General Introduction

The products provided by the chemical industry are decisive for the modern standard of living.[1–3] At the beginning of commercial synthetic chemistry, the quality of a chemical process was evaluated by its performance (maximizing the function of a process) without considering the repercussions for the planet and its inhabitants.[1,2] To enable the transition to a sustainable society in which the way of living does not compromise the needs of future generations, academic and industrial synthetic chemistry has to drastically alter the important criterion for evaluating a chemical process.[1,4,5]