Polpharma Launches Green Chemistry Program
20 June 2008
Polpharma has launched the green chemistry program aiming to maintain its significant financial results while developing new APIs and products with less impact to the environment.
Chemical synthesis takes into account environmental considerations in the selection of reactants and reaction conditions. It is growing in importance as both industrial and academic researchers become aware of the ecological and economic advantages of an environmentally benign or "green" approach. The principles of green chemistry focus on four main pillars:
- Reduce use of toxic and hazardous chemicals
- Recycle by-products, chemicals and wastes within manufacturing cycles
- Reuse process materials after processing
- Redesign manufacturing processes and products to eliminate the production of hazardous and toxic materials
Finding creative ways to reduce hazard and waste is also an important goal for Polpharma. Therefore, the company has launched the green chemistry program, aiming to maintain its significant financial results while developing new APIs and products with less impact to environment.
The initiatives within the program which have been already identified by Polpharma as 'quick wins' are the following:
- Organic solvent recovery and rectification improvement
- Replacement of reactants with more environmental friendly ones (non-organic solvents such as water and ionic fluids and reactants with less impact on the environment)
