Biography for Dr. Paul Anastas

Dr. Paul Anastas serves in the National Security and International Activities Division in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. His Responsibilities include furthering the science and technology relationship between the U.S. and China. In addition to bilateral international activities, Dr. Anastas is responsible for furthering international public-private cooperation in areas of Science for Sustainability such as Green Chemistry. In the area of international water science and technology, Dr. Anastas coordinates the interagency working group to identify areas of cross agency collaboration.

Prior to coming to OSTP in October of 1999, Dr. Anastas served as the Chief of the Industrial Chemistry Branch of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency since 1989. During that period he was responsible for regulatory review of industrial chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act and the development of rules, policy and guidance. In 1991, he established the industry-government-university partnership Green Chemistry Program which was expanded to include basic research and the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Awards. Prior to joining the U.S. EPA, he worked as an industrial consultant to the chemical industry in the development of analytical and synthetic chemical methodologies.

Dr. Anastas is the author/editor of nine scientific and technical books including "Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice" which has been translated into five languages. He currently is a visiting Professor in the Chemistry Department at the University of Nottingham, U.K. and serves on the editorial board of the journal Environmental Science and Technology. Dr. Anastas received his M.A. and Ph.D in Organic Chemistry from Brandeis University and his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Massachusetts at Boston.

Assistant Director for the Environment
White House Office of Science & Technology Policy
Executive Office of the President

Keynote Abstract

GREEN CHEMISTRY: CURRENT STATUS AND FUTURE CHALLENGES

In its essence, green chemistry is a science-based, non-regulatory and economically driven approach to achieving the goals of environmental protection and sustainable development. The approach has been utilized in a number of industrialized and developing nations. The results in these countries have been that of extremely positive results in terms of both protection to human health and the environment as well as significant economic benefit to the industrial interests involved.

While very broadly applicable, Green chemistry has a very specific and well-defined scope. Green chemistry is chemistry for pollution prevention, which strives to reduce or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances. This scope explicitly does not include approaches such as waste treatment, waste control or re-mediation even though these elements are recognized as important, but separate, elements of an environmental protection programs. While many countries have those elements capable of reacting to environmental problems once they are formed, there is a need for the introduction and focus on initiatives that design products and processes such that these environmental problems never occur. This is the focus of green chemistry.

The range of green chemistry includes products and processes. This means that not only the structures of a final product can be designed to be non-hazardous but also each of the transformations along the way to manufacture of a product are designed so that they don’t use or generate hazardous substances. There is an implicit consideration life cycle impacts with the scope of sustainable chemistry. Although traditionally pollution prevention was thought to focus on waste reduction and waste minimization sustainable chemistry includes and expands this focus to all stages of the life cycle. The importance of this expansion is seen through commonly reported achievements from industry where the greatest economic benefits as well as the greatest environmental benefits are being realized as much in the early stages of the process or product life cycle as they are in the latter stages.

The green chemistry programs implemented by government industry and academia on a voluntary basis have achieved success in reducing risk through the reduction of intrinsic hazard at the molecular level. The types of hazards that can and are being addressed by scientific and industrial concerns include physical hazards, toxicological hazards (both human & ecotox, and global hazards), all of which are effected by proper and innovative molecular design.

As we review the success of green chemistry thus far, it is as important to keep an eye on the challenges of the future and identify the scientific challenges confronting green chemistry and especially the role of catalysis in Green Chemistry. Questions such as “What is the role of nanoscience on green chemical catalysis?” “Can we use energy in the place of matter to effectively carry out transformations catalytically on a commercial scale?” “Are the reaction types we use currently in chemical manufacturing the one’s we should be using in the next ten, twenty years?” If we are to meet the challenges of sustainability, it will require that we address the problem at the molecular level as one part of the solution.