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Report outlines Calif.´s ´green-chemistry´ ideas

By Roger Renstrom

SACRAMENTO, CALIF. (June 10, 5:15 p.m. EDT) -- California is reviewing 38 recommended
approaches and requirements for reducing toxic compounds in the state.

The findings may help provide a broad-based model for implementation in California and other
locales.

In April 2007, the state Environmental Protection Agency launched the Green Chemistry Initiative,
primarily through its Department of Toxic Substances Control. A nationally dispersed panel of 21
science advisers was formed in the fall.

The members are "leading thinkers and innovators of green chemistry," DTSC director Maureen
Gorsen said in a news release. "Their willingness to wrestle with our state policy issues
demonstrates their belief in the potential of California to create a new, robust green-materials
economy."

Panel Chairman John Warner is president and chief technology officer of Warner Babcock
Institute for Green Chemistry LLC, a research and development firm in Woburn, Mass. Most
members are academics, researchers or environmental advocates. Corporate representatives
include Neil Hawkins, vice president of sustainability with Dow Chemical Co. in Midland, Mich.,
and William Carroll Jr., vice president of Occidental Chemical Corp.

On June 2, after numerous meetings and seven public workshops, the panel issued a 70-page
report with appendices covering another 111 pages. A compendium from the University of
Massachusetts' Lowell Center for Sustainable Production references comparable state, federal
and foreign programs.

In order to create green-chemistry supply and demand, the state needs a diverse set of options,
the report said. Those options should bridge gaps that hinder current efforts.

"The central concept ... is that the advancement of green chemistry in California is an effective
vehicle to promote innovation in ways that also protect human health and the environment and
provide economic opportunities," the report said.

Governmental agencies, industrial concerns, universities and not-for-profit organizations are
targeted as possible "agents of change" in bringing viable options to fruition.

The scientific advisory panel's proposals may be included in the multiagency initiative's final
report, due in a few months to state EPA secretary Linda Adams. The state may seek more
feedback on the report's conceptual framework.

No costs were disclosed, but the state is funding the initiative within its existing budget, DTSC
said.

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