Over 99 percent of the most widely produced chemicals aren’t sustainable. We are using up fossil raw materials and natural resources faster than the Earth can provide in the long term.
A new study measured greenhouse gas emissions, and how much land and water we use to understand the global environmental impact of the chemical industry. In fact, only three out of the almost 500 chemicals studied are environmentally sustainable.
The work is unique.
Earlier, we only measured and compared carbon dioxide or CO2 emissions in the production processes of various chemicals. But climate change isn't the only problem. If we focus only on it, we end up shifting the environmental burden to others.
Take biofuels. Yes, they do release significantly less CO2 into our atmosphere. But they require a lot of land, water and fertilisers to produce the required amounts.
But changing how we produce chemicals could be costly.The next step is to evaluate our current methods and change it so its economic but also environmentally friendly.
Original article:
Almost all chemicals burden the planet
Original study:
Planetary metrics for the absolute environmental sustainability assessment of chemicals