CHEMISTRY Green chemistry: a tool for the sustainable development of the chemical industry

Han∗ Mostmanufacturedproducts involve one or more chemical processes. We cannot imagine what our life will be like with-out the products produced by the chemi-cal industry. However, on average, only a small proportion of the resources we take from the Earth is converted into the de-sired products in current chemical pro-cesses, and large amounts of wastes and hazardous materials are generated. How to supply humanity with enough food, energy, chemicals and materials sustain-ably, without damaging our planet, is an unavoidable issue. Green chemistry, which was estab-lished about two decades ago, has at-tracted much attention [1–3]. It re-flects the efforts of academia and indus-try to address the challenges related to sustainable development of the chemi-cal industry, and continuous progress is being made, both in academia and indus-try. Briefly, green chemistry is the utiliza-tion of a set of principles to reduce or eliminate the use or generation of haz-ardous substances in the design, man-ufacture and applications of chemical products [4]. Green chemistry is a mul-tidisciplinary field and covers areas such as synthesis, solvents, catalysis, rawmate-rials, products and efficient processes, a