The path to a sustainable chemical industry: progress and problems

The drive toward sustainability among businesses, governments, academic programs and individuals has resulted in much progress in the last several years. Methods such as life cycle assessment, carbon and water footprinting are increasingly popular. In addition, many regions are developing byproduct synergy networks to enhance resource efficiency by using waste from one industry as a resource in another. Most efforts toward sustainability in engineering, including these, focus on enhancing efficiency of resource and energy use for a process or life cycle. Unfortunately, these efforts need not lead to sustainability. Additional efforts are required to address several challenges. These include accounting for the role of ecosystem services in life cycle analysis and decision making, considering the strong multidisciplinary, complex and wicked nature of the sustainability challenge. Process systems engineers are in a position to address these challenges by working with researchers in other disciplines.