Throughout its history, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has evaluated technologies to determine their effectiveness in monitoring, preventing, controlling, and cleaning up pollution. Since the early 1990s, however, numerous government and private groups have determined that the lack of an organized and ongoing program to produce independent, credible performance data is a major impediment to the development and use of innovative environmental technology. Such data are needed by technology buyers and permitters, both in the United States and abroad, to make informed technology decisions. To overcome this impediment, EPA established a program to accelerate the implementation of environmental technology through objective verification and reporting of technology performance. In October 1995, the Environmental Technology Verification (ETV) Program was established by EPA. The ETV Program develops testing protocols and verifies the performance of innovative technologies that have the potential to improve protection of human health and the environment.

The goal of ETV is to provide credible performance data for commercial-ready environmental
technologies to speed their implementation for the benefi t of vendors, purchasers, permitters, and the public.

Since its inception in 1995, ETV has verified more than 300 environmental technologies and developed more than 80 protocols for technology testing. A survey of participating vendors completed in 2001 showed overwhelming support for the ETV Program and its results. Responses indicated that 73 percent of the vendors were using ETV information in product marketing, and 92 percent of those surveyed responded that they would recommend ETV to other vendors. To date, more than 45 vendors
have had multiple products verified by ETV.