By: Deborah Johnson Wood
The recently formed Green Materials and Chemicals Users Group is working to reduce or eliminate harmful chemicals in West Michigan manufacturing processes and products. Last year the adoption of the BIFMA E3 Sustainability Standard for furniture manufacturing encouraged the formation of the group by identifying the chemicals most harmful to humans and the environment.
Bill Stough and Clinton Boyd of Grand Rapids-based Sustainable Research Group (SRG) led the charge on the development of the BIFMA E3. Now they’re leading the green materials users group, which is a partnership between the Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center (MMTC) and Right Place Inc.
“We want to move away from petroleum-based products as fast as we can,” Stough says. “Our goal is that, at the end of a product’s life, it should be able to be reused for something else because it contains no hazardous chemicals, or it can be composted and used to grow plants to produce new raw materials.”
The group is just beginning to market itself with the aim of attracting product designers, design for the environment specialists, materials purchasers, and chemists from a wide spectrum of industries.
“This group will give West Michigan a head start in the marketplace on offering environmentally safer products to their customers,” Stough says. “This whole evolving area of green chemistry affects all of us; whatever you do during a day, you’re interacting with purposefully designed chemistry—your keyboard, your phone, your office furniture. We’re sure our work will lead to innovation and new products.”
Source: Bill Stough, Sustainable Research Group; Brian Walquist, Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center
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Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].
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