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Metrics Toolkit

‌The GCCE, as partners in the EU IMI CHEM21 project, developed a unified Metrics Toolkit to comprehensively evaluate the sustainability of chemical and bio-chemical reactions based on a series of key parameters. Moving beyond the use of mass based metrics alone, the Toolkit uses a blend of both qualitative and quantitative criteria to assess how green a reaction is, as well as considering factors both upstream and downstream of the reaction itself, ensuring a truly holistic approach. The Toolkit allows the user to both assess the ‘green credentials’ of their research – highlighting where research is performing well in terms of its ‘greenness’ and clearly identify hot-spots or areas of concern in current methodologies and benchmark their work against current state of the art for a particular reaction or pathway by giving a baseline against which new discoveries can be compared. The Toolkit is specifically structured with a series of ‘passes’ to cover everything from bench top research right through to industrial scale with increasing level of complexity. 

The primary aim of this Toolkit is to encourage continuous improvement whilst training researchers to think critically about sustainability and environmental acceptability, making analysis of their synthetic routes and the use of greener and more sustainable techniques part of everyday practice.

The rationale behind the creation of the Toolkit and a description of the methodologies adopted is available as an open access publication. 

To maximise uptake, the Toolkit itself has been made freely available in the form of a user friendly excel spreadsheet in the supplementary information of the publication.

The CHEM21 online learning platform, solvent selection guide and metrics toolkit were all developed as part of the IMI funded CHEM21 project (Chemical Manufacturing Methods for the 21st Century Pharmaceutical Industries). CHEM21 has received funding from the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking under grant agreement n°115360, resources of which are composed of financial contribution from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) and EFPIA companies’ in kind contribution