Boulder County among 11 selectees nationwide receiving grant funding to support innovative approaches to source reduction
BOULDER – Today, on the 30th anniversary of the Pollution Prevention Act, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is announcing the selection of 11 organizations across nine states receiving $1.16 million in grant funding to support pollution prevention activities. The grants will fund innovative, cost-effective, replicable source reduction approaches enabling grant recipients and others to save energy and water, reduce pollution, and improve public health.
“When the groundbreaking Pollution Prevention Act was signed 30 years ago, EPA was given a simple charge: work to prevent pollution before it happens,” said EPA Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention Assistant Administrator Alexandra Dapolito Dunn. “By providing our partners with essential tools, resources and information, we have taken a strategic approach that has yielded millions of dollars in savings and avoided the use of tens of thousands of pounds of hazardous chemicals. I’m looking forward to seeing the contributions of EPA’s 2020 source reduction grantees to our national pollution prevention effort.”
EPA’s individual Source Reduction Assistance (SRA) grant awards range from $43,000 to $174,000 for a two-year funding period. For these grants, EPA prioritized funding for projects that support research, education, and/or training of innovative source reduction techniques. The grantees will document and share source reduction best practices that are identified and developed through these grants so that others can replicate these practices and outcomes.
The 2020 EPA SRA grant recipients are:
- Colorado: Boulder County, $105,000
- Delaware: Delaware State University, $43,536
- Illinois: University of Illinois at Chicago, $95,000
- Illinois: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, $99,168
- Iowa: Iowa Department of Natural Resources, $93,000
- Kansas: Kansas State University, $132,000
- Nevada: greenUP!, $160,000
- New York: New York State Pollution Prevention Institute, $174,946
- Pennsylvania: North Hampton Community College, $72,146
- Pennsylvania: Slippery Rock University, $72,146
- Washington: Pollution Prevention Resource Center, $119,872
Since the inception of the program in 2003, EPA has awarded SRA grants to state, local, and tribal government entities; non-profits; and university partners to work directly with U.S. businesses to develop and implement source reduction techniques. For instance, the University of Minnesota Technical Assistance Program, using 16-17 SRA grant funds provided technical assistance to 45 businesses in Minneapolis to reduce air pollution in surrounding neighborhoods and cut electricity expenses. In addition, seven participating companies switched to environmentally safer chemical alternatives in their sanitization and disinfection processes.
Read more about the Source Reduction Assistance (SRA) Grant Program and about the individual projects.