Editorial Green Chemistry C G Green Chemistry August 1999 G83 he week starting June 28, 1999 marked an important and enjoyable annual event in the Green Chemistry world: the presentation of the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Awards at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC, USA. Following the award presentations, the 3rd Annual Green Chemistry and Engineering Conference provided a forum for award winners and other scientists and engineers to report their results and engage in state-of-the-art discussions.As usual, Paul Anastas, Tracy Williamson, and Joe Breen were responsible for much of the organization of this event, which is sponsored by the US Environmental Protection Agency, American Chemical Society, American Institute of Chemical Engineers, Chemical Manufacturers Association, Council for Chemical Research, Green Chemistry Institute, National Institute of Standards and Technology, National Research Council, National Science Foundation, US Department of Energy, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.I offer congratulations to the award winners, the organizers, sponsors and conference participants.This year’s Presidential Awardees are briefly listed here, and I look forward to a series of articles in Green Chemistry from the various scientists and engineers who contributed to and administered these programs: l Professor Terry Collins of Carnegie Mellon University won in the academic category for his iron-based peroxide activators that have broad applications to oxidations in the pulp and paper industry, water disinfection, and laundry bleaching.Terry has a background in coordination chemistry and catalysis, and has become a major force in the development of green oxidants. Biofine Inc.’s plant converting paper mill sludge into levulinic acid received a 1999 Presidential Green Chemistry Award Tl The Small Business Award went to Biofine, Incorporated for a process that converts cellulosic biomass into levulinic acid, a useful building block for many chemical products.The biomass feedstocks for this process include paper mill sludge, unrecyclable paper waste, waste wood and certain agricultural residues. An industry–government consortium has conducted the work on high value-added derivatives of levulinic acid. It was a pleasure to see that my old friend and former colleague Joe Bozell was one of the lead scientists on this program.l The Alternative Synthetic Pathways Award went to Eli Lilly and Company for designing a green synthesis of a compound currently under testing for a variety of central nervous system diseases. Key aspects of this work included replacing a CrO3 oxidation with an air oxidation, and the use of a biocatalytic transformation using specially identified yeast.I had the pleasure of chairing the conference session where Dr. Benjamin Anderson described the work done by the Lilly group. l Nalco Chemical Company received the Alternative Reaction Conditions Award for developing a new water-based process for the manufacture of liquid polymers. Applied to the preparation of acrylamide polymers that are important for waste-water treatment, this method avoids the exposure hazards and energy costs associated with dry (powder) polyacrylamide samples, and also avoids the use of organic solvents and surfactants associated with the alternative ‘water-in-oil’ preparations of these materials.l Dow AgroSciences received the award for Designing Safer Chemicals for the development of Spinosad, a selective, low-risk insecticide (registered by EPA as a reduced risk pesticide). A fermentation process using a naturally occurring microorganism isolated from a Caribbean soil sample produces Spinosad.Spinosad has demonstrated remarkable selectivity in targeting pests that attack cotton, trees, turf, fruits, vegetables and ornamental plants without harming 70–90% of beneficial insects and predatory wasps.Spinosad presents little risk to the environment since it does not leach, bioaccumulate, volatilize or persist in the environment. These properties make it a valuable tool for pest management. For a fuller discussion of this award see the short article by Anastas et al. on page G88 of this issue of Green Chemistry.At the same awards ceremony, the Kenneth G. Hancock Memorial Scholarship in green chemistry was presented to W. Clayton Bunyard of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Bunyard’s research centers on environmentally benign syntheses of perfluoropolyethers (PFPEs) and new uses for these materials. One such synthesis uses carbon dioxide instead of ozone-depleting CFCs as the solvent.New uses of PFPEs include so-called ‘fouling-release coatings’ for ocean-going ships. These coatings prevent marine organisms from adhering to ships, in contrast to traditional antifouling coatings (i.e. alkyltin reagents) that are toxic and that accumulate in water and marine life. One theme that has been common for many of the awards and conference presentations is the following: green chemistry does not hurt the simple economic bottom line while it helps the environment.Instead, many green processes provide considerable economic advantages C G G84 Green Chemistry August 1999even before the savings in environmental costs have been computed. How can this be? In public debates in the US, environmentally benign industrial practices are often automatically associated with higher costs to industry.This false, inverse relationship between public good and industrial benefit was certainly in evidence during early debates over automobile emissions and safety, with sides being chosen on political rather than economic grounds. It is important to spread the news that, time and again, green innovation goes hand-in-hand with economic benefits—lower raw materials costs, less wasted material, more energy-efficient processes, more efficient synthetic chemical routes, fewer separation steps.I believe that most industrial processes are the brainchildren of earlier eras. They used then state-of-the-art chemistry to prepare the products. Any reason for a complete, modern technical re-evaluation should lead to processes that offer greatly enhanced environmental and economic attributes. This certainly is true for ‘old’ chemistry such as that sometimes found in commodity chemicals production, but also occurs for pharmaceutical chemistry, where companies can become locked into a particular synthetic route because of the need for the entire route to be subject to regulatory approval.We heard a wonderful talk in Washington by Sam L. Nguyen of Roche Colorado Corporation, who along with my old friend Chris Roberts and other team members, developed a green and economically beneficial synthesis of Cytovene®, an important drug against cytomegalovirus (CMV). CMV plagues AIDS and transplant patients. Reducing the number of chemical processing and isolation steps from 6 to 2 and cutting the number of reagents and intermediates from 22 to 11 were just some of the ways that the costs (economic and environmental) were reduced, allowing sustainable and cost-effective scale-up to meet increasing patient need.Of course, often there are capital expenditures that are necessary to capture the economic and environmental benefits of new processes, and large capital spending does entail risk. Therefore, the companies that move forward with new green processes are to be congratulated, and should enjoy considerable economic benefit just as our global ecosystem benefits from the greening of their industry. Green processes that can be retrofitted into existing plants may allow the faster route to capturing value. Conferences such as the 3rd Annual Green Chemistry and Engineering Conference and the 1999 Gordon Conference on Green Chemistry allow industrial, academic and government scientists and policymakers to interact and cross-fertilize each other’s efforts. James K. Bashkin, St. Louis, MO, USA, July 1999. C G Green Chemistry August 1999 G85