The central government is soon to announce a Green Chemistry Initiative (GCI) to support R&D in cleaner technologies in the chemicals and pharmaceutical sector. The programme is to identify various projects of promising nature and help commercialise those technologies. The Department of Science and Technology (DST) will be the implementing agency for the initiative.

The first meeting of the expert committee on Green Chemistry Initiative (GCI) that took place last week is known to have discussed the modalities of the programme.

The centre is likely to support collaborative research programmes taken up by government research institutions and universities as part of the GCI. The bulk pharmaceutical industry is going to be most benefited out of the new programme.

According to experts, most of the conventional bulk drug manufacturing processes brings in huge amount of waste. The attempt of the government would be to see the development of new process technologies that can reduce this waste. It is known that 100 kg of waste is generated during the manufacture of one kg penicillin in the conventional way. Similarly, in the manufacture of modified cyphlosporins the amount of waste is exactly the double of the final product. While the waste generation in bulk drug manufacturing sector is very high, the utilization of waste (recovery of waste) is dismal.

The centre has realized the urgency in developing cleaner process technologies where waste can substantially be reduced or recycled. Though details of the initiative is yet to be finalized, the centre may support institutional R&D programmes to begin with and would extend it to both private, as well as government sector in the coming years. Though there were very few institutions who had been focusing on green chemistry years ago, today, the situation has changed with many research institutions coming forward with such research programmes. Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT), Central Drug Research Institute (CDRI), National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER) are all known to have initiated research programmes in this direction. The centre's GCI would give a renewed thrust and direction to such programmes.

It should also be recalled that the Department of Chemistry at University of Delhi had recently constituted Green Chemistry Chapter of India and started working towards the popularization of Green Chemistry in India. The chapter had also organized several symposia, to focus on real-world applications of Green Chemistry. The chapter also attempts to explore the possibilities to build industry-university-government partnerships in this regard.