Many chemical processes are still rooted in a traditional approach that prioritises short-term gain at the expense of long-term impact. Yes, sustainability awareness is growing. But awareness isn’t the same as action. The shift toward green chemistry isn’t just about following a checklist; it’s a mindset shift. It means reimagining how we design, source, and scale chemistry processes from the ground up.
Keep reading to dive deeper into the inspiring world of green chemistry and its 12 principles.
What is green chemistry?
Green chemistry involves creating products and processes that minimise the use and production of harmful substances. This approach reduces environmental impact across a chemical product’s entire life cycle and simultaneously reduces human health impact by reducing exposure to toxic chemicals in the workplace.
From design and manufacturing through use and disposal, the goal of green chemistry is to prevent environmental pollution and harmful exposures at a molecular level.
While traditional methods usually emphasise efficiency and profitability over environmental concerns, green chemistry takes both environmental and economic objectives into account.
What are the 12 principles of green chemistry?
The 12 principles of green chemistry were developed by scientists Paul Anastas and John C. Warner. Outlined in their 1998 book Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice, these principles offer a helpful framework for developing greener chemical processes. The book also serves as the primary resource for the movement today. The 12 green chemistry principles, as described by Anastas and Warner, are:
1. Prevent waste
It’s always better to prevent waste than to treat it and clean it up after it has been created. This principle is the cornerstone of green chemistry, focusing on the “what”, with the remaining 11 principles focusing on the “how”.
By focusing on preventing waste from ever occurring in chemistry, we bypass a host of potential issues altogether. While green chemistry often focuses on making more environmentally sound processes, humans will always benefit from those choices as well. The only time when the chemical exposure risk is zero is when there’s no toxic substance to be exposed to in the first place.
2. Maximize atom economy
Atom economy is a way to measure how efficient a chemical reaction is at using raw materials. By designing syntheses where the final product uses as much of the starting materials as possible (maximizing atom economy), less waste is also created, and fewer resources are used.
3. Less hazardous chemical syntheses
While maximizing atom economy is important, it’s also considered best practice to choose safer compounds in chemical syntheses. Take adipic acid as an example. It’s used to produce nylons, polyurethanes (foams, coatings, adhesives…) and as a plasticizer for PVC (used in window frames, flooring and plumbing).
To produce adipic acid you need either benzene or glucose. Benzene is carcinogenic while glucose is harmless. A laboratory following green chemistry principles would always choose glucose instead of benzene, reducing health and safety risks but also minimizing environmental contamination and long-term ecological damage.
4. Designing safer chemicals
The fourth principle of green chemistry is to design safer chemicals that are still effective for their intended use. This means thinking about toxicity before the substance is ever produced or used.
Take flame retardants. While they help slow the spread of fire, some have been linked to endocrine disruption and bioaccumulation in wildlife. These hazards can lead to serious downstream consequences, such as costly cleanup, the need for protective equipment, and long-term health risks.
To align with this principle, scientists should develop alternatives that retain fire-retardant properties without the harmful side-effects.
5. Safer solvents and auxiliaries
The fifth principle of green chemistry focuses on eliminating the need for or choosing safer solvents and auxiliaries for your chemical reactions. In practice, most chemical reactions require auxiliary substances such as solvents and separation agents to drive the reaction to completion and isolate the final product from the byproducts. Green chemistry advocates for the use of safer solvents and auxiliaries, such as water or ethanol, instead of undesirable ones, such as hexane or benzene.
Several companies have created solvent selection guides to help chemists select safer solvents.
6. Design for Energy Efficiency
The sixth principle aims at optimizing and minimizing energy usage during the chemical processes, on top of using greener energy sources whenever possible. The goal is to design chemical reactions to take place at ambient temperature and pressure, reducing the need for heating, cooling, or pressurizing the chemicals.
As an example, some reactions are nowadays done with the help of microwaves, reducing both energy usage and the time for syntheses to complete (think minutes instead of hours).
7. Use of renewable feedstocks
The seventh principle of green chemistry focuses on the use of renewable raw material or feedstocks in chemical processes. Examples of renewable feedstocks are algae, biomass and carbohydrates.
