Green Chemistry in Controlling Environmental Pollution

The use of toxic reactants and reagents affects the environment. The gaseous, particulate substances, solvents and heat added to the environment due to laboratory and industrial chemical processes, reach directly or indirectly by incorporating in precipitation to oceans if these persist in the environment for long time. As a result these cause harm to both territorial and aquatic life. Long lived gases such as CO2, SO2, nitrogen oxides gets dissolved in ocean water causing its acidification which has been recently recognized as threat to marine organisms especially marine calcifies. At this stage, the beginning of Green Chemistry was marked. Green Chemistry is defined as environmentally benign chemistry. Green chemistry is one of the most explored topics these days. Main research on green chemistry aims to minimize or eliminate the formation of harmful bi-products and to maximize the desired products in an environment friendly way. The three main developments in green chemistry include the use of super critical carbon dioxide, water as green solvent, aqueous hydrogen peroxide as an oxidizing agent and use of hydrogen in asymmetric synthesis. In order to reduce carbon footprint, the traditional methods of heating are increasingly replaced by microwave heating. It also saves a lot of time. Even food with low carbon footprints is greatly encouraged these days. This paper mainly highlight on applying green chemistry to day to day life in order to control environmental pollution.