By Anna Zhenova, founder and CEO of Green Rose Chemistry a partner of Foundation Industries Ventures (FIVe) supporting innovators to embed green chemistry in new technologies, materials and processes.
Green chemistry, sometimes called sustainable chemistry, focuses on designing chemical products and processes that are safer and more sustainable, minimising negative impacts on human health and the environment throughout their lifespan from design to disposal.
While the chemical industry has long embraced efficiency and accident prevention, green chemistry is transformative in advocating for chemicals to be inherently safe—preventing harm from the design stage, rather than relying on safety procedures to minimise risk.
This is the critical shift that the industry needs and there’s a demand for high-quality, on-demand green chemistry research to tackle to problems facing the chemical industry.
As a chemist by background, I see manufacturers trying to make highly hazardous, yet high-performing chemicals more sustainable. Critically important chemicals, like solvents and polymers, are being “retrofitted’ for sustainability by making them from bio-based feedstocks or using renewable energy in manufacturing.
The problem with this approach is that it misses opportunities to turn our system into something that’s benign by design. Instead of sticking to the same hazardous chemistry, manufacturers could redesign for efficiency, circularity, and safety, stopping accidents before they happen and reducing risk to workers and neighbours.
For the chemical industry to address the climate crisis alongside safety and health and pollution concerns we need to bring this thinking out of academia and out of laboratories into manufacturing to solve real industry problems.
High-performing chemicals like solvents, surfactants, and polymers are critical to the products that make modern life possible. We know they are hazardous not just to the environment but also humans, so manufacturers try to mitigate and minimise risks.
They try to reformulate existing chemicals and material by ‘dropping-in’ bio-based ingredients, but essentially they end up with the same hazardous product with possibly a smaller carbon footprint.
But there is another way. They could look to completely replace the chemicals with safer, greener alternatives.
Innovate UK recently funded a grant to explore waterproof paint and coatings for a large manufacturer. Using a computational screening approach, the project team was able to virtually test hundreds of high performing sustainable solvents, quickly finding one safe, bio-based solvent that could replace two petrochemicals in the formulation.
With this substitution, the manufacturer was able to achieve the same performance and accreditations as the existing product, while also lowering the carbon footprint by 14%.
What’s more, the new formulation has reduced odour, opening up new markets for the coating. The slight increase in cost of manufacture was balanced by the reduced need for personal protective equipment and other health and safety measures no longer needed with the bio-product.
Reformulating with greener chemicals can be incredibly challenging, yet market demand is rising for safe, sustainable products.
By redesigning for efficiency, safety, and circularity, green chemistry can reduce waste and stop accidents before they happen. It’s also a crucial part of the transition to a bioeconomy, discovering biobased options to replace petrochemicals.
Another Innovate UK-funded project with the University of Cambridge developed an improved computational screening method. By creating an unprecedented database of solvent-polymer interactions using the latest automation equipment, the project was able to build a machine learning algorithm that can help with solvent selection and polymer recycling. Talks are ongoing with multinationals that want to use the algorithm to speed their green chemistry efforts.
I’ve always been impatient with the slow route to market for green chemistry. While larger companies are increasingly seeing its value and implementing it into research and development (R&D) it’s vital that safer, green chemistry starts at the bottom with the innovators.
Start-ups can really kick-start change and disrupt the norm, so if more focus and R&D budget goes into safer chemistry during pre-commercialisation, we can really transform hazardous materials and processes for the benefit of both people and planet.
