The concept of "green chemistry" arose in the USA in the early 1990's due mainly to activities carried out at NSF (CHE,CTS) and EPA in the area of benign synthesis and process development. Environmentally Benign Chemical Synthesis and Processing Research on Pollution Prevention at its Source; A University-Industry Cooperative Program was an early NSF effort to affect partnerships between government, academia and industry.

Today, the generally accepted definition of green chemistry involves the design of chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances. Major support for the concept is found in the NSF/EPA Partnership for Environmental Technologies and Systems, which now includes the Technology for a Sustainable Society (TSE) Program and the New Technologies for the Environment (NTE) Program (http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2003/nsf03510/nsf03510.htm). TSE is a part of EPA's STAR (Science to Achieve Results) Program (http://www.epa.gov/ncer), which also includes The Green Chemistry Challenge Program, Green Engineering, Design for the Environment and other pollution prevention activities at EPA.

Of note, the Green Chemistry Challenge Grants and Green Chemistry Challenge Awards Programs (http://www.epa.gov/greenchemistry) champion the green cause by supporting research through the TSE activities and by recognizing those in industry, academia and government who have met the Green Chemistry objectives in an exemplary way

On April 1, 2004, the House Science Committee gave voice vote approval to H.R. 3970, the "Green Chemistry R&D Act of 2004," indicative of current interest in the area.

The Green Chemistry Institute (CGI) was founded as a non-profit organization in 1997 to promote green chemistry through research, education information dissemination, conferences and symposia. In 2001, the CGI joined the American Chemical Society (ACS) to help address global issues dealing with chemistry in the environment.

Notable on the international scene, the Green Chemistry Network, (http://www.chemsoc.org/networks/gcn), was launched by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and the RSC also publishes the journal entitled Green Chemistry (http://www.rsc.org/is/journals/current/green/greenpub.htm).

The Second Basic Science & Technology Plan adopted by Japan in FY2001, and in effect until FY2005, is the underlying framework for the promotion of science and technology under the Science and Technology Basic Law, passed in 1995. (For a more detailed description of the Plan, see RM #00-18, dated 12/4/00, http://www8.cao.go.jp/cstp/english/s&tmain-e.html and http://www.mext.go.jp/english/index.htm). In order to oversee implementation of the plan, the Council for Science & Technology Policy has been established. The Council has a secretariat within the Prime Minister's Cabinet Office whose members are detailed from various ministries while the rest will be on loan from academia and industry. This proactive group, much more representative than past groups, will attempt to drive the Basic Plan to fruition. With the approval of the Council, the priorities for R&D within the Basic Plan are:

• Life sciences (genome and post-genome science, cell biology, and brain science)
• Information technology (including network technology, high-performance computing technology, man-machine interface technology, and basic software)
• Environmental science and technology (including recycling technology, safety management technology for chemicals, global change prediction, greenhouse emission technology remediation)
• Materials sciences and nanotechnology (including nanoscale materials and ecomaterials)

Basic Plan Spending

Recent expenditures indicate relative priorities in the four areas. Funding for Environmental Sciences had the largest increase but it should be kept in mind that most of the funding is for recycling and remediation activities and further, that relative to Life Sciences and IT, the base was low. For instance, it should be noted that of the 60 billion yen available to the major academic funding agency (MEXT) for Environmentally related activities, 65% goes to global observation, 30% to predicting global conditions and only 5% to the improvement of technology.

Within the government framework, the designated “patron” for building the base for environmental science is the Japan Chemical Innovation Institute (JCII) and the recently formed Green & Sustainable Chemistry Network (GSCN). The GSC title represents a compromise between academics and industry, with government and industry stressing the economy and benefits to society. The strategy of JCII in the formation of an anticipated Third Basic Plan is to propose an emphasis on Sustainable Technology (ST) in order to increase public and political support. Within ST, GSC will become a key driver by addressing such issues as:

Among the researchers in the field there was the sense that JCII has not been a particularly effective agent for the promotion of GSC during the current plan. The basic problem, as seen by JCII is that to get support, GSC must evolve away from process chemistry and broaden into a more inclusive approach. If this occurs, there is the fear that academic chemists will leave the area, yet if it doesn't happen, it is probable that industry will lose interest. The title Green and Sustainable Chemistry is a compromise between the two camps.

