BioH™ Bulletin: Choosing Responsibly Goes Mainstream

Cargill Receives Presidential Award for Green Chemistry

According to a preliminary Life Cycle Analysis, replacing petroleum-based polyols with BiOH polyols leads to a 36% reduction in carbon dioxide equivalent emissions. Plus, for every million pounds of BiOH polyol that replace petroleum-based polyols, about 2,200 barrels of crude oil are saved. These advances helped secure the recognition for Cargill chemists.

Cargill’s BiOH polyols, the first commercially successful bio-based polyol used in flexible foams, has won the 2007 President’s Green Chemistry Award. Cargill, winner of the Designing Greener Chemicals category, was one of five recipients honored June 26 in a ceremony at the National Academy of Sciences.

Sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Presidential Green Chemistry Award promotes innovative chemical technologies that reduce negative impacts on human health and the environment compared to the current state of the art. An independent panel, selected by the American Chemical Society, judges the nominations.

This former 4-H Club member from a family farm in Iowa is set up for agribusiness and has just the right chemistry to assist Cargill in its pursuit of renewable-based products.

In 2006, Cargill’s BiOH polyols earned a Technology Innovation Award from the Alliance for the Polyurethanes Industry. In March of this year, it won a Sustainability Award from the Society of Plastics Engineers.

In addition, this is the second time a Cargill business has landed a Presidential Green Chemistry Award. In 2002, Cargill’s corn-based polymers business, NatureWorks (then known as Cargill Dow), won in the Greener Reaction Conditions category.

For more information, visit
www.epa.gov/greenchemistry/pubs/pgcc/presgcc.html