Designing Chemistry with a Net-Positive Impact
Everything is chemistry, from the elements of nature to manmade inventions. If you take a moment to look around you, most things you use every day were made possible by a manmade molecule: the paint on your walls, the finish on your floors, the keys under your fingers, and the moisturizer on your face. Chemistry creations are necessary and important to modern life. The challenge facing chemical companies and molecule designers today is to create innovations with a net-positive impact on our world, and so we design molecules with a safer, greener life cycle.
The 12 Principles of Green Chemistry
Green chemistry is an approach to development that leads the chemist to create molecules with excellent environmental, health, and safety profiles. The 12 Principles of Green Chemistry are a set of guidelines, published by Paul Anastas and John Warner, that guide this type of development through structured steps. These principles ensure reduced hidden trade-offs because the entire impact of the molecule is considered. With green chemistry design it’s all about balance to create a holistically more sustainable molecule.
Sustainable Life Cycles
Green chemistry inherently prompts life cycle thinking. The 12 Principles include elements such as feedstock selection, reactions and manufacturing processes, and molecule degradation. At Inolex, we take this approach one step further. We recognize our unique position at the center of beauty & personal care supply chains and the opportunity we have to create sustainable impacts. In addition to operating purposefully, we look upstream and downstream to reduce our overall impact. We source responsibly upstream, consider the manufacturing needs of our customers downstream, and hold a high regard for consumers’ needs at the end of the value chain.
