„Doing the right things right”

Paul Anastas of Yale University in New Haven is considered the father of green chemistry. He introduced the term over three decades ago and in 1998, together with his colleague and friend John Warner, published Twelve Principles for the sustainable design and production of chemicals. Last summer, the GDCh honoured the two US chemists with the August Wilhelm von Hofmann Memorial Medal. A conversation with Paul Anastas about the current world situation, the need to transform the chemical industry and his optimistic view into the future.

The German chemical industry suffers extremely from the gas crisis as a result of the war in Ukraine. Some processes have already been shut down and there is great concern that they may never start up again.

Paul Anastas: It‘s interesting that we take the current terrible circumstances as a surprise – we could have seen these issues coming. For decades we have all been talking about that our supply of energy and feedstocks is not very resilient because we have too little diversity. The problem is, if you don‘t take action in time, then these difficult challenges are going to be that much more hard to deal with.

You seem not to be shocked by the current situation.

What‘s surprising to me is that people are shocked. Whether it‘s on energy, climate change, infectious disease or whatever, all of it is laid out in reports that I wrote or read when I was working for the White House 20 years ago. And we also know what‘s going to happen from here into the future. We know what‘s going to happen with food, we know what‘s going to happen with water. We know the path we are on, we know what happens if we don‘t change and we know what we have to do. There is brilliant work taking place now. For example, have you heard of the Air Company from Brooklyn, New York? It’s a company that I’m proud to be a part of. We are making things out of thin air. We started a couple of years ago and the first product was vodka. It‘s a long story but this vodka is the first carbon negative spirit produced by caption of CO₂.

Why vodka? We are not going to solve the climate change with vodka.

This was not about addressing climate change. This was about capturing people‘s imagination. If people see that you can make an award-winning delicious vodka from capturing CO₂ from the air, then they might understand that it is possible to make many different things from CO₂. In September the Air Company launched its sustainable aviation fuel. That‘s a breakthrough. It‘s the first commercial, climate-neutral aviation fuel.

But converting CO₂ into fuel or basic chemicals costs a lot of energy.

You‘re right, there are energy requirements to convert water into hydrogen in order to convert the hydrogen and CO₂ to hydrocarbons. This is not new. Materials and energy are inextricably linked and this is why I always talk about both energy and feedstock. It is absolutely essential that we have solar and other renewable sources of power in our diversity of energy sources.

Vodka is usually produced from potatoes or another renewable raw material in a fermentative process. What role does biotechnology play for green chemistry?

Chemistry takes many forms and we are seeing innovations in all aspects of our molecular world. Biotechnology is a wonderful tool in this toolbox but I don‘t see it as distinct. The point is that there are lots of ways to have good intentions go wrong. Even with biotechnology you can do right things wrong. The principles of green chemistry and green engineering are all about doing the right things right.

Obviously, many things are still going in the wrong direction. Why does the chemical industry still pay too little attention to the principles of green manufacturing?

That is a question that many industry sectors need to ask themselves. While there are genuinely amazing green chemistry champions in companies large and small, I see a big difference between large companies and small companies. Start-ups are all talking about what they can do. In contrast, too many of our largest companies are talking about what they can‘t do. They have too much invested in established processes and say they can‘t change that quickly. But at some point they will no longer have a choice – and you would never want to get to that edge of the cliff. We‘re talking about disruptive technologies and that small companies might displace large companies. Some dinosaurs will evolve and some dinosaurs will go extinct.

The chemical industry is one of the largest industries in the world producing many thousands of different products. Does the chemical industry need to reduce its product portfolio to become more sustainable?

I‘ve never been one to say that we have to do less, have less, expect less. It is not simply about the quantity, it is about the inherent nature of a chemical product. Is it harmful or harmless? Is it toxic or healthful? Is it depleting or renewable? Is it degrading or resistant? I want to make chemistry conducive to life rather than hazardous. There have been so many scientific discoveries but there hasn‘t been the will to implement the ideas.

You have been campaigning for green chemistry for three decades but the transformation is happening so slowly. What keeps you going?

I‘ve got to get out of bed every morning. If thirty years ago I – and everybody who is contributing to green chemistry – just stayed in bed, then we wouldn‘t have all of these solutions now. Because thirty years ago, green chemists were motivated and took action with countless scientific discoveries, we have answered the question “Can we solve this problem?”. The answer is clearly and demonstrably “yes”. Now the question is: “When will we gather the will to solve the problem?” And I have no doubt that we will solve it.

You give me hope.

That‘s my purpose: I try to help people see that good future is possible. Some of my environmentalist friends wonder why, with all this bad news, people aren‘t motivated to action. But people have never been motivated by fear. They are paralyzed by fear. Nobody is surprised that people don‘t get up and dance when they hear a funeral dirge. If I give an hour-long speech, I spend only two minutes reviewing how bad everything is. I hit it hard, I make it clear and then I say: Okay, we‘re all in agreement where we are; now here‘s what we have to do!

The interview was conducted by Uta Neubauer. Uta Neubauer has a Ph.D. in chemistry and works as a freelance science journalist in Bad Soden am Taunus. Paul Anastas has also recently answered the Nachrichten award winner questionnaire [Nachr. Chem. 2022, 70(9), 112].

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