Green award

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it is now accepting nominations for the 2025 Green Chemistry Challenge Awards from companies or institutions that have developed a new green chemistry process or product that helps protect human health and the environment. EPA's efforts to speed the adoption of this revolutionary and diverse discipline have led to significant environmental benefits, innovation and a strengthened economy. The awards program highlights green chemistry that helps prevent pollution before it is even created, making it a preferred approach for providing solutions to some of the nation's most significant environmental challenges.

“Green chemistry is an important way to create products that prevent waste and increase resource efficiency. In recent years, we've seen tremendous innovation in transforming how we can more effectively use renewable feedstock, agricultural waste and bio-based proteins,” says EPA Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention Deputy Assistant Administrator for Pollution Prevention Jennie Romer. “The Green Chemistry Challenge Awards spotlight cutting edge technologies and show us how green chemistry will continue to protect our environment and ensure we all have cleaner air and water.”

The 2025 competition includes six award categories, including a category to recognize green chemistry technology that can prevent or reduce greenhouse gas emissions and a category that debuted last year to emphasize circularity through the design of greener chemicals and materials that can be continuously reused or remanufactured - thereby reducing waste.

Nominations are due to EPA by Dec. 13, 2024. An independent panel of technical experts convened by the American Chemical Society Green Chemistry Institute will formally judge the 2025 nominations and make recommendations to EPA for the 2025 winners. EPA anticipates announcing awards to outstanding green chemistry technologies in fall 2025.

Since the inception of the awards more than a quarter century ago, EPA has received more than 1,800 nominations and presented awards for 139 technologies that decrease hazardous chemicals and resources, reduce costs, protect human health and spur economic growth. Previous winners of the awards include a company that developed a textile dying process that dramatically reduces the use of water, energy, dyes and chemicals compared to traditional dyeing methods, and a university professor who designed a way to refine agricultural waste into materials like lithium-ion batteries which are important for the transition to green energy.

Winning technologies are responsible for annually reducing the use or generation of hundreds of millions of pounds of hazardous chemicals, saving billions of gallons of water and eliminating billions of pounds of carbon dioxide equivalents.