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How to build a better… everything
March/April 2009
by Melinda Tuhus
On average, for every pound of medicine produced, a
ton of waste is generated.
That fact alone might have been enough incentive for
Yale to create its Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering. But Paul
Anastas, the center’s founding director, wants not only to clean up
pharmaceutical and other manufacturing processes: he wants to build new ways to
live in the twenty-first century.
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The Center oversees a course on greening business operations.
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Anastas, who has worked in the Environmental
Protection Agency and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy,
is widely known as the father of green chemistry—"the design of chemical
products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use and generation of
hazardous substances," as Anastas defines it. He cofounded the Green Chemistry
Institute in 2004 and served as its director until 2006. Two years ago, Anastas
was lured to Yale to launch the university’s own initiative in the field.
The center is a hub for research in the chemistry
department as well as the environment and engineering schools, pursuing such
innovations as hydrogen-based energy systems, biomaterials, biodiesel, and
water purification. The center also oversees a course on green chemistry and
one on greening business operations, and it has created textbooks on green
chemistry and green engineering.
Beyond that, says Anastas, is implementation—"working
with industry and government to make it all real. Because chemicals constitute
everything that we see, touch, and feel, everything that is the basis of our
economy and our society, the applicability of the work of the center cuts
across everything from cosmetics to agriculture to energy to packaging to
drugs—you name it. So we work with a wide range of companies in designing the
next generation of products and manufacturing processes.”
Anastas says his center’s job is "identifying ways
that ensure we will get increased quality of life and increased performance
from our industry, in ways that preserve the things we can’t live without. That
is what green chemistry is doing every day.”  |
