CAMBRIDGE, — The long-held, unspoken assumption that chemistry almost by definition has to be hazardous and dangerous has affected the financial soundness of companies as much as it affects the environment.
John C. Warner, director of University of Massachusetts Lowell's Center for Green Chemistry, argues in Turning the Ship, a five-week online dialogue convened by the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and The Clark Group (and hosted by GreenBiz.com here), that industry's reliance on these dangerous chemicals has widespread financial effects on aspects of daily business ranging from storage to treatment to worker health and safety to corporate reputations.
Warner lays out the 12 "Principles of Green Chemistry," and explains how they offer the solution to so many of the problems raised by industrialization:
1. Prevention. It is better to prevent waste than to treat or clean up waste after it is formed.
2. Atom Economy. Synthetic methods should be designed to maximize the incorporation of all materials used in the process into the final product.
3. Less Hazardous Chemical Synthesis. Whenever practicable, synthetic methodologies should be designed to use and generate substances that possess little or no toxicity to human health and the environment.
4. Designing Safer Chemicals. Chemical products should be designed to preserve efficacy of the function while reducing toxicity.
5. Safer Solvents and Auxiliaries. The use of auxiliary substances (solvents, separation agents, etc.) should be made unnecessary whenever possible and, when used, innocuous.
6. Design for Energy Efficiency. Energy requirements should be recognized for their environmental and economic impacts and should be minimized. Synthetic methods should be conducted at ambient temperature and pressure.
7. Use of Renewable Feedstocks. A raw material or feedstock should be renewable rather than depleting whenever technically and economically practical.
8. Reduce Derivatives. Unnecessary derivatization (blocking group, protection/deprotection, temporary modification of physical/chemical processes) should be avoided whenever possible.
9. Catalysis. Catalytic reagents (as selective as possible) are superior to stoichiometric reagents.
10. Design for Degradation. Chemical products should be designed so that at the end of their function they do not persist in the environment and instead break down into innocuous degradation products.
11. Real-time Analysis for Pollution Prevention.
Analytical methodologies need to be further developed to allow for real-time in-process monitoring and control prior to the formation of hazardous substances.
12. Inherently Safer Chemistry for Accident Prevention. Substance and the form of a substance used in a chemical process should be chosen so as to minimize the potential for chemical accidents, including releases, explosions, and fires.
The Turning the Ship dialogue has brought together leaders from a variety of fields to explore market and policy barriers that may be inhibiting adoption of environmentally sustainable practices by U.S. businesses. In addition to Warner, other participants in the discussion include Dan Esty, Director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy; Truman Semans, Director for Markets and Business Strategy, Pew Center on Global Climate Change; Ben Packard, Director of Environmental Affairs, Starbucks Coffee Company and Reid Lifset, editor of the Journal of Industrial Ecology.
Warner's full essay, "Green Chemistry - Turning the Ship," can be found on Turning the Ship.
