Life Cycle Thinking Blog - Toxics Policy

Nice summary of the state of the California Green Chemistry Initiative:
The Recorder: CA Green Chemistry Law Has Lawyers, Industry on Alert

Hard to believe California can manage this mess without years of litigation. This isn’t just putting as label on that customers will ignore like Prop 65 (although it has caused a lot of substitution activity and its share of NGO lawsuits against companies). It will mean a load of company work looking for the “right” alternatives based on moving target analyses and potential mischief for government blacklisting of companies and their products. Not to mention that California is broke and doesn’t have the wherewithal to pay bureaucrats to do the reviews required. A source of exorbitant fees to pay down state debt?

California listened to some of the public comments on their proposed Safer Consumer Product Alternatives regulation (see earlier blog) and simplified it some. Details can be found here, with 15 days to get in comments.
Jumping through the hoops of Chemicals and Products Under Consideration and preparing a Tier I Alternatives Assessment are gone. Now it will just be proposed and final Chemicals of Concern and Priority Products. Notification that a Chemical of Concern is in a consumer product also will have less confidential business information. But there will still be a boatload of work to do Alternatives Assessments on Priority Products.