We all know that the many wonderful products we use in our daily life cause a lot of waste to be generated and accumulated due to age-old manufacturing practices. It is sad that this waste is piling up and we do not have adequate resources to recycle it. And when we try to do it, we only end up with another pile of waste.

It is at this point that the idea of green chemistry comes handy. When chemical products are designed keeping in mind the principles of green chemistry and E-factor, the enormous amount of waste produced by the industry can be kept under control.‘Recycle at Source’ should be the motto.

To elaborate this point, Dr. Komal Maheshwari from Newreka will be making a presentation at the upcoming conference. She will speak on “Recycle at Source” at the 14th Annual Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference, which will be held at the The Capital Hilton, Washington, DC from June 21 to 23. The presentation will emphasize how Green Chemistry and Engineering-based solutions can be applied to recycling processes. Synthesis and catalysis with green chemicals reduce waste in the system which is otherwise disposed off after primary/secondary treatment as effluent and is the biggest source of water pollution. Dr. Komal Maheswari is the Green R&D Manager at Newreka, where she, in her own words, does fundamental research that can change the way traditional chemists think about chemistry.

The Indian Chemical industry, contributing around 6.7 per cent of the Indian GDP, is a vital part of the agricultural and industrial development in India and has major links with several other sub industries such as automotives, consumer durables, food processing, engineering etc. According to a KPMG study, “At $60 billion in 2010, the contribution of the chemical industry to India’s GDP would grow from the current level of 6.7 per cent to 7.1 per cent, while its contribution to the global industry would increase from 1.9 per cent to 2.3 per cent.”

But as with other scientific advancement, the chemical industry faces certain setbacks. Very often you hear of public outcries against the various problems caused by toxic wastes or obnoxious odours that are a result of drug or other chemical products’ manufacturing. The one way of countering such ill effects is the application of green chemistry and its allied principles. And if that is achieved, the future of chemical industry is secured.

With adequate efforts and the development of supporting structures, the Indian chemical industry is envisaged to grow and position India on the global map as a supplier of specialty and knowledge chemicals. It it also set to be a hot destination for investment in these sectors, thereby strengthening the Indian economy. Highly developed technology, in-depth research capabilities, backward and forward linkages and the development of domestic capacity to decrease the dependence on imports are some of the crucial factors that need to be taken into consideration. Nowadays, safety, health and environment protection issues have become the major-talking points in almost all industries and the Indian chemical industry is no exception. Indian chemical manufacturers have to address these issues on a war-footing. We shall be checking out the level of E-factor of the Indian Chemical manufacturers the next time and only then can we can say if the country’s oldest industry is going the environmental-friendly way or not…

Vanishing from Indian skies & flying towards extinction.

It’s “Save Tigers” everywhere. Why only Tigers? Don’t think I am against saving Tigers. I support Save Tigers; but what about the other species’ which are just disappearing all of a sudden? We have heard many talking about the parrots, woodpeckers, hornbills, cuckoos and bulbuls. Every one likes them and are concerned about these birds. So as me. But now I changed my views a bit and included one more to my list…. the vultures. Yes you heard it right; It’s vultures, the ceaseless scavengers. I know none of you have spared a thought for the bird. Even if the bird does find notice it is usually for the wrong reasons. I also noticed them for a reason.

Over the past few years, wildlife enthusiasts are crying themselves hoarse that the stately vulture is vanishing from the Indian skies and flying towards extinction. But is someone listening….? Yes, I listened to them recently and took an oath to help them be there in the nature. From millions of individuals in the 1980s, vultures have simply disappeared from large swathes of India, Pakistan and Nepal. Diclofenac, which is used as an anti-inflammatory drug in cattle, has killed millions of vultures in Asia that have eaten the bodies of the dead animals. The population of three species of Asian vultures has fallen by 97% in 12 years, and they are now at risk of extinction. Vultures eat the carcasses of livestock that have been administered veterinary diclofenac, and are poisoned by the accumulated chemical. The mechanism is probably renal failure, a known side-effect of diclofenac. It’s here that comes green pharma to the rescue. Green pharma practices will reduce the ecological impact of these drugs, which have caused mass bird die-offs and spawned antibiotic-resistant.

