GC3 — Projects

Business and Academic Partnerships

In an effort to model how businesses can partner with academic institutions and NGOs to find green chemistry solutions, this working group will conduct a pilot project with the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production and the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and GC3 companies seeking to reduce the use of toxic chemicals in products. The focus of this pilot project will be the evaluation of plasticizers (both phthalates and non-phthalates) used in PVC and non-PVC applications, for wire and cable products.

Facilitating Chemical Data Flow Along Supply Chains

Many product formulators and fabricators are spending significant resources gathering chemical data from their supply chain for regulatory compliance, green product design and certification programs, and chemical disclosure initiatives. The aim of this working group is to advance the efforts of these companies by developing a written statement that they can use when communicating with their suppliers, including a description of the need for chemical data, specific examples of how the data is being used, and details on the types of chemical data that companies are seeking. The workgroup is also planning a Chemical Data Summit with the aim of bringing together formulators and fabricators, suppliers, retailers, information system providers and other stakeholders to discuss chemical data needs, challenges, data management systems, and avenues for collaboration.

Incentivizing Green Chemistry Along Supply Chains

To locate incentives for green chemistry adoption along supply chains, this working group hosted a series of conference calls with chemical manufacturers, chemical users, and state agency technical assistance providers. Each call served as a focus group through which incentives for green chemistry most relevant to each community could be discovered. Based on these discussions, a briefing paper has been drafted, outlining economic, regulatory, research, and information incentives for the expanded use of green chemistry in industry.

Portal of Retailer Policies Managing Chemicals Used in Products

Building on the research work in the report: Best Practices in Product Chemicals Management in the Retail Industry, the Retail Portal working group is developing an online resource / inventory of product chemicals management systems currently existing or under development that are available for the consumer product and retail sector. The inventory will consist of systems and tools to help retailers and those in the consumer product sector establish a baseline of product ingredient information, track the chemical ingredients of the products they are selling, identify chemicals of concern in products, transition to safer alternatives, and green their supply chains. This research will result in a matrix of systems and tools, a description of their use, and their boundaries and limitations.