Science AMA Series: We designed a method to quantify how “green” a
chemical is; We’re Jane Murray and Samy Ponnusamy, Ask us anything!
Abstract
Our recently published paper in the ACS Sustainable Chemistry &
Engineering journal describes a quantitative assessment tool to evaluate
chemicals and chemical processes against the 12 Principles of Green
Chemistry, using generally accepted industry practices and readily
available data sources. This tool, called DOZN, provides a consistent
framework for measuring and communicating what’s “greener” about the
products labeled as “greener alternatives” and is robust and flexible
enough to encompass a diverse product portfolio, from biology to
chemistry to materials science. So, feel free to ask us anything about
this tool and how it’s currently being implemented at MilliporeSigma, or
how you can apply it in your organization. We’ll be back at 1:00 PM
Eastern Time (10 am PT, 6 pm UTC) to answer your questions, ask us
anything! Dr. Jane Murray: I am the head of Green Chemistry for the Life
Science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, which operates as
MilliporeSigma in the U.S. and Canada. I have a background in chemical
research—having completed my Ph.D. at the University of York, where I
researched green oxidations of organosulfur compounds using hydrogen
peroxide. I am a member of the American Chemical Society’s Green
Chemistry Institute, Chemical Manufacturer’s Roundtable, the Royal
Society of Chemistry and the American Chemical Society. Dr. Ettigounder
“Samy” Ponnusamy: I am the Green Chemistry Fellow with the Life
Science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, which operates as
MilliporeSigma in the U.S. and Canada. In this role, I manage and expand
new green business opportunities, as well as research and develop
greener alternatives—including spearheading the DOZN tool that we’ll
be talking about on this AMA. I have more than 30 years of experience
managing new product developments—from bench scale through product
launch—with many products showing sustained growth over time. I earned
my Ph.D. from the University of Madras and am the co-author of 30
related scientific articles and holder/co-holder of seven patents. Edit:
We forgot to include the link to the paper:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1021/acssuschemeng.6b02399 Edit 2:
We’ll be back in an hour to begin answering but wanted to share a link
to the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry that we referred to at the top -
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/greenchemistry/what-is-green-chemistry/principles/12-principles-of-green-chemistry.html
Edit 3: Hi everyone, thank you for all of the questions. We’ll be
sticking around until 2:30 EST to answer questions, so keep them coming.
If you’re interested in learning more about MilliporeSigma’s program,
you can go to www.sigma.com/greener Edit 4: Thank you everyone for the
great questions! This was both of our first times on Reddit and we
appreciate the informative and engaging discussion - hopefully you did
as well. We’re sorry if we weren’t able to get to your question but we
hope to be back here sometime soon. If you have time, feel free to take
a look at the links we shared above and throughout our answers. If you’d
like to see an example of our DOZN scoring for a real product, you can
see it here: http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/sigma/a7005 If
you have any other feedback or questions, please continue to post. We’ll
continue to revisit this thread and may even answer a few more
questions. Thank you again!