Green Chemistry: An Introductory Text

Citation

Lancaster, M. (2025). Green Chemistry: An Introductory Text (4th ed.). Royal Society of Chemistry.

Chapter Summary

The publisher's description says the fourth edition still focuses on the core principles of green chemistry but places new emphasis on how green chemistry can help solve environmental problems facing society, including a new chapter on energy decarbonisation and climate change and a discussion of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The chapter headings listed in the contents are given below, in order (numbered by that order; titles only, with no section headings available).

Chapters 1–3: Principles and Concepts of Green Chemistry; Production Problems and Prevention; Measuring and Controlling Environmental Performance

The first chapter sets out the principles and concepts that the description calls the core of the book. The next two turn to problems in production and how to prevent them, and to ways of measuring and controlling environmental performance, so that the principles are tied to evidence about processes and products.

Chapters 4–5: Catalysis and Green Chemistry; Environmentally Benign Solutions

Catalysis has a chapter of its own, followed by a chapter titled "Environmentally Benign Solutions".

Chapters 6–7: Renewable Resources; Emerging Greener Technologies and Alternative Energy Sources

One chapter on renewable resources and one on newer greener technologies and alternative sources of energy.

Chapters 8–9: Designing Greener Processes; Energy Decarbonisation and Climate Change

Chapter 8 deals with designing greener processes. Chapter 9 is the chapter new to this edition: according to the publisher it brings together sustainable energy solutions and the possibility of a fossil-free chemical industry, and shows how green chemistry can help sectors such as transport and energy generation to reach net zero.

Chapters 10–11: Industrial Case Studies; An Integrated Approach to a Greener Chemical

The closing chapters turn from principles to practice: case studies from industry, then an integrated approach. The publisher states that the book looks at the practical solutions that have developed since the first edition, as well as the basics.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–3: Principles and performance

• Green chemistry principles and concepts: the core ideas for designing products and processes that reduce harm and waste (Chapter 1).
• Production problems and prevention: preventing problems at the source rather than treating them afterwards (Chapter 2).
• Environmental performance: measuring and controlling it (Chapter 3).

Chapters 4–7: Tools and feedstocks

• Catalysis: its role in greener chemistry (Chapter 4).
• Environmentally benign solutions: the subject of the chapter of that title (Chapter 5).
• Renewable resources and alternative energy: renewable feedstocks and emerging technologies (Chapters 6–7).

Chapters 8–11: Process, climate and practice

• Greener process design: designing the process as a whole (Chapter 8).
• Energy decarbonisation and climate change: sustainable energy and a fossil-free chemical industry (Chapter 9).
• Industrial case studies and integration: seeing the principles applied together (Chapters 10–11).

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Taught origins. The publisher says the text was originally designed for a Masters course in Clean Technology and associated undergraduate modules at the University of York, so it grew out of classroom use.
• Industrial perspective. The author recently retired from the Chemical Industries Association (UK), has nearly 20 years of experience in the chemical industry and set up the Royal Society of Chemistry Green Chemistry Network, and the contents end with industrial case studies and an integrated approach.
• Current framing. The fourth edition adds a chapter on energy decarbonisation and climate change and connects green chemistry to the UN Sustainability Goals, linking the subject to present policy rather than only to laboratory practice.
• Wide readership. The publisher describes the book as suitable for undergraduates and postgraduates as well as industrialists looking for ways to develop more sustainable products and processes.

Limitations

• Not a text on environmental chemistry. The chapters are about designing products and processes; none of the headings is about the behaviour of pollutants in air, water or soil, so it needs pairing with an environmental chemistry text for that side.
• Edition-dependent. The new chapter on energy decarbonisation and climate change, and the discussion of the Sustainable Development Goals, belong to the fourth edition, so earlier editions differ in content.
• Title-level information only. The publisher's page shows chapter headings but no section outline, so students should check a copy for how much chemical detail each chapter works through.

Where It Fits in the Course

Lancaster is the course's dedicated book on green chemistry as a way of designing chemistry. Manahan's Environmental Chemistry is the broad survey of the environmental spheres, and its chapters on the anthrosphere, industrial ecology and green chemistry overlap with Lancaster's subject; reading Manahan first gives the background of environmental problems that Lancaster's principles respond to. Raff and Hites's Elements of Environmental Chemistry develops the quantitative skills (mass balance, kinetics, lifetimes) used to estimate environmental fate, and Chemistry in Context is a gentler, societal-issue-led introduction in which sustainability and green chemistry recur.

For related depth, Seinfeld and Pandis's Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics treats the climate and air-pollution science that sits behind Lancaster's chapter on decarbonisation, and Schwarzenbach, Gschwend and Imboden's Environmental Organic Chemistry explains how organic chemicals partition and are transformed in the environment, which is the reason for designing hazard out of products in the first place.

How to Use This Book

The book is aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students and at people from industry. The publisher gives no formal prerequisites; a general chemistry course is a sensible minimum, and some organic chemistry will help with the chapters on catalysis and renewable resources.

A practical plan:

• Core: Chapters 1–3 in order for principles, production problems and environmental performance.
• Choose by interest: Chapters 4–7 on catalysis, environmentally benign solutions, renewable resources and emerging technologies; read the ones that match the course project.
• Systems level: Chapters 8–9 on process design and decarbonisation, after the principles are clear.
• Capstone: Chapters 10–11, the industrial case studies and the integrated approach, which are best read once the earlier chapters are familiar, applying their principles to the examples.

A useful exercise is to take a familiar product or process and assess it against the principles of Chapter 1 and the measurement ideas of Chapter 3, then compare the result with a case study from Chapter 10.