Green chemistry is a concept that crops up with increasing frequency; we’ve already discussed it here previously with reference to the Periodic Table’s ‘endangered’ elements, and the recycling rates of metal elements used in mobile phones. But what do we mean by ‘green chemistry’, and what’s required for chemistry to be considered ‘green’? That’s what this post, a collaboration with the University of Toronto’s Green Chemistry Initiative, aims to look at.
We’re all familiar with the periodic table, but the majority of non-chemists probably aren’t familiar with the everyday uses of some of the many elements it contains. Some elements that many haven’t heard of find uses in technologies or applications we take for granted – but the supplies of these elements on Earth are not infinite. Today’s graphic, in a collaboration with the American Chemical Society’s Green Chemistry Institute, looks at some of the endangered elements in the periodic table, and why we might miss them when they’re gone.
