Evolution and growth in 2001 E D I T O R I A L The year 2001 sees a number of significant developments in the world of green chemistry. The year had an excellent start with the IUPAC International Symposium on Green Chemistry in Delhi in January. It is very important that developing countries with growing chemical manufacturing bases are at the forefront of the green chemistry revolution. We were delighted that IUPAC agreed to support this meeting and this helped to attract an international group of speakers from India the USA East and West Europe Africa and Japan. Green chemistry conferences later in the year include the first international conference organised by the Green Chemistry Network Green Chemistry Sustainable Processes and Products which is to be held in Swansea Wales in April.The 2001 Europacat conference in Ireland in September will also have a green chemistry theme. Green Chemistry hopes to include the latest information on and reports from green chemistry meetings around the world. The journal goes from strength to strength; institutional subscriptions have more than doubled since 1999 (the USA being the largest source of subscriptions) as have submissions. The quality of submissions continues to increase and we are pleased to have published work from many of the leading workers in this area of research and a variety of papers from institutions in so-called ‘Third World Countries’ where green chemistry may have its greatest application and impact. As a result of the increased submissions our natural rejection rate has increased to approximately 35%.Hardcopy publication times remain at an average of 120 days from receipt with web publication even faster. The journal now offers free contents alerts (www.rsc.org/is/journals/current/ej_update_form.htm); publication of supplementary information to your paper on the web (e.g. videos structures related data software) (www.rsc.org/esi); electronic submission by file upload (www.rsc.org/submissions) or e-mail attachment; and authors are sent free of charge electronic (.pdf) files of their papers instead of reprints allowing copies to be printed on demand. Whilst the web version of the complete journal remains free on a site-wide basis only to full-rate institutional subscribers the web news section is free to both subscribers and non-subscribers.Subscriptions to Green Chemistry were lower than we had planned for in 1999 and this led to caution and a minor cost-cutting exercise in 2000 which affected mainly the use of colour and the number of news pages we published. Colour will still be used in the back section wherever and whenever it is appropriate to do so. This measure had no deleterious effect on the quality of the science in the journal in fact the quality of work submitted has clearly improved. We are now confident of the financial viability of Green Chemistry even in a very competitive market. Green Chemistry February 2001 G2 This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2001 Nonetheless the continued success of the journal is dependent on encouraging new subscriptions and maintaining the large volume of high quality submissions we hope that you will continue to lend us your support in both of these areas.We welcome articles of various types from industrial and other non-academic organisations. We have been particularly pleased to publish articles from companies about green chemistry in practice and this issue sees further examples of this—these are the most powerful arguments to support all of our efforts to persuade more and more companies that green chemistry can achieve economic as well as environmental and societal benefit. Please encourage colleagues in industry to consider publishing their case studies in Green Chemistry. We should not lose sight of the fact that to represent properly what is important in the context of green chemistry we must continue to publish more than just articles on research and industrial application.Green Chemistry news pages continue to provide news on awards conferences and other activities as well as featuring highlights from the green chemistry literature. Supplementary news material will be available via the web —see also the Green Chemistry Network Site www.chemsoc.org/gcn for substantial information on what is happening in the world of green chemistry. We were very pleased to publish Neil Winterton’s authoritative review on chlorine (Green Chemistry 2000 2(5) 173). This exemplifies that not only are we interested in publishing long (critical) reviews but also that we welcome challenging controversial issues (though the latter would also be welcome in much shorter forms e.g.letters!). Educational issues are at least as important as any other aspect of green chemistry and we would very much like to publish more articles on innovative aspects of new courses and relevant educational material. For example at York we are starting a new Masters (“MRes”) course in Clean Chemical Technology this year and we hope to inform the community about how the course develops and the challenges that we encounter along the way. Therefore if you are running or planning a course module practical or workshop that you think may be relevant to the green chemistry community please let us know—as with industrial application the most effective means of persuasion is by example. We would like to extend our sincere thanks to all reviewers and authors of Green Chemistry papers for their hard work and contribution(s) to the journal. We look forward to your continued support and that of the growing community of green chemists to help ensure Green Chemistry is even more successful in 2001. James Clark York January 2001 DOI 10.1039/b100448o