Sustainable chemistry encompasses the design, manufacture and use of efficient, effective, safe and more environmentally benign chemical products and processes. Within the broad framework of sustainable development, government, academia and industry should strive to maximise resource efficiency through activities such as energy and non-renewable resource conservation, risk minimisation, pollution prevention, minimisation of waste at all stages of a product life-cycle and the development of products that are durable and can be reused and recycled. Sustainable chemistry is also a process that stimulates innovation across all sectors to design and discover new chemicals, production processes, and product stewardship practices that will provide increased performance and increased value while meeting the goals of protecting and enhancing human health and the environment. This report uses patent data to investigate green chemistry innovation trends. Due to the nature of the International Patent Classification (IPC) system it was not possible to identify a broad all-encompassing green chemistry indicator. As a consequence, we have investigated selected technologies which can be identified reliably using IPC classes. While these are by no means intended to be representative of Sustainable Chemistry as a whole, we believe that they do provide a cross-section of relevant areas.
Sustainable Chemistry: Evidence on Innovation from Patent Data
OECD Series on Risk Management of Chemicals
