum extent practicable.”

Under the proposal, agencies would be directed to follow EPA’s Recommendations of Specifications, Standards, and Ecolabels for Federal Purchasing designed to help government purchasers identify private sector standards and ecolabels that meet sustainable acquisition goals and mandates. The new rule would also direct agencies to avoid the procurement of products containing PFAS, or “forever chemicals.”

Alongside the announcement of the proposed rule, the EPA said that it will extend its recommendations to new product and services categories including healthcare, professional services, laboratories, uniforms and clothing, and food service ware.

The proposed rule will be open for public comment for 60 days via Federal Register docket FAR-2022-0006 at www.regulations.gov.

New Publication

The Circularity Gap Report 2023

This report, published annually by Circle Economy since 2017, aims to:

Quantify the current circular state of the world: update the Circularity Metric and a range of other crucial indicators concerning global material flows.
Identify key circular solutions within key systems that are based on the needs of society and impactful on a range of planetary boundaries for healthy air, water, and land.
Demonstrate the power that these circular economy solutions can have in reversing the overshoot on multiple planetary boundaries. Illustrate which circular solutions are most suitable for different country profiles, based on economic, social, and environmental differences, in order for them to reach their goals.
Illustrate which circular solutions are most suitable for different country profiles, based on economic, social, and environmental differences, in order for them to reach their goals.

Download 2023 Documents