Diclofenac, the popular anti-inflammatory and arthritis drug, is used in both human and veterinary medicine. In Asian countries, the farmers started using the drug in 1990′s dosing their cows and oxen to relieve inflammation that could spoil the animal’s ability to provide milk or pull plows. When they died the livestock were sent to special dumps and the vultures who fed on the carcasses accrued a dose of diclofenac of around 100 micrograms per kilogram. And that was more than enough to kill the birds.

Diclofenac originated from Ciba-Geigy (now Novartis) in 1973 and was first introduced in the UK in 1979.

The governments of India, Pakistan, and Nepal banned veterinary use of diclofenac in 2006, but the drug has still not disappeared from livestock tissues. You might be wondering what the monitoring authorities had been doing when all these things happened or Were there any such monitoring systems exist? Yes there are monitoring authorities existing, like FDA, to give approval to the drugs. But what FDA will check is the environmental assessment provided by the companies if the drugmakers plan to manufacture more than 40 tons of a drug. And the FDA only requires assessments of a single manufacturer’s contribution, not the total volume of the drug that may be produced or leaked into the environment. So what is the exact solution for this? Even if the FDA had asked the companies to file a comprehensive assessment report, it was unlikely that diclofenac’s side effect on vultures would have been detected. What is to be done? We can just keep on suffering like this all time. We don’t want to see any one – whether it is human or animals/birds – to suffer because of the technology.

As a solution for this, Drug-makers should create drugs that are “benign by design” and should consider environmental impact before new drugs are brought to market. An approach like this, which is exactly same as that of the E-factor concept, could lead to a new category of “green drugs”: compounds that biodegrade quickly and easily in the environments they inevitably end up in. Let’s all have Green dreams and let’s work for it together!!!

These drugs are not only harmful to the environment and the mankind, but also threaten the wildlife. Of course in weird ways. I was speechless for a minute when a researcher told me that a derivative of the hormone oestrogen can feminize a male fish!! The derivative, called ethinyl estradiol (EE2), is thought to be responsible for feminising male fish. Now, what more can you do to a male, does it really matter whether it’s a fish or a human being?

EE2 is the main active ingredient in many contraceptives and is excreted by women in a conjugated form, which can then be deconjugated in sewage treatment works and discharged in the activated state.

Numerous chemicals released in the process of drug making hold the potential to disrupt sexual development and reproduction in a diverse range of animal species by mimicking natural estrogens. And, most of these chemicals are found in waste water and ultimately will end up in rivers and other aquatic bodies. So, undoubtedly we can say that these aquatic organisms are therefore highly susceptible to the harmful effects of environmental estrogens.

It is actually shocking to know that drugs prepared for the wellness of mankind is actually destroying many other living beings and thereby the nature also. This particular case of EE2 tells us exactly how drugs discharged into the environment disrupt the normal endocrine function of wildlife.

There is a lot of pressure evolving around the pharma industry worldwide as their block-buster drugs patent expires, lack of candidates to replace them, and especially the cost of discovering and developing drugs also increase. But green chemistry offers significant cost advantages and hence is a part of the solution to these problems. How ‘going green’ will reduce the cost? The savings come about because efficient syntheses that avoid exotic reagents, minimise energy use and replace organic solvents with water are invariably cheaper to perform.

But, how many are implementing these principles? The numbers are growing, but still need more participation.

The industry reports are actually a bit scary as it highlights the impact of pharmaceuticals on the environment. There is an immediate requirement of an action plan to be set up so as to increase understanding and improve risk management. The need for a greener solution is much more important when we see the steady growth of the pharma market worldwide.

