Paul T. Anastas

1: Introduction. 2: What is Green Chemistry?. 3: Tools of Green Chemistry. 4: Principles of Green Chemistry. 5: Evaluating the Impacts of Chemistry. 6: Evaluating Feedstocks and Starting Materials. 7: Evaluating Reaction Types. 8: Evaluation of Methods to Design Safer Chemicals. 9: Illustrative Examples. 10: Future Trends in Green Chemistry

Green Chemistry is a relatively new emerging field that strives to work at the molecular level to achieve sustainability. The field has received widespread interest in the past decade due to its ability to harness chemical innovation to meet environmental and economic goals simultaneously. Green Chemistry has a framework of a cohesive set of Twelve Principles, which have been systematically surveyed in this critical review. This article covers the concepts of design and the scientific philosophy of Green Chemistry with a set of illustrative examples. Future trends in Green Chemistry are discussed with the challenge of using the Principles as a cohesive design system (93 references).

Over the course of the past decade, green chemistry has demonstrated how fundamental scientific methodologies can protect human health and the environment in an economically beneficial manner. Significant progress is being made in several key research areas, such as catalysis, the design of safer chemicals and environmentally benign solvents, and the development of renewable feedstocks. Current and future chemists are being trained to design products and processes with an increased awareness for environmental impact. Outreach activities within the green chemistry community highlight the potential for chemistry to solve many of the global environmental challenges we now face. The origins and basis of green chemistry chart a course for achieving environmental and economic prosperity inherent in a sustainable world.

ADVERTISEMENT RETURN TO ISSUEPREVFeaturesNEXTPeer Reviewed: Design Through the 12 Principles of Green EngineeringSustainability requires objectives at the molecular, product, process, and system levels.Paul T. Anastas and Julie B. ZimmermanCite this: Environ. Sci. Technol. 2003, 37, 5, 94A–101APublication Date (Web):March 1, 2003Publication History Published online1 March 2003Published inissue 1 March 2003https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/es032373ghttps://doi.org/10.1021/es032373gnewsACS Publications. This publication is available under these Terms of Use. Request reuse permissions This publication is free to access through this site. Learn MoreArticle Views35897Altmetric-Citations945LEARN ABOUT THESE METRICSArticle Views are the COUNTER-compliant sum of full text article downloads since November 2008 (both PDF and HTML) across all institutions and individuals. These metrics are regularly updated to reflect usage leading up to the last few days.Citations are the number of other articles citing this article, calculated by Crossref and updated daily. Find more information about Crossref citation counts.The Altmetric Attention Score is a quantitative measure of the attention that a research article has received online. Clicking on the donut icon will load a page at altmetric.com with additional details about the score and the social media presence for the given article. Find more information on the Altmetric Attention Score and how the score is calculated. Share Add toView InAdd Full Text with ReferenceAdd Description ExportRISCitationCitation and abstractCitation and referencesMore Options Share onFacebookTwitterWechatLinked InRedditEmail PDF (324 KB) Get e-Alertsclose Get e-Alerts

The material basis of a sustainable society will depend on chemical products and processes that are designed following principles that make them conducive to life. Important inherent properties of molecules need to be considered from the earliest stage-the design stage-to address whether compounds and processes are depleting versus renewable, toxic versus benign, and persistent versus readily degradable. Products, feedstocks, and manufacturing processes will need to integrate the principles of green chemistry and green engineering under an expanded definition of performance that includes sustainability considerations. This transformation will require the best of the traditions of science and innovation coupled with new emerging systems thinking and systems design that begins at the molecular level and results in a positive impact on the global scale.