8. Reduce derivatives
Unnecessary derivatization (installation and removal of protecting groups in a chemical reaction) should be removed or minimized to reduce waste and optimize the chemical reaction process.
9. Catalysts
Catalysts are substances that improve the efficiency and speed up the chemical reaction, resulting in less waste and energy usage. Catalysts aren’t consumed during the process, which means that they can be re-used in many reactions.
The traditional alternative to catalysts, stoichiometric reagents, are also used to improve and speed up reactions. The key difference is that stoichiometric reagents are consumed during the chemical reaction, generating more waste in the process.
10. Design for degradation
Chemical products should be designed to be degradable to innocuous products when disposed of and not be environmentally persistent.
A good example is compostable cutlery, which eventually decomposes into non-toxic lactic acid. A worst-case scenario for what happens when this principle is ignored, is PFAS. PFAS, also known as forever chemicals, can persist in the environment for thousands of years.
11. Real-time analysis for pollution prevention
Analytical methodologies need to be further developed to allow for real-time, in-process monitoring and control prior to the formation of hazardous substances.
It’s important to get real-time feedback and to design chemical processes in a way that they can be monitored.
12. Inherently safer chemistry for accident prevention
The last principle, sometimes called the safety principle, focuses on designing chemicals to minimize the risk of chemical accidents, such as fires, explosions, and environmental releases.
With this principle we look at the ingredients of a reaction and make sure that they don’t cause any excessive hazards or risks.
A quick and easy way to reduce health and safety risks in a laboratory setting is by storing chemicals that are reactive together in different places. Another highly recommended and in most cases mandatory exercise is to immediately clean up any chemical spills in the laboratory, having consulted a safety data sheet first, to be sure of any necessary first-aid and clean-up procedures the spilled chemical would require.
What are the benefits of green chemistry?
Apart from the health & safety and sustainability benefits mentioned earlier, green chemistry also comes with several economic benefits.
From a corporate risk-management perspective, green chemistry helps companies reduce chemical risks by staying ahead of major regulations such as EU REACH in Europe, TSCA in the U.S., and CEPA in Canada. Of these, REACH alone has already banned the use of over 1,000 chemicals.
A common benefit of green chemistry can also be seen in the electricity bill. By aligning your processes with the 12 principles, you’ll eventually experience a more effective and optimized chemical process, which reduces both waste and energy use. During times when electricity prices have been known to skyrocket, these savings will have a defining effect on the entire company’s bottom line.
Similar efficiency unlocks can also be attributed to the atom economy principle, which, among other things, will lead to lower expenditure on waste disposal.
In some cases, green chemistry has led to both efficiency and productivity increases but also an objectively better product. Take Dow Chemical Company as an example, a company that managed to lower production costs by developing a polymer that improves the function of titanium oxide, an important but expensive additive used in paint. As a result of this new polymer, less titanium oxide was needed and the amount that was used led to a better and more even finish.
Common challenges in green chemistry
While companies see numerous benefits in green chemistry, the approach doesn’t come without its challenges. A recent article in the Royal Society of Chemistry Journal compares the features between polypropylene (PP), a plastic film commonly used in food packaging, and bioplastics such as poly3-hydroxybutyrate (PHB). PP has 2x the elastic modulus of PHB-based plastics and over 3x the tensile strength.
For the plastic packaging to have any use, it needs to be air-impermeable, waterproof and printable. In other words, the solution created using green chemistry principles needs to complete its function at least as well as the material it’s supposed to replace.
At times, approaches based on green chemistry ideas can also come with a higher initial price tag compared to traditional methods.
The role of chemical management software in green chemistry
A natural step for anyone working with or supervising the use of chemicals in the workplace is to create a defined and standardized process for the replacement of harmful chemicals and components with safer alternatives, i.e. chemical substitution.
In the age of AI and rapid technological innovations, starting from scratch is neither necessary nor advised. With EcoOnline’s Chemical Substitution Software, you can quickly evaluate and compare chemicals and their hazard properties with reliable data taken straight from up-to-date safety data sheets.
What would normally be a sluggish and painstaking process can now be done in mere minutes — while leaving a clear and transparent log for inspectors and auditors.
Watch a quick 3-minute demo video today to uncover the benefits of modern Chemical Substitution Software.
