Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award

Green chemistry, also called sustainable chemistry, is an area of chemistry and chemical engineering focused on the designing of products and processes that minimize the use and generation of hazardous substances. Whereas environmental chemistry focuses on the effects of polluting chemicals on nature, green chemistry focuses on technological approaches to preventing pollution and reducing consumption of nonrenewable resources.

The overarching goals of green chemistry—namely, more resource-efficient and inherently safer design of molecules, materials, products, and processes—can be pursued in a wide range of contexts.

Green chemistry emerged from a variety of existing ideas and research efforts (such as atom economy and catalysis) in the period leading up to the 1990s, in the context of increasing attention to problems of chemical pollution and resource depletion. The development of green chemistry in Europe and the United States was linked to a shift in environmental problem-solving strategies: a movement from command and control regulation and mandated reduction of industrial emissions at the "end of the pipe," toward the active prevention of pollution through the innovative design of production technologies themselves. The set of concepts now recognized as green chemistry coalesced in the mid- to late-1990s, along with broader adoption of the term (which prevailed over competing terms such as "clean" and "sustainable" chemistry).

In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency played a significant early role in fostering green chemistry through its pollution prevention programs, funding, and professional coordination. At the same time in the United Kingdom, researchers at the University of York contributed to the establishment of the Green Chemistry Network within the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the launch of the journal Green Chemistry.

In 1998, Paul Anastas (who then directed the Green Chemistry Program at the US EPA) and John C. Warner (then of Polaroid Corporation) published a set of principles to guide the practice of green chemistry. The twelve principles address a range of ways to reduce the environmental and health impacts of chemical production, and also indicate research priorities for the development of green chemistry technologies.

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