Guidelines on the proper selection of greenness and related metric tools in analytical chemistry - a tutorial

The metric tools that aim to assess greenness, whiteness or related aspects of analytical procedures are gaining in popularity. At the same time, their application is not standardized, leading to unintentional abuses.

Within this study, two datasets were created, consisting of the greenness assessment results for 27 (for general assessment) and 3 (for reproducibility study) analytical procedures, obtained with available greenness and related metric tools. The first dataset was assessed with multivariate statistical tools, and the analysis shows that metric tools give correlated results. The second dataset was used to calculate the reproducibility of metric tools results.

Based on the results of multivariate statistics and reproducibility analyses, we propose guidelines for the application of metric tools. Obeying these guidelines will result in a more standardized approach to assessment, consistency of results, and drawing more meaningful conclusions.