(442b) Research Trends in Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering: Quantifying Progress Toward Sustainability

The research literature covering green chemistry and green engineering is rapidly expanding. In presenting their findings in this rapidly expanding literature, researchers often justify the relevance of their work to the sustainability of the chemical enterprise by qualitatively invoking the principles of green chemistry and green engineering or other principles of sustainability. This approach will ultimately need to be complemented by rigorous, semi-quantitative and quantitative sustainability assessments. These may include life cycle analyses, toxicity assessments, or other indicators of sustainability. More quantitative approaches to sustainability assessments can help identify the key features to be improved to make a process or product sustainable, providing valuable guidance to further process or product development. This presentation will briefly describe how one prominent research journal (ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering) is attempting to encourage researchers to incorporate the use of quantitative sustainability metrics into their work.