EPA Announces Availability of up to $600K to Support Healthy, Resilient and Sustainable Communities in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and Nine Tribal Nations
Environmental News
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Region 7 Healthy, Resilient, and Sustainable Materials Management Grant program will support Midwestern communities as they develop and implement source reduction, reuse and recycling and sustainable materials management systems that help make their communities, safer, healthier, and more resilient.
“This is a good opportunity for projects that creatively address sustainability at a local level. Local solutions can result in tangible local health improvements,” said Acting Region 7 Administrator Ed Chu. “We expect the best projects to serve as examples to other communities across the Midwest and Great Plains and pave the way to a more sustainable future.”
EPA anticipates making three to six individual awards ranging from $50,000 to $200,000, each with a project period of up to two years. Eligible entities include states; local, county and tribal governments; interstate and intrastate government agencies and instrumentalities; public educational institutions; and nonprofit organizations that are not 501(c)(4) organizations that lobby, including nonprofit educational institutions and nonprofit hospitals. Applications for grant awards must be submitted by May 3, 2021.
EPA is seeking applications for projects that support Sustainable Materials Management (SMM) through research, investigation, study, demonstration, education and training. SMM is a systemic approach to using materials more productively over their life cycles. It represents a change in how our society thinks about the use of natural resources and environmental protection. By looking at a product's life cycle, we can find new opportunities to reduce environmental impacts, conserve resources, and reduce costs.
EPA’s SMM program supports efforts and projects to help build community health by reducing the use, release and exposure to toxic chemicals; using life-cycle approaches to reduce the health and environmental impacts of materials use; and employing upstream solutions that reduce the need and cost of environmental cleanup and pollution management. Under this announcement, EPA is particularly interested in applications for projects that improve community health, resiliency and sustainability through source reduction, reuse and recycling, which are key pillars of EPA’s SMM hierarchy.
EPA is also seeking SMM project proposals that promote waste prevention, waste minimization, household hazardous waste, and recovery and reuse of materials. SMM projects could include supporting market development for salvaged construction materials, or reducing wasted food through outreach and tools for communities, local and tribal governments, and private businesses following EPA’s food recovery hierarchy. Projects could also include outreach to public or private buyers of materials or products about buying packaging products with recycled content or investigating process innovations such as reusable packaging systems or zero packaging.
Learn more about this opportunity and how to apply for it.
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