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Zoë Schnepp may be green, but that's not a sign of inexperience. Named by the Royal Society of Chemistry as best chemistry student of 2005, Schnepp was at the forefront of changes in the discipline when she decided to focus her career efforts on green chemistry.
Green chemistry is a set of principles dedicated to creating more efficient industrial chemicals, drugs and products, driven by a mixture of political, economic and cultural factors. The economic drive is to reduce waste. The political drive comes from regulations, such as the US Pollution Protection Act, that are forcing companies to develop cleaner processes. And the cultural drive is provided by consumers and scientists who are becoming more aware of the need for cleaner processes.
Such factors helped to launch the field; recent recognitions may help legitimize it. The 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to a group who developed a green organic-synthesis method used in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries. The award gives scientists such as Schnepp hope that a career can be made applying cleaner chemical approaches.
AP PHOTO/J. EKSTROMER
Basic and applied: companies such as DuPont (above) are adopting green chemistry. And Richard Schrock (left), Yves Chauvin (centre) and Robert Grubbs shared a Nobel last year for their work on environmentally friendly catalysis.
Another award, by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), shows that green chemistry is more than an industry buzzword. In the ten years the agency has presented the Green Chemistry Awards, the companies that won them have cut the amount of hazardous material or waste they produce by about 1.5 million tonnes. One recent winner, the drug company Merck, shows how greener can be cheaper. The EPA rewarded the company for changing its synthesis of Emend, an antinausea drug for chemotherapy patients, by cutting the number of steps to produce it from six to three and eliminating some hazardous compounds from the process. This reduced its cost and environmental impact.
Such approaches are attractive to all industries looking to cut costs, avoid lawsuits and maintain good public relations. So chemists interested in taking a green approach should find growing opportunities in chemical, drug and healthcare companies. But hiring managers are split over which is more desirable: specific green chemical training — a growing trend — or a more general background.
For hiring managers at the multinational General Electric (GE), green qualifications are less important than raw talent. "I don't go out and look for green chemists," says Greg Chambers, GE's global technology leader of polymer and chemical technology. His colleague Terry Leib, manager of GE's material-analysis and chemical-sciences division, says green chemists have some advantages, including greater awareness of environmental issues.
The biggest potential growth area in green chemistry is in finding cleaner, cheaper catalysts — because the chemicals used to accelerate reactions for everything from gas to detergents can also cause waste and pollution. Developing catalysts that are in a different phase from the reaction species — a solid among liquid reactants, for example — simplifies the purification of the end product, reducing the amount of energy used and waste produced. And chemists are working on such heterogeneous catalysts to ensure they can be easily recovered and reused. Just last year, researchers at Iowa State University developed a low-cost solid catalyst that can be recycled more than 20 times without any drop in performance.
Mark Harmer, senior scientist at DuPont's central research and development department, emphasizes that green chemistry has industrial economics on its side. Developing heterogeneous catalysts can reduce the amount of waste generated during product development by 95–99%. "It takes time and effort but companies have to commit to looking over the longer term," he says.
As part of a $1.5-billion eco-imagination programme, GE plans to double its spending on developing cleaner technologies and reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by 2010, through projects such as hybrid locomotives. The quest to reduce waste and comply with regulations is driving other companies to recruit green chemists. Colja Laane, corporate science manager at chemical manufacturer DSM in Heerlen, the Netherlands, expects jobs to increase as chemical industries invest in innovation. DSM, for example, will hire an extra 250 people in areas from research to engineering, processing and business development, to support its 
75-million (US$89-million) investment in innovation, which focuses heavily on using living cells to produce enzymes for use as catalysts.
As well as chemical manufacturers, makers of consumer goods are increasingly focused on their environmental impact. S. C. Johnson, which makes cleaning products, developed Greenlist, an in-house three-point system to classify raw materials used in manufacturing based on their impact on the environment and human health. "We use environmental toxicologists to look at profiles of a product from environmental and human standpoints and choose those chemicals that have least risk," says Scott Johnson, the company's vice-president of global environmental and safety actions. Over the past five years, he adds, they have made steady progress in reducing their environmental impact.
