Leading up to the GreenBiz Innovation Forum, GreenerDesign.com editor Jonathan Bardelline spoke with John Warner, founder of the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry and one of the fathers of green chemistry, about how green chemistry syncs up with innovation within companies.

Jonathan Bardelline: What is the relationship between green chemistry and innovation in businesses? Is green chemistry driving innovation, or are companies turning to and exploring green chemistry as an attempt to be innovative?

John Warner: I think it's a little bit of both. You know, 10 years ago, I would say that sustainability is a critical component and that technologies must not sacrifice performance and must not sacrifice cost while accomplishing goals of sustainability. I think the marketplace is slowly but positively evolving to now have a little tolerance for additional cost, which I think is quite a big change in society's perception. Now, it's not a huge tolerance, but there's a little bit of tolerance. And that, when we step back and think about it, indicates a lot.

I really believe that sustainability is the biggest impediment to success in the marketplace today. It's not technology. It's not business. It's actually issues around sustainability. And what I mean is the environmental regulations are a rapidly evolving landscape. We have new regulations, new legislation, bans of certain molecules, public opinion on certain sustainability issues.

I really believe that now sustainability has become a critical component to success. And yet, if we look at the way that we educate people in science and technology, it's still absent from their education. In the United States and the world, for that matter, you get an undergraduate degree and a PhD in chemistry, you get a piece of paper, patted on the top of the head and told, "Go work in industry to invent new technologies," and you never have a course in toxicology and environmental impacts.

JB: With companies looking at green chemistry and it becoming a bigger issue, in what areas is it having the biggest impact right now?

JW: At this point, green chemistry is still nascent. It's only been around for 12 years, 13 years. It's not something that's mainstream, and so it's still evolving. But every major company that I know of has a program to address certain research development and manufacturing processes around green chemistry.

When you look at the cost of waste in a manufacturing process, when you factor in the transportation, storage issues, the regulatory issues, the training and safety issues, the potential liability, there's a hidden but massive and increasing cost for doing things in a non-sustainable way.

And so companies get that, and they want to have technologies that are more competitive, and they're realizing that sustainability, through green chemistry, is not a set of handcuffs. It's not an added cost. It's actually an economic benefit. It reduces cost. The problem is it's very unlikely that the people working in these companies, the scientists and the technologists, have any training or ability to deliver green chemistry technology. So the desire is there. The ability isn't.

JB: What are some of the other barriers that companies and the larger world of green chemistry are facing?

JW: The biggest issue is perception. It's a very strained reality that we face, that change is a difficult thing to wrap our heads around. Historically, 10 or 15 years ago, I think it was a valid perception that green technologies were expensive and inferior. That's no longer the case. I think that the science has evolved, but there are people still living in the past. And immediately, when they hear green, they think more expensive and less efficient. That perception is a hindrance.

Now, if they actually pay attention to what's going on in the world, they realize that that's no longer the case. There is the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge award program. It's the only award given by the president of the United States with the word chemistry in the title. It's been going on for 14 years. It was created in the Clinton administration, transferred to the Bush administration and onto the Obama administration. So it's non-partisan, looking at technologies that accomplish pollution prevention actively through reduced toxicities and environmental impact, but also have superior performance and costs.

Every year, five awards are given, and there's about 120 to 150 nominations. And there's a celebration of five technologies every year that demonstrate not only the technical achievements but the market achievements as well.

So the perception that it can't be done or it's difficult is erroneous. There is tangible evidence, but it's still just the tip of the iceberg because, again, the widespread technical competence of the United States still hasn't met that challenge. We don't have the skill set to truly do this. And so when we do finally figure that out and have a wholesale change in the way that we educate scientists, that is the key to innovation.