Chemistry and Biochemistry: Research Progress Vol. 12

Green chemistry is commonly presented as a route to sustainable development because it seeks to prevent pollution and hazard at the molecular and process-design stages rather than manage them after formation. Yet the relationship between a greener reaction and a genuinely sustainable chemical system is not automatic. This critical narrative review evaluates how far green chemistry contributes to sustainable development when its principles are interpreted through resource efficiency, hazard reduction, life-cycle thinking, circularity, enabling technologies, and implementation governance. Literature eligible for thematic inclusion was considered from 1990 to 15 June 2026, supplemented by foundational works where necessary. The strongest evidence supports green chemistry as a design discipline that can reduce material waste, hazardous inputs, solvent burden, and process intensity, particularly when catalysis, biocatalysis, solvent selection, continuous processing, electrochemistry, and mechanochemistry are deployed against explicit baselines. Confidence weakens when local reaction metrics are treated as proxies for system-wide sustainability. Mass-based indicators can fail to track life-cycle impacts; renewable feedstocks can transfer burdens to land, water, or energy systems; recycling can perpetuate hazardous substances; and apparently benign solvents or technologies may create upstream or separation burdens. Recent safe-and-sustainable-by-design approaches therefore extend green chemistry by integrating hazard, exposure, life-cycle environmental impacts, circularity, and, increasingly, socioeconomic considerations. The review argues that green chemistry contributes most credibly to sustainable development when it functions as an upstream design infrastructure embedded within life-cycle assessment, absolute sustainability benchmarks, transparent trade-off analysis, and value-chain governance. Priority research needs include early-stage predictive sustainability assessment, industrial-scale validation of emerging technologies, harmonised metrics, non-toxic circularity, and stronger measurement of social outcomes. Green chemistry is thus necessary for sustainable chemical innovation, but it is insufficient when practised as an isolated set of reaction-level rules.