The importance of Green Chemistry

It has been 24 years since Paul Anastas and John Warner formulated the Twelve principles of Green Chemistry. Those principles should be considered in every chemical laboratory or company because implementing them will make technologies and processes more sustainable. I have read those principles a hundred times, but now, I had the great opportunity to attend Anastas’es lecture in person at the 9th IUPAC International Conference on Green Chemistry in Athens. It was an excellent talk that encouraged me in the work we do. I got a strong feeling that Green Chemistry will be the key direction in the chemical industry in the following years. The reason is easy. Life conditions are getting worse and our society is challenged with large waste production or increasing CO₂ emissions. But there, I felt a huge passion from many researchers across the World to deal with those issues. I saw new concepts on biomass and waste valorizations, and new approaches that would remove unnecessary solvents from chemical synthesis or transformation of CO₂ or plastics into valuable chemicals. In all of those topics, the catalyst played a key role. I am happy I could be part of a chemical society that wants to change our life environment. I contributed to the discussion with my lecture called “Development of Cr-free hydrogenolysis catalyst” which also solves a particular problem by replacing the toxic catalyst.