Organometallic Catalysis and Sustainability: From Origin to Date Rapid progress towards more sustainable processes for industry

Organometallic catalysis has its origins in the 18th and 19th centuries. Then, the emphasis was on achieving remarkable chemical transformations, but today the focus is increasingly on sustainability. This article summarises the current promising approaches with special regard to those that have commercial potential, including non-aqueous and water immiscible solvents, modified enzymes, micellar catalysis, catalysis with low loading, metal-free catalysis and catalyst recycling. Environmental metrics, a key evaluation tool for any industrial chemical process, are used in micellar catalysis to demonstrate their usefulness, especially to achieve streamlined protocols, reduce losses and eliminate toxic materials.