The Center for Clean Products and Clean Technologies
The Center for Clean Products and Clean Technologies (CCPCT) at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has a mission to develop, evaluate, and promote cleaner products and cleaner technologies that minimize pollution at the source and contribute to long-term sustainable development. The CCPCT focuses on the earliest stages of pollution prevention: the design of products and the processes by which they are made.
The CCPCT was established in 1992 through a grant from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and has been directed by Gary Davis over the past decade. It is currently operating under the leadership of Jack Barkenbus, executive director of the University of Tennessee's Energy, Environment and Resources Center (EERC) while Davis is on a leave of absence. CCPCT has been a unit of EERC since it's founding.
CCPCT's goals are to:
• Serve as a catalyst for cleaner products and cleaner technologies by working with manufacturers, government agencies, consumers, and the general public.
• Assist manufacturers and other stakeholders in cooperative efforts to design and redesign products and processes to reduce life-cycle environmental impacts.
• Provide reliable information on the environmental benefits, performance, and economic feasibility of cleaner products and cleaner technologies.
• Support the educational mission of the University of Tennessee by providing students with an opportunity to gain experience in researching cleaner products and technologies.
Evaluating a product's overall environmental impact calls for in-depth, multidisciplinary life-cycle evaluation. CCPCT utilizes the quantitative tool of live-cycle assessment (LCA) to compare the environmental profiles of products and has developed a life-cycle design software tool to assist product designers. Another tool for this kind of evaluation is the cleaner technologies substitutes assessment (CTSA), which CCPCT developed in conjunction with the U.S. EPA's Design for the Environment Program. CTSAs provide details on alternative production processes and chemicals, including performance and cost analysis.
In keeping with its commitment to reduce pollution and waste, CCPCT has also pioneered the principle of extended product responsibility in the United States, and it assisted the President's Council on Sustainable Development in shaping recommendations for the principle's implementation. The principle maintains that, throughout the product chain, companies and individuals must accept and share responsibility for minimizing the adverse environmental impacts of the whole life cycle of the products they produce and use.
The CCPCT is staffed by an interdisciplinary team of engineers, policy analysts, and environmental scientists who conduct focused research and help shape local, state, and federal policy initiatives. CCPCT's core staff members collaborate with University of Tennessee faculty and graduate students from many disciplines, including chemical engineering, industrial engineering, environmental engineering, toxicology, law, economics, and chemistry.
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