In the brief time since the founding of GSCN, the membership has grown to include 20 organizations, an excellent website (http://www.gscn.net/) has emerged and a program for GSC Awards to individuals, groups or companies who greatly contribute to promote GSC through their research, development and their industrialization in the field has been established. The Minster of the Ministry of the Environment (ME), the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) or the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), whichever agency is appropriate, presents these distinguished awards that are quite similar in concept to the EPA awards given under the Presidential Green Challenge Program in the US.

The Japan Science and Technology Corporation (JST under MEXT) and the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO, under METI) approach funding from the point of view of project research and both have green projects in their portfolios. The major supporter of individual academic chemists, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS under MEXT), works in a manner more analogous to the NSF individual investigator mode and new experiments in both JST and JSPS involve academic rotators in the review and granting process. Again, as with JST and NEDO, JSPS supports a number of people in the green area. As in the US, there are isolated groups carrying out excellent chemistry in the area but no major initiative or crosscutting government policy in place to unite the field.

The major interfaces between government and industry occur with NEDO/METI and JST/MEXT. The project emphasis of these agencies makes for a viable match.

Industry in Japan has been aware of the environmental aspects of chemistry for over twenty years. This sector, pushed by such regulatory considerations as the Kyoto protocol has been proactive in both a real and PR sense. The current thrust in Japan for the compatible growth of the economy with the environment will keep industry in the forefront. However, as noted in the JCII approach given above, the emphasis will be on sustainability with more of an eye towards recycling, energy savings and pollution control than on the development of new, greener technology. It was noted by NEDO that no new green technology has as yet replaced a traditional one in Japan.

For the future of green chemistry, the problems arise from the fact that, in Europe and the U.S., the GSC mainstream is process innovation. Here in Japan, it is felt by some in industry that academia may leave the movement if the framework is broadened. Unfortunately, unless broadening of the definitions of GSC occur beyond chemistry, industry will not be interested.

The current president of the Chemical Society of Japan (CSJ) has noted that the interaction between academia and industry has been hampered by the fact that industry works on a fast time scale while Japanese academia is much more conservative with respect to research areas. The need for academicians to train students makes them less likely to change their research areas, and this has not been of benefit to green chemistry. Industrial support to academicians has been centered on several of the "big hitters" on the university scene.

Industrial interaction is more apparent at the Research Institutes, AIST (METI) and RIKEN (MEXT) where, especially at AIST, there is pressure to commercialize results.

The Research Institute for Green Technology has a permanent staff of 135 and a budget of 1.56 billion yen per year. The Institute, supported by in-house money, concentrates on catalysis, membrane, supercritical fluid, and green products and resources research. The Institute also has a METI project on minimum energy chemistry. AIST concentrates on two approaches to environmental chemistry. First, with about 100 people, methods are sought to industrialize aspects of an environmental problem in a short to midterm effort. Second, again with about 100 people, research for developing environmentally friendly technology is being carried out. It was felt that, in the latter case, industry complains that academia, and, to some extent, the institute is out of step. However, industry won't provide the data needed to improve the situation. To help solve this problem, the institute uses Japanese engineering companies to evaluate its research. Industry is quite willing to use green technology, but clearly, profit making comes first.

The research being carried out at RIKEN in the Ecomolecular Science Research Group, situated in the Discovery Research Institute at Wako works on the interface between polymer chemistry and biology with personnel consisting of equal numbers of molecular biologists and polymer scientists. The group is made up of 7 scientists, 12 postdoctorals and 12 graduate students. The researchers comprise four teams involved in "Material-conversion;” Biological-conversion;" “Chemical-conversion” and "Photosynthetic-conversion." As with other RIKEN projects, the idea was vetted within the institute, and then by the institute to MEXT with the result that MEXT has supported the work through its initial 5-year period and additional support has been obtained from JSPS. There is a chance for continued support to the group.

