Planetary metrics for the absolute environmental sustainability assessment of chemicals
Environmental assessments in green chemistry often rely on simplified metrics that enable comparisons between alternative routes but fail to shed light on whether they are truly sustainable in absolute terms, viz. relative to the Earth's ecological capacity. To expand our currently limited knowledge of the extent to which chemicals are environmentally sustainable, here we analyse 492 chemical products through the lens of seven planetary boundaries representing critical biophysical limits that should never be exceeded.
