The name comes from a question Barry Trost asked in 1991: when you run a reaction, how many of the atoms you put in end up in the thing you wanted? For most of the history of industrial chemistry, nobody kept close track of the rest.
Green chemistry is the field that started keeping track. Paul Anastas and John Warner wrote down its twelve principles in 1998, and they read like common sense: make less waste instead of cleaning it up later, use safer solvents, use catalysts instead of reagents that get used up, and design products that break down when they’re done.
This blog tells the stories behind those principles. Each post picks one real process, such as a painkiller, a cup of decaf, or a diabetes drug, and looks at what was changed to make it cleaner and what it cost to do it.
The diagrams here are drawn for this site. If you spot a mistake, leave a comment and I’ll fix it.
