Week 4:  Atom Economy:  "Chemists need to measure efficiency of chemical reactions in order to compare alternative routes to products and their associated economic and environmental costs". Atom Economy is the method of expressing how efficiently a particular reaction makes use of the reactant atoms.  I'm glad that guy invented this equation to help green chemists do this-- even though it does not take yield into account. Also encouraging to see that ibuprofen is made in half the number of steps than it used to be, increasing atom economy.

Green chemistry as social movement:  great idea.  Consumers can bring their influence to bear on the profit driven uncaring industries. It's already starting-- people don't want damaging chemicals in their (household, personal, food) products . If more people are more informed,  we can make changes like that in ibuprofen production.  I liked the first website, Phillip Sutton has some inspirational ideas for resolving the conflict between economic growth and ecological sustainability. He mentions green chemistry, nanotechnology, and biotechnology as a way to have economic growth occur naturally in a physically constrained world. Basically, future economic growth needs to be generated through net qualitative change, not physical expansion. We need less stuff. No more landfills filling up with plastic shit, etc.

He points out that in the developed world, countries and provinces with the strongest environmental controls have the strongest economies and the leading exports of related technologies.....