Green Product Design
Making Oregon the epicenter for green product research, education and leadership.
Tens of thousands of chemicals and materials are embedded in modern society. Whether you're talking about life-saving pharmaceuticals, consumer products, performance plastics, high-tech electronics, other still another material, each somehow enhances the human existence. Every day, new compounds are developed to advance our standard of living. Each new advance, however, raises fresh concerns about environmental impacts.
Where are the solutions, interventions and cures for these mounting problems?
Since the mid-1990’s, chemists have pioneered a new field, green chemistry, that provides solutions that minimize the impact of existing and new substances on human health and the environment. The greening of industry requires society to strike the perfect balance among profit, the environmental (planet) and human benefit (people).
How can we find and enhance the synergies among people, planet, and profit?
We first need top scholars and researchers to comprehend how new products impact the environment, economic structures, and society overall.
This Big Idea seeks to establish a Green Product Design Network that will lead the world in discovering, developing and implementing greener solutions for products that provide high value for a more sustainable society, making Oregon the epicenter for green product research, education and leadership.