Both human and veterinary medicines have the potential to harm environment. But how?  The whole lot of toxic elements contained in these medicines will be coming through waste waters.  Can we ever control the production of these medicines? No I guess. How can we control the production of medicines when population, and thereby health problems, is on a high. The more the number of people, the more the medicines –  of different varieties, flavours, colours, complications, after-effects… where are we heading to? Green Chemistry and its wonderful concept of E-factor come to our rescue at this point. Why don’t we discuss that in another post as I am already too much “DRUGGED”?

The relevance of E-factor should be recognized at the design stage itself for any product so that it comes in harmony with the green concept. E-factor helps develop new processes and chemical products without harming the environment. It stresses on design of safer, biodegradable and less hazardous useful chemical products utilizing atom economic and energy efficient processes.

High Volume Products generate huge quantities of waste like H-Acid, DASDA, Paracetamol, Phenylephrine, Pigment CPC, Violet23 and Pendimethylene, which are extremely deadly harmful to the mankind. The key is prevention, not control. It is important to ensure proper scale-up through appropriate mixing, reactor design and engineering to have uniformity over large-volume operation. This is where green engineering plays a critical role in prevention by recycle at source at industrial scale. Green Chemistry is taking an independent form as an amalgam of other chemical disciplines, especially organic, inorganic and biological chemistry.

The enormity of the amount of waste produced and how it can be reduced before the production stage itself via the concept of E-factor was in a fact reduced their woes on waste generation during manufacturing. The concept of E-Factor challenged the fine chemical and pharmaceutical industry to make a paradigm shift from a concept of process efficiency to one that is motivated by elimination of waste and maximisation of raw materials utilization.

In fact, the pharmaceutical industry in particular has made substantial progress in the past few years and has adopted the concept of E-Factor as its measuring staff. The impact of E-Factor is not restricted to the fine chemicals industry, it has wider and more complicated uses in the other sectors also and has played as a major role as a measure of the efficiency of the chemical industry. Hopefully the concept of E-factor will continue to do so as the chemical industry progresses towards being a sustainable enterprise.

Green chemistry efficiently utilises (preferably renewable) raw materials (includes the source of energy), eliminates waste and avoids the use of toxic and/or hazardous reagents and solvents in the manufacture and application of chemical products. Green chemistry eliminates waste at source, i.e., it is primary pollution prevention rather than waste remediation. Green Chemistry is the utilization of a set of principles that reduces or eliminates the use or generation of hazardous substances in the design, manufacture and application of chemical products. It is better to prevent waste than to treat or clean up waste after it has been created. So says the first principle of Green chemistry; the E-factor.

E factor is the actual amount of waste produced in the process, defined as everything but the desired product. It takes the chemical yield into account and includes reagents, solvent losses, all process aids and, in principle, even fuel (although this is often difficult to quantify). Higher E-factor means more waste and, consequently, greater negative environmental impact. The ideal E factor is zero. It can be easily calculated from knowledge of the number of tons of raw materials purchased and the number of tons of product sold, for a particular product or a production site or even a whole company. But surprisingly many of the companies are not aware of this concept which was developed in the early 80s.

Now, it’s time for the chemical fraternity to come forward and vote for E-factor!

So how can one determine if one method of making a product is better than the other? There are a number of ways to determine this and one such metric is called the E-factor or the Environmental Impact Factor. E-Factor is the measure of the waste generated while making a particular product. Lower the E-factor, lesser the waste produced. E-factor is a measure of the quantity of waste produced in making a product, compared to the amount of useful material obtained (the product). The E-factor calculation is defined by the ratio of the mass of waste per unit of product:

E-Factor = Total Waste (kg) / Product (kg)

The concept of E-factor has been there for more than fifteen years, which played a major role in focusing the attention of the chemical industry word-wide, on the problem of waste generation in chemicals manufacture. Dated back in 1980s the concept still provides the impetus for developing cleaner and more sustainable processes.

The principles of Green Chemistry direct us to reduce waste rather than dealing with it after creating waste. As we all know, it is always better when zero waste is produced. All the materials that were used initially for the manufacturing of a product should be used in the final product or they should be recycled. In this case the E-factor is zero – “The Goal is Zero”.