EPA News Release:

California’s Amgen, Provivi, UC Davis Win EPA’s Green Chemistry Challenge Awards

SAN FRANCISCO — Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the winners of the 2022 Green Chemistry Challenge Awards, with three of the five awardees based in California. Green chemistry is the design of chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate the generation and use of hazardous substances. This year’s winners have developed new and innovative green chemistry technologies that provide solutions to significant environmental challenges and spur innovation and economic development. In support of the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to tackle the climate crisis, EPA added a new award category this year that recognizes technology that reduces or eliminates greenhouse gas emissions. 

“EPA encourages the use of innovative green chemistry, to help reduce or even eliminate the generation of hazardous substances, lowering the burden of potential environmental contamination,” said EPA Pacific Southwest Regional Administrator Martha Guzman. “We are proud to recognize these awardees who are working to develop innovative green chemistry, recycling and safer manufacturing practices and safer products. Their efforts help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce solvent waste, and protect pollinators.”

The 2022 California winners are:

• Amgen, Thousand Oaks, California, for an improved manufacturing process for LUMAKRAS™ (sotorasib), a novel drug for the treatment of certain non-small cell lung cancers. Amgen’s innovation decreased manufacturing time, the amount of solvent waste generated, and established a recycling process for a high-value waste stream.
• Provivi, Santa Monica, California, for creating ProviviFAW®, a biological pheromone-based product that controls the fall armyworm, a destructive pest of corn. The product’s pheromone active ingredients are produced through innovative green chemistry using renewable plant oils. ProviviFAW™ can reduce the need for conventional pesticides, which can be harmful to beneficial insects, such as pollinators.
• Professor Mark Mascal of the University of California, Davis, California, in partnership with Origin Materials, for a technology that reduces greenhouse gas emissions by producing chemicals for making polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic from biomass derived from sugar fructose rather than petroleum. This novel chemistry could have significant climate impacts by replacing fossil-based products with carbon-neutral, biobased products, especially when the technology is scaled to an entire industry.

“At Amgen, we are committed to developing manufacturing processes that minimize our impact to the environment. I am excited that the EPA has recognized Amgen with the 2022 Green Chemistry Challenge Award for developing a greener manufacturing process for one of Amgen’s oncology medicines,” said Andrew Parsons, Principal Scientist at Amgen, one of the award winners. “Since Amgen also received this award in 2017, this year’s recognition is a validation to Amgen’s continued focus on environmental sustainability and green chemistry.”

“We at Provivi are very honored by this award and would like to thank the EPA for recognizing our contributions to green chemistry and making agriculture more sustainable, most notably with our ProviviFAW™ product for controlling the destructive fall armyworm in corn crops,” said Peter Meinhold, Provivi Co-Founder and CTO. “Provivi invented and scaled two new pheromone synthesis platforms that are based on innovative metathesis and fermentation technologies. The resulting pheromones are used in crop protection products that have a non-toxic mode of action and reduce the need for conventional pesticides.”

"We are thrilled that the EPA is recognizing the years of hard work my lab at UC Davis has put into the development of this biomass-to-chemicals process, and the ingenuity of the team at Origin Materials in using it to bring carbon-negative materials to the market,” said Mark Mascal, Professor in the Department of Chemistry at University of California, Davis, one of the award winners. “It is highly rewarding to play even a small part in helping the US meet its sustainable development goals.”

EPA recognized the winners today during the American Chemical Society Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference. Since 1996, EPA and the American Chemical Society, which co-sponsor the awards, have received more than 1,800 nominations and presented awards to 133 technologies that decrease hazardous chemicals and resources, reduce costs, protect public health, and spur economic growth. Winning technologies are responsible for reducing the use or generation of nearly one billion pounds of hazardous chemicals, saving over 20 billion gallons of water and eliminating nearly eight billion pounds of carbon dioxide equivalents released to the air.

An independent panel of technical experts convened by the American Chemical Society Green Chemistry Institute formally judged the 2022 submissions and made recommendations to EPA for the 2022 winners.

Learn more information about the Green Chemistry Challenge Awards

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