Editorial pubs.acs.org/journal/ascecg
Cite This: ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng. 2018, 6, 4422−4422
ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering Virtual Special Issue on Promoting the Development and Use of Quantitative Sustainabilty Metrics n recent editorials of ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering (ACS SCE), we have made multiple calls for the increased use of Sustainability Metrics. In our January 2017 Editorial, we noted that we will encourage authors to develop and use metrics that quantify the improvements in sustainability made possible by their research. At that time, we also began to solicit input from reviewers about whether papers submitted to the journal effectively used sustainability metrics. In our January 2018 Editorial, we made a commitment to publishing a virtual special issue on the development and use of sustainability metrics; this Editorial announces the appearance of that special issue. In January 2018, we also announced that we will increasingly consider the use of sustainability metrics in our editorial decisions. Now, calls for the use of sustainability metrics emerge from a new source. On March 12, 2018, the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report entitled “Chemical Innovation: Technologies to Make Processes and Products more Sustainable” (available at www.gao.gov/ products/GAO-18-307). The GAO, often called the “congressional watchdog”, is an independent, nonpartisan agency that investigates how the U.S. federal government spends taxpayer dollars. The GAO report on chemical innovation for sustainability had many positive findings concerning our field, noting, “Breakthrough technologies in sustainable chemistry could transform how the industry thinks about performance, function, and synthesis.” The report also offered the prospect for increased research support, stating, “A national initiative that considers sustainable chemistry in a systematic manner could be useful. Such an effort could encourage collaborations among industry, academia and the government, similar to other national technology initiatives.” Yet this promise, the report noted, is weakened because “Stakeholders lack agreement on how to define sustainable chemistry and how to measure or assess the sustainability of chemical processes and products; these differences hinder the development and adoption of more sustainable chemistry technologies.” For our field to realize its potential, we must, as we have noted multiple times in our editorials, make significant progress in how we measure and assess the sustainability of chemical processes and products. Our field is diverse, and so a diverse group of metrics will be required. We also recognize that the use of sustainability metrics will not be possible or necessary in all cases, but we must make progress. Organizations such as the ACS Green Chemistry Institute and the United States Environmental Protection Agency have been active in promoting the development of new tools and metrics for sustainability assessment. ACS SCE will complement such efforts by providing a peer-reviewed forum promoting the use of these tools and metrics in describing the latest advances in the field.
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© 2018 American Chemical Society
The Virtual Special Issue (VSI) on Promoting the Development and Use of Quantitative Sustainability Metrics represents another step that ACS SCE will take in bridging the gap noted in the GAO report. We acknowledge the organizers of the 21st Annual Green Chemistry and Engineering Conference held in Reston, VA (June 13−15, 2017) for allowing us access to potential authors from metrics-related sessions. The VSI contains contributions from well-known authors in the field and addresses diverse topics that include a compilation of the vocabulary of sustainability metrics, the evolution of the use of such metrics, in silico tools for predictive toxicology, the role of life cycle analysis in sustainable design, and specific examples of process/product design using such metrics. Collectively, these articles represent applications of sustainability metrics in diverse industry sectors including commodity chemicals, renewable fuels, pharma, specialty chemicals, and personal care products. The scale of applications extends from a chemical synthesis laboratory to a large chemical plant to agricultural land. We hope that this VSI compilation demonstrates to our readers not only how existing tools and metrics may be applied to promote sustainable chemistry and engineering but also the complexities and challenges associated with reliable sustainability assessments. Finally, another step that ACS SCE will take in promoting sustainability metrics, announced in our January 2018 Editorial, is to provide fresh guidance to authors and reviewers. We will provide a variety of rubrics for reviewers to apply when evaluating the use of sustainability metrics in manuscripts submitted to the journal, and we will recommend that authors review these rubrics as they are preparing their manuscripts. We will announce this guidance in a future editorial. We welcome your suggestions and inquiries (please email us at
[email protected]) as we develop and publicize the guidance.
Bala Subramaniam, Associate Editor University of Kansas, United States
David Allen, Editor-in-Chief
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The University of Texas at Austin, United States
AUTHOR INFORMATION
ORCID
Bala Subramaniam: 0000-0001-5361-1954 David Allen: 0000-0001-6646-8755 Notes
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the authors and not necessarily the views of the ACS.
Received: March 20, 2018 Published: April 2, 2018 4422
DOI: 10.1021/acssuschemeng.8b01268 ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng. 2018, 6, 4422−4422
