Meet the Scientists
[Green chemistry comes at the challenges of
sustainability with the recognition that everything we
see, touch, and feel is a chemical. . . ]
Soon after, in 1991, Dr. Paul T. Anastas coined a new term, “green chemistry,” and established the Green Chemistry program at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — the
EPA. Anastas later headed the ACS’s Green Chemistry Institute before moving to Yale
University.
Ivan Amato
“Green chemistry comes at the challenges of sustainability with the recognition that
everything we see, touch, and feel is a chemical, and as we look at the products and the
processes that are the basis of our society and our economy, if we care about sustainability, environmental protection, that ranges from energy to the materials that we use,
green chemistry shows us how to design things fundamentally so that they’re sustainable
and environmentally benign.”
A Win–Win Situation
Together with colleague Dr. John Warner, who now heads the Warner Babcock Institute for
Green Chemistry, Dr. Anastas has led the charge to radically alter the way we make and use
chemicals. At first, the two scientists met significant resistance to the idea that the principles of sustainability must be an integral part of all good manufacturing processes. But as
Dr. Anastas explains, making things in a sustainable manner is not all about conserving
resources and protecting the environment.
Paul T. Anastas, Ph.D.
“The wonderful thing about green chemistry, and people think I’m joking when they ask
me how did I come up with this term green chemistry, but I tell them that green is the
color of the environment, but it also happens to be in the U.S. the color of our money, so
what we’re talking about is being able to meet our environmental and economic goals
simultaneously. It’s no longer simply a trade-off between one or the other. It’s aligning
environment and economics hand in hand and synergistically.”
Many great examples of how green chemistry can be a win–win proposition for our
environment and our pocketbooks can be found among the winners of the coveted Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Awards, an annual program administered by the EPA.
Since the program’s inception in 1995, it has recognized 67 groundbreaking developments
that together have reduced chemical use by some 1. 1 billion pounds over the past 13 years.
That’s 1. 1 billion pounds of chemicals that manufacturers didn’t have to purchase. And since
manufacturers didn’t have to pay for those chemicals, ultimately, neither did consumers. The
EPA estimates that in this year alone, these technologies will eliminate the need for 193 million pounds of hazardous chemicals and solvents and save 21 billion gallons of water. Green
is indeed the color of money.
Rajender S. Varma, Ph.D.
The Three “Rs” in Sustainability
Most of us are familiar with the universal recycling symbol, three arrows chasing each other
around the sides of a triangle. The arrows stand for the three Rs of sustainability — reduce,
reuse, and recycle. Green chemistry contributes to each of these three Rs.
One chemist whose work typifies a green chemistry approach is Joseph DeSimone of the
University of North Carolina and North Carolina State University. Dr. DeSimone is a past
winner of the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award. He is also this year’s recipient of the prestigious Lemelson–MIT Award, considered by many to be the Nobel Prize
for inventors. Since the early days of his career, Dr. DeSimone has focused his research on
developing new ways of making polymers that follow the principles of green chemistry.
