January 21, 2005

The Department of Environmental Quality today announced that applications for Community Pollution Prevention (P2) grants are being accepted through April 1, 2005.

The Community P2 Grant Program seeks to bring local government, businesses, planning agencies, and residents together to address community pollution issues. The grants announced today seek to address waste reduction of school chemicals by not only cleaning out excess, legacy, unused, and improperly stored chemicals, but by going a step further and implementing mechanisms in schools for minimizing the use of toxic chemicals.

A total of $250,000 in funding is available through the Michigan Community P2 Grant Program. The DEQ will provide matching grants to schools, school districts, county governments, local health departments, municipalities and regional planning agencies to fund school chemical waste reduction.

The following are examples of activities that would qualify for funding under this grant program:

• Develop a detailed chemical inventory of ALL chemicals used in the
  school.

• Set up centralized purchasing of chemicals and link purchasing
  requests into an inventory system so that excess chemicals in
  stock can be used before buying more.

• Store materials within centralized chemical storage areas and
  implement a system to identify purchase dates and the ages of all
  chemicals in inventory.

• Set up a program to clean out all chemicals in the school, including
  arts, automotive, industrial arts departments and custodial and
  landscaping supplies.

• Implement microscale or small-scale chemistry.

• Provide training on proper lab chemical management with an
  emphasis on P2 for both staff and students.

For more information contact the DEQ, Environmental Science and Services Division at 1 800-662-9278. To access the RFP go to: www.deq.state.mi.us/documents/deq-ess-p2-communityrfp.pdf.

Editor’s note: DEQ news releases are available on the department’s Internet home page at www.michigan.gov/deq.

Revised January 21, 2005 by Pat Watson