The groups at both AIST and RIKEN have first-rate facilities including laboratories, personnel and equipment. Also, both Institutes have active foreign collaborations. With the established industrial interface apparent at both Institutes, they seem well positioned to have impact on useable green chemistry in the future.

On the academic scene, as of April 1, 2004, the reorganization of the National University system will reduce the original number of 99 national universities to 87 four-year national university corporations and the present 15 inter-university research facilities will be incorporated into four independent organizations. The

expected changes due to reorganization include:

Although the new system could lead to greater autonomy, the prevalent feeling is that the old paternalistic system in chemistry departments will be slow to break down. This has ramifications for younger people who might be interested in launching projects in green chemistry (or any other area of new science). The lack of an overarching government policy in the area puts a risk into choosing GSC as an area of focus. Also, without a unifying policy, it is not clear how many established researchers would shift their efforts into GSC.

This is not to say that there is no GSC research being carried out in Japanese universities. Very much as in the U.S., excellent research centered around such topics as catalyst development, supercritical fluids, aqueous reaction medium, atom economy, microreactor chemistry, fluorous reaction systems and solar energy conversion are found in the laboratories of academic chemists. The quality of the university work in GSC is high, but as yet there are only hot spots of activity in the system.

The academic chemists interviewed for this study fell into three camps. Those who were dedicated to the precepts of GSC and were carrying out solid basic research formed a solid core and will advance the field. There was a second group, many of whom were doing excellent work in other areas that felt that GSC has no intellectual content and that chemists should stick to "pure chemistry" The third group, described by the other two groups was said to consist of those researchers who were willing to chase support by claiming a connection, albeit, a thin one, to GSC.

The concept of Green and Sustainable Chemistry (GSC) has been established in Japan as a part of the Environmental Science and Technology priority of the Second Basic Science and Technology Plan. Research in GSC, from the basic to the applied, is being carried out in academia, industry and the Research Institutes with the support of the major governmental funding agencies. Support comes for both projects and individual investigators. The challenge for GSC is to foster public and political support for a larger effort via JCII while establishing meaningful collaboration between academia and industry. In an environment that is giving a higher priority to economic growth than basic research, academia must be convinced there are challenges in GSC with high intellectual merit, while industry must be convinced that academia has something to offer that can become economically viable.

Perhaps the most promising area for American/Japanese collaboration, at this time, is at the industrial/academic interface in each country. The possibility of organizing a workshop at PACIFICHEM 2005 (http://www.pacifichem.org/) was brought up with staff at the Research Institute for Green Chemistry at AIST and of the Okayama University of Science. Others are also organizing symposia and reacted favorably toward the workshop idea.

As envisioned, the workshop would bring together approximately 20 participants who would be split evenly between countries and split evenly between industry and academia. The purpose would be for the industrial participants to bring forth topics of general interest to that sector, while the task of the academic participants would be to indicate how university researchers might best be involved. The timing of the workshop would allow it to set the stage for the green chemistry symposia to follow. Further, the timing would allow the chance for NSF to elicit other U.S. agency support for the effort at a point where interest in green chemistry seems to be gathering some momentum in the U.S.

Thirty-one representatives of government, scientific societies, research institutes, universities and industry were interviewed for this report. The following is a list of the organizations visited:

The NSF Embassy Fellows program has been created through a partnership between NSF and the Department of State, with the goal of providing scientific expertise and support to U.S. Embassies as they may request, while providing international experience to NSF staff. Embassy fellows are expected to:

The focus of the assignment was on the area of "Green Chemistry" in Japan, with Dr. Rubottom assigned to the Environment, Science, and Technology Affairs Section at the Embassy of the United States of America in Tokyo, Japan.