Sustainable laboratories: Recovering metals

Precious metals are one of the big workhorses of chemistry. Cross couplings, metathesis and photochemistry all depend on these rare and expensive catalysts, not to mention the wider commercial demand for industrial synthesis, automotive catalytic converters and green energy technologies. The environmental footprint of extracting and disposing of these materials is huge, but rarely given much thought by typical lab scientists. ‘Most of the time, our goal is to make sure that you get the purest and most high-yielding reaction,’ says catalysis researcher Shiao Chow from the University of Strathclyde, UK. ‘You know it’s a precious metal but there’s not a strong awareness of the need to recover and you don’t really consider that it should be part of the protocol when it comes to synthesis.’