Getting greener (Image: Chris Salvo/Taxi/Getty)
PASS by a chemical plant, and the plumes billowing from its smokestacks may get you thinking. What filthy concoctions are being brewed inside, and what nasty stuff is it spewing into the environment?
You could be right to worry. The chemical industry relies on many ingredients that in the wrong place are harmful to the environment, human health or both. If that turns your nagging doubt into a full-blown headache, popping a pill will only make it worse: pharmaceuticals are just one of the resulting products that few of us could do without.
Short of getting rid of our drugs, paints, plastics and textiles, what can be done? Quite a lot, actually. Beyond the bubbling syntheses that make the chemical products we all rely on, a different sort of chemical transformation is now taking place. Catalysed by yo-yoing oil prices, new regulations and pressure from consumers and retailers, industrial chemistry is getting cleaner. Products as diverse as the shoes we wear, the soap we wash with and the decaf we drink are starting to be manufactured in processes with a green tinge.
“Yo-yoing oil prices, new regulations and pressure from retailers and consumers are all making chemistry go green”
The concept of “green chemistry” dates back to the mid-1990s, when two US chemists, Paul Anastas and John Warner, were lamenting that most strategies to combat pollution focused on cleaning up messes rather then preventing them in the first place. They set out a 12-point manifesto for a better way of working, starting with the tenet that it is better to avoid waste than to…
