Most widely produced chemicals contain carbon-based ingredients and production processes that involve the use of petroleum. Naturally, a question saying “Is this really sustainable?” comes to mind. As a lot of production, transformation, and research processes involve the usage of basic chemicals least, it is important to know if we are doing something wrong.
Now, research published in the journal, Green Chemistry, titled “Planetary metrics for the absolute environmental sustainability assessment of chemicals” reports that a huge amount of these chemicals were unsustainable in at least one planetary boundary criteria.
How do you determine if a chemical is sustainable or not?
The research examines the most widely used chemicals according to the Planetary Boundaries (PBs) concept which includes nine metrics including the effect on climate change, ocean acidification, land-system change, freshwater use, etc. According to these metrics, the research reports that 99.4% of widely used chemicals fail in at least one of those areas and have high transgression levels. It must be mentioned that the research openly comments about the PB system, saying that “the concept is still in infancy”. However, if even the simplest metrics show problems, that must be an indicator for something serious.
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Why is it unsustainable?
While not much is commented on this side on the research paper, many on the web comment that it is usually about the production processes of these chemicals. Since most widely used chemicals require benzene rings, carbons, and practical processes of producing those, the simplest and cheapest option is almost always petroleum. Even if most materials themselves have other ways to be produced without petroleum or other fossil fuels, being the cheapest and most practical option pushes the industry to an unsustainable path. There are a lot of alternatives to most products, however, they might not be cheap or practical.
A lot of material is being used in a lot of research, daily life, processes that happen as we live by. Not only making the energy sustainable but making materials sustainable by adjusting our methods is also a big thing. However, as it happens in most industries, there is a conflict between going the easy commercial route and the experimental sustainability route. Still, there are a lot of efforts on sustainability (Read: Hydrogen from Plastic Waste: 3 Major Corporations from Japan Has a Revolutionary Plan).
Maybe, one day, the balance will be found before it is too late.
Reference
Green Chem., 2021,23, 9881-9893 (Open Access CC-BY-NC)
@article{tulus_pérez-ramírez_guillén-gosálbez_2021, title={Planetary metrics for the absolute environmental sustainability assessment of Chemicals}, volume={23}, DOI={10.1039/d1gc02623b}, number={24}, journal={Green Chemistry}, author={Tulus, Victor and Pérez-Ramírez, Javier and Guillén-Gosálbez, Gonzalo}, year={2021}, pages={9881–9893}}
