SUSTAINABLE INNOVATION OF CHEMICALS: USING LCA AS A METRICS IN ADVANCING AND SCALING UP GREEN CHEMISTRY RESEARCH

The concept of Green Chemistry was coined in the 1990s and can be briefly defined as applying the pollution prevention approach to chemistry. LCA is a technique to assess environmental impacts associated with all the stages of a product's life from-cradle-to-grave. If this method is applied in the form of a gate-to-gate LCA it provides the environmental profile, or footprint, of a chemical or material composed of multiple chemicals. A criticism to the 12 green chemistry principles as a tool is their qualitative nature. Using two examples, this paper shows how LCA can help evaluating the 12 principles in concrete cases of advancing green chemistry research towards the sustainable innovation of chemicals. Emphasis is made to show the potential for using LCA as a metrics in scaling up this research.