FREETH CARTWRIGHT LLP
L. SHILL/UNIV. ARIZONA
From green to gold? Steve Howdle (top, right) and Robin Rogers (above, left) have each launched green chemistry start-ups.
Two of the largest drug companies, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline, have used green chemistry to reduce waste. Pfizer has used green techniques to decrease the amount of waste generated for each kilogram of drug produced from from 25–100 kg to 10–25 kg. "We see green chemistry not as a revolution, but an evolution," says Peter Dunn, Pfizer's head of green chemistry. The company's focus on sustainability has placed an emphasis on quickly identifying cheap green solutions. In addition to chemical technologists trained in high-throughput screening that will find greener reagents or solvents, those trained in biotransformations, or shuffling genes into a water-based enzyme that generates less waste, are in demand. The quest for innovation is even fuelling an entrepreneurial spirit. Robin Rogers, a chemist at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, points out that green chemistry, like biotechnology before it, will be most innovative in the arena of start-ups. "The best, most profitable technologies will be sold to or adopted by major industries," he says. To that end, he has created a start-up called 525Solutions to develop alternatives to traditional solvents. Steve Howdle, a chemist at the University of Nottingham, UK, researches polymers that will generate less pollution during the manufacturing process. One of his ideas, a biodegradable polymer that releases drugs within the body, is the focus of a company he is starting.
A handful of green programmes are training chemists to think specifically about cleaner synthesis. John Warner, director of the green-chemistry centre at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, puts mastery of traditional chemistry skills above the green label, but he says that green-chemistry students are uniquely positioned to address industry concerns because of their specific training in both industry regulations and manufacturing constraints. His colleague, Terry Collins, director of Carnegie Mellon's Institute for Green Oxidation Chemistry, agrees with him. Collins invented tetraamido macrocyclic ligand (TAML) iron (III) activators — synthetic catalysts that significantly increase the oxidizing ability of hydrogen peroxide. Compared with previous techniques, much smaller quantities of TAML activators are needed to completely degrade harmful chlorinated organics, such as dioxins. "It's a dream solution to a 50-year old problem," Collins says, adding that the compounds can also clean up problematic organophosphates.
Growing industry interest in greener catalysis methods helped to form the Center for Environmentally Beneficial Catalysis (CEBC), a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Not surprisingly, Bala Subramaniam, the CEBC's director, says the centre's 60 students are highly sought after by industry members, including DuPont, ExxonMobil and the agricultural processor Archer Daniels Midland of Decatur, Illinois.
The first generation of green chemists are busily training the next generation, says Collins, and students are getting snapped up. "Of the 100 students to pass through my research lab, none has ever gone longer than three weeks looking for a job," says Warner. One graduate, Amy Cannon — now a consultant for the materials company Rohm and Haas — says that although her title of 'green chemist' raises initial scepticism from those in industry, those same industry leaders inevitably seek her advice. (See box)
"The biggest challenge is that there are more jobs out there for green chemists than there are trained chemists for the jobs," says Paul Anastas, director of the Green Chemistry Institute in Washington DC and coiner of the term. He is borne out by a 2005 US National Research Council report that identifies a need to increase training in green chemistry — to spur the move away from fossil fuels over coming decades. The report recommends incorporating green-chemistry principles into education materials for students as well as business leaders.
Europe's chemical wastage
Worldwide, chemistry has not been a popular career choice in recent years. Indeed, a steady decline of chemistry students in Europe has prompted concern. With 1.7 million people employed in the chemical industry in the 25 countries of the European Union, the industry is fighting to remain a competitive employer.
One programme, the European Technology Platform for Sustainable Chemistry, or SusChem, is promoting a research agenda emphasizing cleaner industrial technologies. "If we don't do something, there will be radical decline in industry employment," says Russell Mills of Dow Chemical, who sits on SusChem's board. Expertise in biocatalysis, process design and nanotechnology are some of the future skills that will be critical. To increase work in these areas, SusChem hopes to boost the European Union's funding of training and research in chemistry by 75%, to 5.5 billion (US$6.6 billion) by 2013.
V.G.