Digitalization paving the ways for sustainable chemistry: switching on more green lights

The world is facing an interconnected crisis caused by a variety of factors including climate change, water scarcity, biodiversity loss, and chemical waste. One of most prominent factors is the exploitation of limited resources to convert them into chemical products based on the traditional linear approach. This has been provocatively described as rubbish chemistry, a "bad, old-school" system that needs to be revised globally. Representing one of the largest and most complex industrial sectors around the globe and accounting for $4 trillion USD in sales in 2019, the chemical industry generates fundamental components to produce agrochemicals, plastics, paints, adhesives, coatings, electronics, and pharmaceuticals. However, most of these chemicals are made using oil and natural gas, corresponding to 99% of the feedstocks for downstream organic chemical production. Over 80% of the producing companies assert that sustainability has become as important to them as revenue growth, and both increasingly depend on recent advancements in digitalization.