为什么化学家首先会制作危险材料？这个问题导致约翰·华纳（John Warner）进行十字军东征，以改变化学领域。四十年来，华纳一直在发明分子，收集数百份专利，并倡导设计不会伤害人和环境健康的化学品和产品。
Yet the Zymergen senior vice president and research fellow is still swimming upstream in his evangelism for nontoxic, circular product design that imitates patterns and principles found in nature. How can green chemistry, which he has helped popularize, be more widely embraced and established within a circular flow of materials and products?
Warner, also the co-founder of the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry, lately has been sharing a "materials metabolism" framework for understanding how to make use and reuse the norm for industry. At the GreenBiz Circularity 22 event Tuesday in Atlanta, he offered the following hints for advancing green chemistry within a circular economy.
Seek answers in nature
华纳说：“我们希望我们的产品处于使用和再利用状态；这是我们想要实现的最高可持续性形式。”竞彩足球app怎么下载“有时候，当我们想到自然世界中的人类时，我们会试图将自己从中摆脱出来。我们人类是自然界的一部分。”
"But we also have to have technology that creates materials and products that are actually in harmony and compatible with nature," he added. "It's not one or the other. It's actually both."
华纳已经绘制了闭环产品流与自然界中的圆形过程相交的方式。（在下面的图形中，人类的人类流动流行时，而自然资源的流动逆时针循环。）可持续性发生在使用和重复使用与稳定的生态系统相交的点。竞彩足球app怎么下载
拥抱使用和重复使用
使用和重用模型本质上很丰富。例如，寄居蟹找到了一个空壳，最终它会超出并腾出更大的外壳，这值得考虑，这是人们想要制作耐用商品的何时，从汽车到游乐场幻灯片到饮料杯子，这是值得考虑的。
"When we do this system of use and reuse, it's important to realize what we're asking is that the materials conserve their composition, that chemistry, and they conserve their form," so both the molecular clarity and the structure need to be maintained, he said.
Recognize recycling's role
However, that molecular structure can't last forever. Entropy enters the picture, and things break down. A mechanical cycle of recycling follows the cycle of use and reuse. For example, a bird finds a twig and builds a nest, a beaver makes a dam from a tree. A human regranulates waste plastic to make something new. The form changes, but the chemical composition remains the same.
然而，这个阶段也不会永远持续下去。聚合物链和纤维分解。木材和塑料磨损和破裂。
Enable 'materials metabolism'
Enter the next cycle, "to what I find the most beautiful opportunity for us, what I call the materials metabolism, where we take materials and components and go to molecules and ingredients and back and forth, not to chemical recycling but to molecular reprocessing and synthesis," Warner said. "And this is where nature is such an opportunity to teach us, 3.8 billion years of evolution."
At this point, both form and the chemical composition change.
拥抱再生
通过降解，一些分子被分解并恢复自然，以后可能会再次提取它们，从而在再生周期中构成新成分。
Through regeneration, "we're interacting now with the with the natural world and natural resources," Warner said, citing natural examples including the work of dung beetles, bees pollinating flowers and lions eating prey. As for products, however, very few beyond some packaging and textiles are truly regenerative at this point.
练习谦卑
I spent more than a few eyebrow-wrinkling moments pondering Warner's complex diagram. It's worth a look and then another look, especially at a red arrow that points to the unanticipated consequences of people's best-laid plans. The arrow stands for "leakage," showing how human-made materials loops aren't perfectly closed.
"One of the things we've got to realize is we have humility, when we look at systems," he said. "It's not the things we put on the map that's gonna mess us up. It's the things we leave out," he said. "During recycling, there's leakage and what happens is that leakage create a porosity and at that intersection, we lose a little sustainability," and the same is true of the other cycles.
换句话说，漏油，海滩上的塑料废物和二氧化碳排放不是通过设计的。
“我们如何处理泄漏，这是一个平等的问题，甚至可能是一个更重要的问题。因此，我们具有人类行为，必须设计产品以促进采用行为改变，但是我们还必须拥有创造材料的技术和实际上与自然兼容并兼容的产品。它不是另一个。实际上是两者兼而有之。”
支持协作
Warner also advocates for working together across disciplines and sectors: "not only the commercial people, not only the development people or manufacturing people that are researching people, not only the recycling people, but as a community, we have to look at all of these approaches, and start talking to each other more often."
Warner's admonition is informed by his own serendipitous path through art and science, and a career straddling business and the public sector.
在1980年代初期，他是波士顿的一名本科生，他曾在一支名为“ The Elements”的乐队中演出。在参加基本化学课程的同时，有一天，他与一位朋友一起到马萨诸塞大学研究实验室标签。那一刻为华纳带来了新的生活道路。他意识到艺术家和科学家都创造了东西，他迷上了创建新分子。
不久之后，Teenage Warner发表了五篇化学研究论文，并在美国化学学会发表了讲话。在他在普林斯顿大学获得化学博士学位后，宝丽来招募了他。在那期间，美国环境保护局的一次会议使他偶然地与童年相识的保罗·阿纳斯塔斯（Paul Anastas）。他们关于毒性化学的对话最终导致了1988年开创性的书《绿色化学理论与实践》，该书阐明了12 principles of green chemistry。
Rethink education
Warner sparked the creation of the世界第一博士学位绿色化学计划，在马萨诸塞大学，他说，其毕业生受到公司的高度追捧。然而，在化学教育中，毒理学，环境原则，法律和政策的课程仍然很少见。
为此，超越良性nonprofit he co-founded with Amy Cannon has 100 universities signing on to a "Green Chemistry Commitment" to change their science curricula.
他说：“如果您在地球上的每个材料科学计划上都在搜索每个化学计划，那么您会发现，没有一所大学需要化学家或材料科学家来学习我们今天所说的任何东西。”“因此，我们要求发明未提供技能的人的解决方案。因此，让我们继续前进。让我们不仅与行业和其他事物合作，而且让我们去大学，建议您也许您可能想去更改您的课程。这就是绿色化学的全部内容。”
