M9.3 Blog: Green Chemistry

Green chemistry is the design of chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use or generation of hazardous substances. Green chemistry applies across the life cycle of a chemical product, including its design, manufacture, use, and ultimate disposal. Green chemistry is also known as sustainable chemistry.

Green chemistry:

• Prevents pollution at the molecular level
• Is a philosophy that applies to all areas of chemistry, not a single discipline of chemistry
• Applies innovative scientific solutions to real-world environmental problems
• Results in source reduction (Links to an external site.) because it prevents the generation of pollution
• Reduces the negative impacts of chemical products and processes on human health and the environment
• Lessens and sometimes eliminates hazard from existing products and processes
• Designs chemical products and processes to reduce their intrinsic hazards

Green chemistry reduces pollution at its source by minimizing or eliminating the hazards of chemical feedstocks, reagents, solvents, and products.

This is unlike cleaning up pollution (also called remediation), which involves treating waste streams (end-of-the-pipe treatment) or cleanup of environmental spills and other releases. Remediation may include separating hazardous chemicals from other materials, then treating them so they are no longer hazardous or concentrating them for safe disposal. Most remediation activities do not involve green chemistry. Remediation removes hazardous materials from the environment; on the other hand, green chemistry keeps the hazardous materials out of the environment in the first place.

If a technology reduces or eliminates the hazardous chemicals used to clean up environmental contaminants, this technology would qualify as a green chemistry technology. One example is replacing a hazardous sorbent [chemical] used to capture mercury from the air for safe disposal with an effective, but nonhazardous sorbent. Using the nonhazardous sorbent means that the hazardous sorbent is never manufactured and so the remediation technology meets the definition of green chemistry.

These principles demonstrate the breadth of the concept of green chemistry:

1. Prevent waste: Design chemical syntheses to prevent waste. Leave no waste to treat or clean up.
2. Maximize atom economy: Design syntheses so that the final product contains the maximum proportion of the starting materials. Waste few or no atoms.
3. Design less hazardous chemical syntheses: Design syntheses to use and generate substances with little or no toxicity to either humans or the environment.
4. Design safer chemicals and products: Design chemical products that are fully effective yet have little or no toxicity.
5. Use safer solvents and reaction conditions: Avoid using solvents, separation agents, or other auxiliary chemicals. If you must use these chemicals, use safer ones.
6. Increase energy efficiency: Run chemical reactions at room temperature and pressure whenever possible.
7. Use renewable feedstocks: Use starting materials (also known as feedstocks) that are renewable rather than depletable. The source of renewable feedstocks is often agricultural products or the wastes of other processes; the source of depletable feedstocks is often fossil fuels (petroleum, natural gas, or coal) or mining operations.
8. Avoid chemical derivatives: Avoid using blocking or protecting groups or any temporary modifications if possible. Derivatives use additional reagents and generate waste.
9. Use catalysts, not stoichiometric reagents: Minimize waste by using catalytic reactions. Catalysts are effective in small amounts and can carry out a single reaction many times. They are preferable to stoichiometric reagents, which are used in excess and carry out a reaction only once.
10. Design chemicals and products to degrade after use: Design chemical products to break down to innocuous substances after use so that they do not accumulate in the environment.
11. Analyze in real time to prevent pollution: Include in-process, real-time monitoring and control during syntheses to minimize or eliminate the formation of byproducts.
12. Minimize the potential for accidents: Design chemicals and their physical forms (solid, liquid, or gas) to minimize the potential for chemical accidents including explosions, fires, and releases to the environment.

In collaboration with the GEF program that you learned about in your last session, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) created the Green Chemistry initiative that brings together a large research consortium led by the Centre for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale University, the German Federal Environmental Foundation, and Braskem, the largest thermoplastic resins producer in the Americas, as well as several National Cleaner Production Centres (NCPCs) from Latin America, Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. The three-year project is funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF). 

This project is the first GEF-funded global public-private partnership to bridge the gap between science-based innovation and real-world application of Green Chemistry in developing countries and economies in transition. UNIDO's major initiative on Green Chemistry aims to address the challenges posed by hazardous chemicals through holistic, wide-ranging actions and the preventive design and management of chemicals and waste.

BLOG about your thoughts on green chemistry. Have you heard of or seen any examples of green chemistry in your work or in daily life? What are your thoughts on the 12 principles of green chemistry? 


I think the green chemistry initiative is an important step for the scientific community to take in correcting the course on harmful chemicals we have produced in this industry over the last century. I think that green chemistry is important and I believe the 12 principles of green chemistry should be adopted by all companies and countries across the globe. I think governments should do more to enforce these principles and that they should become the minimum standard that we should all have to adhere to. I firmly believe that this is the only way that we can make any meaningful progress in chemical industries to stop harming human health for the sake of profits.