Awarded the 2017 Innovation in Smart Chemistry sponsored by Nike, NASA, U.S. Department of State, Estee Lauder, American Chemical Society Green Chemistry Institute, and U.S. Agency for International Development.
The nonprofit Environmental Genome Initiative is collaborating with product manufacturers and the philanthropic community to build an open-source database to analyze the content, design, manufacturing processes and energy use of the 100,000 industrial chemicals-in-commerce. These chemicals make virtually all materials and products worldwide.
Our goal is to produce the map of the environmental footprints of all products by first establishing the carbon footprint of the industrial chemicals used, a critical base of any product. It will estimate emissions and greenhouse gas intensity data not currently available and provide the means for Scope 3 reporting of the indirect emissions of a company’s manufactured products and the upstream and downstream activities in its value chain.
Our vision is that with this next generation life cycle inventory data, companies will no longer have to risk relying on imprecise emissions measures that use industry averages. They’ll be able to respond confidently to policymakers, investors and consumers who want better climate-risk information to inform decision making. The database will allow firms to accurately measure, manage and minimize their impact on the environment and on human health, improve their product designs and supply chains while lowering costs as they achieve greater efficiencies.
We envision the project will also yield other large, unforeseen economic benefits and health benefits as we have learned from the evolution for mapping the human genome.