The practice of chemistry still needs to change

There is now over a 20-year history of green and sustainable chemistry efforts in the US, but for a majority of chemicals that have been synthesized, chemists and chemical engineers lack key information about what it takes to commercialize them, their toxicity to humans or the environment, their degradability (biological or otherwise), their ability to be recycled or reused, or their ability to be source renewably. While the depth, breadth, and variety of innovations in chemistry gives one hope that chemists and chemical engineers will make many significant advances in the next 20 years, there is still a need to incorporate systems and life cycle thinking into chemistry. This is especially true as one considers limitations in the supply of key elements chemists rely on very heavily. Recent advances in computational chemistry and machine learning show great promise for moving chemistry toward a more sustainable practice of chemistry.