Earth Equity News

Calling All Chemists. By Steven K. Ritter, Chemical & Engineering News, August 18, 2008. "'The challenges of sustainability are among the most complex and daunting ever faced by society,' [says Paul Anastas… director of the Center for Green Chemistry & Green Engineering at Yale University]. 'It may well be that only by working at the most fundamental level -- the molecular level -- that we can address these complex global issues in an environmentally and economically sustainable manner…' In the mid-1990s, Anastas and Polaroid's John C. Warner, now president and [CTO] at the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry, in Woburn, Mass., codified the ideas of green chemistry and made them more broadly available to the scientific community through the '12 Principles of Green Chemistry.' …The principles… now serve a crosscutting role throughout science and engineering by prompting researchers to efficiently utilize raw materials and avoid toxic and/or hazardous reagents and solvents… 'We need armies of students to go into fields of chemistry, chemical engineering, and materials science,' [Warner] says. 'They must learn how to make more sustainable products. It's our job to manipulate molecules and be at the front end to provide alternatives. We are on the supply side of the sustainability curve.'"