Paul Anastas and the Robin Hood Question

On June 22nd, Paul Anastas, one of the founding fathers of Green Chemistry, was honoured at ACHEMA 2012 in Frankfurt.¹ ACHEMA is the leading process engineering exhibition and conference, organized by the DECHEMA Society for Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology.² This year's theme was sustainability. Therefore, Paul's honour was particularly appropriate; he was awarded the Wöhler-Preis für Ressourcenschonende Prozesse der GDCh (Wöhler Prize for Resource Efficient Processes of the German Chemical Society).³ The citation of Paul's work was presented by Professor Walter Leitner who presently chairs the award panel.

Sadly Paul was prevented from attending the ceremony at the last minute and I had the honour of accepting the Award on his behalf. Paul had e-mailed a short message which I read out after Professor Barbara Albert, President of the GDCh, had handed the Award to me (and I had handed it back to be sent to Paul). Very modestly, Paul wrote that he was accepting the Award not for himself but on behalf of the whole Green Chemistry community, which of course includes all of the authors and readers of this Journal.

Paul had intended to give a lecture entitled The Future of Green Chemistry and Molecular Design and I was asked to give a talk in his place. Since I did not have Paul's slides, I had to invent my own. However, I knew that one of Paul's favourite sayings is “If you don't change direction, you will end up where you are heading”. So I based my lecture on the premise that Green Chemistry needs to change to meet the challenges of a changing world.

How is the world changing? The global population reached 7 billion (7 × 10⁹) in October 2011. There are now probably more mobile telephones in the world than toothbrushes⁴ and each telephone contains a surprisingly large number of elements (one stand at the ACHEMA exhibition even suggested that there were as many as 50 elements in a telephone). Also the world is highly connected via the internet, making those in developing countries far more aware of the higher standards of living in more developed countries. This awareness is stimulating demand for products including chemicals.

I called my talk Green Chemistry and Sustainable Development because a few days earlier, I had been in Brazil for the run up to the Rio+20 conference.⁵ I had been there on behalf of the Royal Society, the UK academy of science, to draw the delegates’ attention to the Society's recent report, People and the Planet,⁶ and also to the IAP global network of science academies’ statement on population and consumption.⁷ These two documents are the first in recent years to draw an explicit connection between world population and consumption. Not only is the level of consumption in the richer countries unsustainable but, more importantly, 1.3 billion people need to consume more to lift them out of their current extreme poverty. This highlights the great challenge facing humanity, which I have termed the Robin Hood Question, namely “How can we give to the poor without robbing the rich?”.

This question represents a huge opportunity for Green Chemists because we need to make more chemicals using less material. Some of this can be achieved by an intelligent application of Paul Anastas's chef d'oeuvre, the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry⁸ (reducing waste, eliminating stoichiometric reagents, etc.). However, this is unlikely to be enough; so how can we do more? I suggested that the answer lies in the fact that most users of chemicals use them not because they really want a particular chemical but because they want a particular effect, e.g. clean clothes, lubricated joints or efficient solar cells. Therefore, I said, the way forward will be a combination of creative thinking, innovative chemistry and clever engineering.⁹

Two further talks completed the symposium in Paul's honour. The first, entitled Innovation and Sustainability: Contributions of the Chemical Industry was given by Professor Wolfgang Plischke, Director of Innovation, Technology and Sustainability at Bayer AG, who described several processes including the incorporation into polyurethanes of CO₂ captured from power stations. In the second, Catalyzing Chemical Reactions and Collaborations – A Way forward to “Green Chemistry”, Walter Leitner reported three elegant catalytic processes each involving CO₂, either as a reaction medium or reactant. Both speakers stressed the big influence that Paul's ideas have had on their science. The symposium ended with an open invitation to contribute to this Journal.

I have been the Chair of the Editorial Board of this Journal for the past six years and, in May, I stood down in favour of Walter Leitner. I must say immediately that this was merely on the grounds of good governance. I believe in the Journal more strongly than ever, and I immensely enjoy working with Sarah Ruthven and her RSC team. But a change of leadership is always refreshing and I wish the Journal every success in the future. As a parting gift, my RSC colleagues very kindly presented me with a sticker for my iPhone bearing the short form of the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry.¹⁰ So every time that I use my phone, I will be reminded of Paul Anastas's enormous and continuing contribution to Green Chemistry.

Notes and references

1. http://besuch.achema.de/achema%CC%B2besucher/en/Social+Programme/Closing+Session.html, accessed July 9th 2012.
2. http://www.dechema.de/en/start_en.html, accessed July 9th 2012.
3. The Award is named after Friedrich Wöhler, the pioneering organic chemist (1800–1882). I mentioned in my talk that, if you go back through my scientific ancestry from my PhD supervisor to his supervisor and so on, one finds that Wöhler was my scientific (great)⁵-grandfather (i.e. me → JJ Turner → N Sheppard → TM Lowry → GBBM Sutherland → HE Armstrong → H Kolbe → F Wöhler). Therefore, most of the German chemists in the ACHEMA audience were probably my scientific cousins!.
4. http://60secondmarketer.com/blog/2011/10/18/more-mobile-phones-than-toothbrushes/, accessed July 9th 2012.
5. See: C. A. Nobre, Science, 2012, 336, 1361.
6. “People and the Planet”, The Royal Society Science Policy Centre Report 01/12; ISBN 978-0-85403-955-5, available for free download http://royalsociety.org/policy/projects/people-planet/, accessed 9th July 2012.
7. http://royalsociety.org/news/iap-population-consumption/, accessed 9th July 2012.
8. P. T. Anastas and J. C. Warner, Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998.
9. For a recent summary of my views on the future of Green Chemistry, see R. A. Bourne and M. Poliakoff, Mendeleev Commun., 2011, 21, 235.
10. S. L. Y. Tang, R. A. Bourne, R. L. Smith and M. Poliakoff, Green Chem., 2008, 10, 276.

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