Molecular Miracle Workers
Green chemist Paul Anastas on making the world less toxic and more convenient
Utne Reader July / August 2007
Kevin Krajick OnEarth
Yale professor Paul Anastas is considered the father of green chemistry, a field he defines as 'the design of chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances.' He talks about the innovations in this burgeoning field and why chemists have a special responsibility to the environment.
RELATED CONTENT
Noun, singular: A pejorative term lobbed at new buildings, both residential and commercial, that ar...
Singer Al Green and poet Rainer Maria Rilke share a sense of the sublime...
How a good idea can make it into the mainstream....
By highlighting a community’s green features—compost drop sites, green space, community gardens—Bra...
A Seattle auto repair shop has sparked a clean-fuel movement in the Puget Sound area.......
Many people assume chemists are evil--they inevitably cause pollution.
People don't know we have the option of doing things green. They think that in order to have cars, computers, and other modern conveniences, we need to generate all kinds of nasty poisons. Green chemistry is disproving that myth every day.
What's really new about it?
We're touching on something that historically has not been done, which is to design molecules with an eye to consequences right from the start. If you just try to deal with a particular hazardous outcome--cancer or poisoning or explosions--then you're addressing things piecemeal. If you go back down to the molecular architecture, you can address a wide range of issues.
Has green chemistry actually taken hold anywhere?
I could give you hundreds of examples of award-winning technologies--used by companies in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Italy--that have eliminated literally billions of pounds of hazardous substances. It goes from the way we make pharmaceuticals or electronics to the way we raise crops or paint the bottoms of boats. That said, for every one process or product that uses green chemistry, there may be a hundred or more that have yet to be considered.
Give me a few examples of things we're using now, or will be using soon.
Polylactic acid is a plastic whose molecule is made from potatoes, corn, and other plant sources. Wal-Mart put in multimillion-pound orders a year ago for cups, soup containers, food packaging--it's just getting going. There's also supercritical carbon dioxide--that is, CO2 put under high pressure so that it becomes a fluid [a form in which it does not contribute to greenhouse gas emissions]. It's now used in many processes that previously used some fairly toxic solvents. That includes decaffeinating coffee, which historically used methylene chloride, a cancer-causing suspect that is also used for stripping paint. CO2 is also used in dry cleaning, which up to now has typically used a toxic chemical called PCE.
So why aren't more businesses using these new techniques?
The replacement cost of machinery is a big part of the equation. Take dry cleaning, for example. CO2 itself is vastly cheaper than PCE, but a new machine costs somewhere around $40,000. Most dry cleaners are mom-and-pop shops, and they can't afford to throw away a 'perfectly good' machine. There should be a whole portfolio of incentives for industries to overcome this.