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GREEN
CHEMISTRY
Green chemistry
refers to the redesign of chemical products and processes with the goal
of reducing or eliminating any negative environmental or health effects.
The community consists largely of engineers and chemists, in both industry
and academia. Examples of green chemistry projects include: finding non-toxic,
non volatile solvent substitutes, developing new reaction media, catalysis,
and environmentally friendly materials.
With
thanks to Deborah Bakker for recommending and providing intros to the following
links.
Journal
of Green Chemistry http://www.rsc.org/is/journals/current/green/greenpub.htm
Published by they Royal Society of Chemistry (UK), the journal covers
the application of innovative technology to established industrial processes,
the development of environmentally improved routes to important products,
the design of new Green chemicals and materials, the use of sustainable
resources, the use of biotechnology alternatives, and methodologies and
tools for evaluating environmental impact.
Green
Chemistry Network
http://www.chemsoc.org/networks/gcn/
An excellent jumping off point, to get research references or contacts.
Focused on education, based in the UK and launched by the Royal Society
of Chemistry, the organisation's aim is to " promote awareness and facilitate
education, training and practice of Green Chemistry in industry, academia
and schools". Site contains a database on Green Chemistry, listing of
events (e.g. workshops, conferences, most of which are in the UK), useful
topic-based searchable mbers' database, very useful list of recent scientific
publications on green chemistry (http://www.chemsoc.org/networks/gcn/public.htm).
Green
Chemistry Links from the Green Chemistry Network
http://www.chemsoc.org/networks/gcn/links.htm
Green
Chemistry Institute
http://chemistry.org/greenchemistryinstitute/
Based at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, this is the site for a not-for-profit
dedicated to environmentally benign chemical synthesis and processing
research and education. Its mission is to "establish industry-government
partnerships with universities and national laboratories to prevent pollution
using economically sustainable clean production technologies". The most
useful thing about the site is where it leads to summary of educational
initiatives, conferences and research centres. U.S. focused. Not much
overlap with GCN site. Taken together, they give a good summary of the
global community active in research in this area. Short on business examples.
American
Chemistry Association
http://www.acs.org/portal/Chemistry?PID=acsdisplay.html&
DOC=education\ greenchem\index.html
Another site focusing on changing chemistry education to include principles
of green chemistry, this site includes these 12 principles, educational
materials and web resources (very good, but almost exclusively U.S. focused).
EPA Green
Chemistry Program
http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/greenchemistry/index.htm
Government gateway site, for a non-regulatory program works with interested
parties in all sectors to foster research, development, and implementation
of innovative chemical technologies that prevent pollution in a scientifically
sound and cost-effective manner. The site includes a list of related tools
and literature, research grants, definition of what green chemistry is,
and a summary of EPA projects and programs. Links aren't as thorough as
other sites mentioned above.
McDonough
Braungart Design Chemistry
http://www.mbdc.com
Excellent, and recently revamped site, summarizing the firm's business
practices, projects and theory underlying them (e.g. Next Industrial Revolution
and Eco-effectiveness. MBDC is currently the most prominent firm in green
design, bridging the gap between green chemistry science and implementation,
i.e. in design and manufacturing). Of note: reference section includes
glossary, MBDC publications, the McDonough Braungart Design Protocol.
Related links ok, not great.
Kendall
Wright
http://www.kendallwright.com
A firm in Toronto specializing in healthy, sustainable and environmentally
conscious interiors, Heather Kendall and Jennifer Wright are knowledgeable
and experience interior designers, familiar with green products and design.
Biomimicry
http://www.biomimicry.org
The critical question here is "How might we apply biological designs,
processes, and laws to the design of human systems? The site is based
on an influential book of the same name. Sections include services, summary
and first chapter of the book, biomimicry explained and case studies of
biomimicry being applied to both materials and processes, many of which
are from the book. The site is "evolving", the essential resources section
is empty. Approach is grounded in biological sciences.
UNEP Working
Group on Sustainable Product Development
http://unep.frw.uva.nl/
Includes a database of sustainable products from around the world.
Green
Procurement info from Greenbiz.com
http://www.greenbiz.com/resources/procurement/
For concrete examples in the business community. A journalistic focus.
Examples include stories about a process to condense and reuse VOCs, creating
silicon based chemicals from sand.
Green
Chemistry from Greenbiz.com
http://greenbiz.com/
Enter "green chemistry" into the site's search engine to get recent new
stories related to green chemistry.
Green
Products Databases
http://www.greenpurchasing.ca/,
http://www.procara.ca/cgi-bin/db2www.exe/emain.d2w/start,
and http://www.epa.gov/cpg/
(which focuses only on recycled content)
Green
Design Resources from Business for Social Responsibility
http://www.bsr.org/resourcecenter/index.html
Choose "Environment", then "Green Product Design" from the menu on the
left hand side.
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