Green chemistry trends to watch: Highlights from the CAS Insights webinar
Governments worldwide are restricting or banning the use of certain substances to meet environmental and health goals. Scientists face mounting pressure to deliver results faster while navigating increasingly complex sustainability challenges. The recent CAS Insights webinar brought together industry leaders and educators to explore how green science trends are reshaping research and development across scientific domains.
In the webinar, Green Chemistry Trends to Watch: Highlights from the CAS Insights Webinar, Dr. Amy Cannon (Co-Founder and Executive Director of Beyond Benign), Dan Bailey (Associate Scientific Fellow at Takeda Pharmaceuticals), and Leighton Jones (Lead Information Scientist for Materials at CAS) discussed how mechanochemistry, water-based reactions, and artificial intelligence are transforming traditional chemical processes while addressing critical sustainability metrics.
Education drives innovation in green chemistry
Beyond Benign, co-founded by Cannon and Dr. John Warner, one of the founders of the field of green chemistry, works to close the gap between how chemists are trained and the skills required to create sustainable chemical products. Cannon stated that approximately 85% of graduates in the chemical sciences enter industry, yet many lack essential competencies.
Industry professionals surveyed by Beyond Benign reported difficulty hiring scientists with green chemistry skills. The growing list of needed competencies includes life cycle assessments, technoeconomic assessments, toxicology, and how to apply green chemistry principles in research settings.
The organization's Green Chemistry Commitment program has grown to include over 260 universities worldwide. The program recently won the Royal Society of Chemistry Horizon Prize for Education, recognizing the collective work of participating institutions. Beyond Benign also offers open-access resources through its Green Chemistry Teaching and Learning Community platform, co-created with the ACS Green Chemistry Institute.
Cannon stressed that green chemistry represents a paradigm shift rather than a separate discipline. This proves challenging because change requires professional development, time, and resources from educators who already face demanding workloads.
Sustainability by design minimizes pharmaceutical environmental impact
Bailey, who graduated from Brown University with dual bachelor's degrees in chemistry and anthropology, leads Takeda's Sustainability by Design program. The program focuses on minimizing environmental impacts during the product design phase, when approximately 80% of a product's environmental impacts become locked in for its lifetime.
"I think that's doubly true in the pharmaceutical industry, which is a highly regulated business where after a new medicine or new product is approved by health authorities, it becomes very difficult to make changes to the product or changes to the way that we make the product," Bailey explained. Once health authorities approve a medicine, changes require resource-intensive regulatory approvals across multiple countries, locking in environmental impacts for the 15 to 20 year lifetime of the medicine.
Takeda has committed to ambitious environmental targets, including net zero emissions for operations and facilities by 2035 and the entire value chain by 2040. The Sustainability by Design program translates these corporate goals into actionable strategies for individual medicines by examining the active ingredient, formulation, packaging, and medical devices holistically.
Life cycle assessments help teams understand environmental impacts from resource extraction through manufacturing, distribution, patient use, and disposal. Bailey's team has discovered that different medicine types have distinct environmental drivers. For synthetic molecule medicines, materials used in manufacturing processes create the largest footprint. Industry benchmarking shows that producing one kilogram of active ingredient requires an average of 182 kilograms of materials, meaning less than 1% of inputs become product while 99% becomes waste. Solvents account for approximately 60% of waste mass in synthetic molecule processes.
Biologics manufactured through cell culture bioprocesses show different patterns. Energy consumption in production facilities maintaining cleanroom conditions drives most of the footprint. While biologics require about 7,500 kilograms of material inputs per kilogram of product, approximately 95% consists of water.
Mechanochemistry and water chemistry challenge established practices
Both panelists identified mechanochemistry and in-water/on-water chemistry as exciting green science trends because they challenge fundamental assumptions about how chemical reactions occur. "I think one of the biggest over the years misconceptions that I've noticed is that people think that many don't see the relevance to their work or they think it's not relevant to their work," Cannon said, emphasizing how green chemistry applies across all subdisciplines.
Bailey noted that Takeda has worked on chemistry in water for approximately eight years and has made significant progress implementing these approaches. "Organic solvents are one of the biggest hotspots that we see for producing our products. So anything we can do to reduce organic solvent use can have a really, really big impact," he explained. Water chemistry adapts easily to existing equipment because it primarily involves substituting water for organic solvents while maintaining similar processes.
Mechanochemistry requires different equipment types that pharmaceutical companies may lack experience operating. Questions remain about the safest methods for scaling mechanochemical processes, though work with extruders and continuous bead mills shows promise. Despite these challenges, Takeda maintains partnerships in mechanochemistry because the technology offers substantial potential for reducing organic solvent consumption.
Cannon reflected on how these trends represent fundamental questioning of established practices. She referenced work by James Mack at the University of Cincinnati, who articulated how chemists are trained within specific constraints, primarily learning to dissolve raw materials in solvents. "All these scientists in this space are looking at that and saying, ‘Do we really need to solve it? How else can we get these materials to react? What other forms of energy are out there?" she said. "I think that's when the innovations happen."
AI accelerates sustainable development
Takeda has successfully implemented AI across multiple dimensions of sustainable process development. Bailey described how Bayesian optimizers, combined with medium-throughput or high-throughput screening, help teams identify optimal reaction conditions rapidly. AI-enabled analytical methods have produced interesting results, including a machine learning model developed in partnership with groups at MIT that measures particle size distribution of powders using only a camera and laser.
Bailey and Cannon highlighted predictive toxicology as an area where AI has gained traction in the green chemistry community. Chemists typically lack toxicology training, yet this knowledge proves crucial for molecular design. They emphasized the importance of this knowledge for material selection decisions that could eventually cascade into large-scale manufacturing.
Taking action toward a sustainable chemical enterprise
Both panelists closed by encouraging everyone in the chemical enterprise to consider how their work impacts environmental sustainability. Bailey acknowledged current environmental challenges while emphasizing the exciting opportunities for innovation. Cannon echoed these sentiments: "I think the point is just to find an action that you can take. We need that challenge in this space, and we need you here too."
The webinar demonstrated how green science trends span from laboratory techniques to corporate strategy, from classroom education to regulatory compliance. As Cannon noted, chemistry as a central science has tremendous potential to impact many other areas, and owning this responsibility more fully would advance the sustainability movement significantly.
Watch the full webinar
To explore more insights from the panelists, watch the full webinar recording. You will gain a deeper understanding of how green science trends are shaping research and development across scientific domains.
