No abstract

There have been a many publications and much discussion about green metrics. While many have been proposed, The American Chemical Society Green Chemistry Institute's Pharmaceutical Roundtable has chosen process mass intensity (PMI) as the key, high-level metric for evaluating and benchmarking progress towards more sustainable manufacturing. This paper provides the philosophical and technical arguments on why PMI was chosen above other related metrics such as E factor or atom economy.

In 2005, the American Chemical Society (ACS) Green Chemistry Institute (GCI) and global pharmaceutical companies established the ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable to encourage the integration of green chemistry and engineering into the pharmaceutical industry. The Roundtable developed a list of key research areas in green chemistry in 2007, which has served as a guide for focusing green chemistry research. Following that publication, the Roundtable companies have identified a list of the key green engineering research areas that is intended to be the required companion of the first list. This publication summarizes the process used to identify and agree on the top key green engineering research areas and describes these areas, highlighting their research challenges and opportunities for improvements from the perspective of the pharmaceutical industry.