The bumpy road to sustainability: Reassessing the history of the twelve principles of green chemistry.

The widely recognized 12 principles of green chemistry, introduced in 1998, have become a focal point for environmentally conscious chemists worldwide. These principles are regarded as a comprehensive summary of the achievements of green chemistry and a roadmap for future advancements in the field, aligning chemistry with sustainability goals. They have been hailed as groundbreaking in addressing pressing global challenges, including environmental and climate crises. However, a closer examination reveals a more nuanced perspective. Criticisms have emerged, asserting that these principles may stifle the creativity of emerging chemists and distort the history of green chemistry. Dissenting voices are growing, prompting scholars to reevaluate their effectiveness and relevance. It appears that the 12 principles provide an overarching narrative and a common language to practitioners of green chemistry but their success does not proceed from their 'scientific' qualities but should be rather understood in socio-historical terms. Analysing these principles provides insights into the mindset and collective identities of chemists, highlighting how underlying value-driven frameworks shape scientific discourse. It becomes evident that these frameworks can be co-opted and persist unquestioned for extended periods. The objective of this article is to demystify the 12 principles, stimulating dialogue on the necessity of self-reflection within scientific fields that heavily rely on value-laden sustainability-oriented terminology.

Beyond green chemistry: Radical environmental transformation through Sanfte Chemie (1985-1995).

Sanfte Chemie was a concept formulated in the 1980s in Germany by a group of environmentally conscious scholars. It emerged within a unique environment, marked by its radical critique of dominant forms of rationality, and against the rich background of German philosophical technocritical traditions. Its purpose was to profoundly reshape the practice of chemistry and the organization of the chemical industry along the lines of sustainability. In contrast to later concepts like green or sustainable chemistry, Sanfte Chemie went beyond setting new research directions; it critically reevaluated the entire epistemological foundation upon which the science of chemistry was built. Under the auspices of the German Green Party, the concept flourished in the 1980s before falling out of grace in the following decade. While largely deemed overly radical in its time and then subsequently forgotten, Sanfte Chemie not only anticipated some of the most promising trends in sustainability science today but also offered unique insights that may shed new light on the challenges of the ongoing environmental crisis.

Reinventing the wheel: A critical look at one-world and circular chemistries.

With the rise of environmental awareness among chemists, more and more programmatic frameworks try to guide chemists to conduct research in an ethical manner. While green chemistry remains the most popular and influential of these concepts, not all scholars choose to embrace it. One world chemistry and circular chemistry are examples of this new trend. They constitute an attempt to profoundly reshape the practice of chemistry along new lines to make the discipline more relevant to the changing social, environmental and economic reality. And yet, both concepts betray a lack of familiarity with the recent history of chemistry and of sustainability undermining their overall message. The article indicates that the history of chemistry can play a crucial role in enriching the conversation on the direction chemistry should take towards the socio-environmental transition.

The Meandering Life of a Research Trajectory: Rare Earths in the Aubervilliers Research Centre (1953-2020).

Solvay's Centre de Recherches in Aubervilliers (CRA), north of Paris, has been one of the leading institutions in rare earths research in the world for the last sixty years. In the 1960s and 1970s, its pioneering studies in liquid-liquid separation of rare earths made it possible to obtain a new level of purity of final products, opening the door to a vast number of applications in fields as varied as phosphors (for colour TV sets and trichromatic lamps) or catalysis (for exhaust emission control). Generations of researchers, many of whom were educated by the leading French figures in solid-state chemistry, worked behind the centre's walls creating a unique critical mass of rare earths in the French industrial chemical community. Today, the place of rare earths has dwindled in the centre's overall structure, but the trajectory still lingers on. This paper follows the complex life of the rare earths research trajectory in the CRA and tries to understand the factors that contributed to its evolution.

Upscaling Forest Waste: The French Quest for Fuel Autarky after World War I.

After World War I, many European nations no longer wanted to depend on foreign fossil fuels and sought national renewable sources. In France, inhabitants of the forest regions of south-west advocated wood as a technological alternative for fuel, envisaging the transformation of forest waste into an inexhaustible energy source for cars and trucks. Despite the lobbying efforts of political and military leaders, wood fuels failed to gain enough momentum in France. Because of the huge variety of production techniques required specially adapted machines, the challenge to the primacy of petroleum fell short. It mirrors the current debates on establishing a post-fossil fuel world as it shows that the overabundance of technological alternatives may prevent any one of them from reaching a critical mass. The article engages in a dialogue between history of technology and sustainability studies by trying to understand the promises and failures of the past alternatives to the petroleum-based technological paradigm.

Can Science Feed on a Crisis? Expectations, the Pine Institute, and the Decline of the French Resin Industry.

Argument While science and economy are undoubtedly interwoven, the nature of their relationship is often reduced to a positive correlation between economic and scientific prosperity. It seems that the modern scholarship focusing on "success stories" tends to neglect counterintuitive examples such as the impact of economic crises on research. We argue that economic difficulties, under certain circumstances, may also lead to the prosperous development of scientific institutions. This paper focuses on a particular organism, the Pine Institute in Bordeaux in France. Not only was it a key actor in the process of defining the discipline of resin chemistry, but also it remained for years at the heart of the local resin producing industry. Interestingly, there is an actual inverse correlation between the Institute's budgets and the prices and production of resinous products. The Pine Institute's existence seemed to have been driven by the crisis of the resin industry.

From Distillation to Standardization: A French Perspective on the Shaping of Turpentine Spirit (1909-1976).

Turpentine is a complex substance of pine resin origin, widely used as a solvent in multiple industries. Attempts to define it, even when elaborated by scientists, have been marked by a whole range of extra-scientific market considerations. While the Pine Institute, a resin chemistry research centre in Bordeaux, succeeded in stabilizing the meaning of the word "turpentine" on the national level in France, its expertise was contested abroad. When the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Committee 35 tried to establish a new international standard for turpentine, France was accused of protecting its industry by twisting scientific definitions for its own needs. The ISO members clashed over the relationship between trade standards and scientific definitions, at the same time highlighting the epistemological difficulties in constructing both categories.

Constructing creationists: French and British narratives and policies in the wake of the resurgence of anti-evolution movements.

Creationism is an ambiguous term used in a variety of contexts: political, scientific, religious and educational. This paper attempts to trace the discourse on creationism in two European countries (France and the United Kingdom) and show how different cultural backgrounds shape the construction of its meaning. The striking difference between the total redefinition of the narration on creationism in France after the Harun Yahya's case, and the practically oriented steady development of the discussion in the United Kingdom seems to result from two different political sensitivities, deeply rooted in local cultures. The goal of my paper is doublefold. It attempts to present the emergence of two distinct incommensurable conceptualisations of a social problem and in the same time it tries to answer how to discuss them in a democratic framework.