Greening chemistry: Emerging epistemic political tensions in California and the United States

1. Introduction

Industrial chemical production worldwide continues to grow dramatically. Over the past century, chemicals have enhanced living standards yet have damaged ecosystems and human health. Since 1990, a social movement of chemists has sought to establish green chemistry as a solution to the toxicity problems of the chemical industry, beginning in the United States but expanding to Europe and Asia (Woodhouse and Breyman, 2005). Green chemistry includes redesigning molecules and manufacturing processes to reduce or eliminate environmental problems. Many green chemists in the US have assumed that a chemist-led movement based on education and voluntary industry action will succeed. Yet most US chemical companies have been tardy in implementing green chemistry in their production. Governments and regulators at the federal and state levels have largely been oblivious to the potentials of green chemistry. Such views contrast markedly with their counterparts in the European Union (Iles, 2007).

Nonetheless, significant changes in policy-making and industry take-up may be under way, particularly at the state government level. Since 2006, several states have introduced green chemistry policies. California has gone furthest, establishing a Green Chemistry Initiative, enacting two laws in September 2008, and drafting new alternative chemicals regulation to stimulate industry to develop substitutes for especially harmful substances. In response, the federal government is beginning to review its chemicals regulation and to prioritize green chemistry. How did these changes begin, and what motivated the turn to regulation in the context of a history of voluntary governance in the US? Part of the explanation may be that societal inputs into green chemistry have grown at the state level, thus subjecting chemists and companies to new scrutiny of their practices and assumptions by legislators, non-governmental organizations, and consumers. The definition of green chemistry – and whether regulation is needed at all – is thus increasingly being contested among a wider range of societal actors.

Considering green chemistry developments in California vis-à-vis those at the federal level, then, can provide insight into the importance of epistemic politics and innovations in not just technical knowledge but societal institutions for (re)directing technological trajectories. Epistemic politics are the politics of creating, using, maintaining, or challenging knowledge, authority, and agency, which are closely intertwined (Martello and Jasanoff, 2004). In terms of societal institutions, Nowotny, Scott and Gibbons (2001) propose that modern science is increasingly subject to societal oversight and input, such that knowledge must be validated through multiple tests of not only scientific disciplinary standards but also societal priorities and transparency. This “socially robust” knowledge can be generated through inventing institutions that exercise authority over science, support extended review, and enable public debate.

The epistemic politics of greening chemistry can be seen through the many tensions that have emerged around California’s policy-making activities. Epistemic politics pervade many environmental regulatory processes but are especially visible in this domain. A spectrum of competing views of authority marks green chemistry: for example, whether elite scientists should govern research and development, or policy-makers, consumers, and NGOs can also claim authority over setting green chemistry priorities. Whereas state-level government, industry, scientific, and NGO actors are now embracing greater government intervention, pluralistic debates, and societal direction of green chemistry efforts, their national-level counterparts have preferred a firm elite consensus around voluntary industry action, chemist education, and scientific direction of greening chemistry in the past.

In catalysing and addressing these tensions, California’s experiments evoke the concept of socially robust knowledge, which has primarily been applied in European settings to date. I first review the theory of epistemic politics and socially robust knowledge, focusing on the processes and implications of making knowledge more robust for regulatory purposes. Next, I sketch the epistemic politics that have prevailed in traditional and green chemistry, before analysing the experiments under way in California in creating a new paradigm of expertise and societal debate. Finally, I consider critically whether green chemistry developments in California can constitute socially robust knowledge.

2. Theorizing epistemic politics

Traditionally, the producers of scientific knowledge are assumed to be scientists in academic (and increasingly, industry) laboratories who generate data and theories through replicable experiments testing hypotheses (Nowotny et al., 2001). As long as scientists comply with disciplinary standards such as peer review, have the appropriate credentials, and remain apart from the political realm, they can assert far-reaching authority over what counts as valid knowledge production. They can choose their own research directions; their judgements will outweigh judgements of those who are not recognized as scientific experts since they are ostensibly free from political pressures (Nowotny et al., 2001). Expert authority grows out of a combination of institutional, cognitive, and professional characteristics associated with expertise. This authority is reinforced by the visible innovations that appear to emerge from practising science. According to much political science, the possession of expertise can justify experts making non-democratic choices on behalf of polities in “technical” realms where their knowledge is superior to that of lay actors.

Conversely, considering epistemic politics emphasizes the societal and political context of knowledge production. Science studies scholars have investigated the nature and constitution of expertise. They demonstrate that the meanings of experts and expertise are not immutable and ahistorical (Fischer, 2000; Corburn, 2005). Who is recognized as an expert, how expertise is assessed, the ways in which experts are given (or stripped of) credibility and authority, and whether and how experts should participate in policy-making are contingent on socio-political processes.

Creating and contesting expert authority over knowledge production has been a major theme. For example, Wynne (1996) examined how technical experts can define problems exclude potential explanations, and overlook lay people as sources of knowledge in managing the aftermath of Chernobyl’s radioactive fallout for sheep farmers in England. Other studies reveal that producers of scientific and technical knowledge may not be restricted to scientists and engineers, and may be found in sites beyond laboratories. NGOs and citizens can produce important scientific and technical insights; they can demand recognition as experts from industry and government. Using environmental health policy in Brooklyn, Corburn has looked at how neighbourhood residents have opposed or reinforced decisions of city planners by generating their own health data and allying with sympathetic technical experts (Corburn, 2005).

Hess (2007) argues that epistemic politics are undergoing modernization across many scientific and technological fields. In particular, expert power is being redefined as experts increasingly face more inquiring societies that are more sceptical about their knowledge claims, particularly under conditions of uncertainty and controversy. As a result, experts may use various strategies to imbue their authority with greater social legitimacy. Funtowicz and Ravetz (1993) conceived the concept of post-normal science to address such new challenges. In their framework, scientific and technical actors work within four zones depending on how routine the technical work is, how ill-defined the problem-solving is, and what the political stakes are: normal science, applied science, professional consulting, and post-normal science. In post-normal science, experts may be unable to provide reliable, conclusive knowledge regarding politically significant problems and thus outsiders such as activists or legislators can force their way into shaping what scientists do. Doing post-normal science, then, calls for extended peer review: expanding the range of actors involved in evaluating science and refining the criteria that they use to include socially meaningful concerns. This peer review may occur in alternative forums, such as the media or public tribunals.

Considering socially robust knowledge in terms of expert politics can provide insight. Socially robust knowledge is more conceptually supple in shifting emphasis from scientific outputs to the recognition of multiple, coexisting problems within a field that may be both scientific and political. Hess (2007) notes that the practice of “normal” science incorporates a dynamic mix of certainty, uncertainty, consensus, and controversy. Green chemists may agree with conventional chemists on how to do experiments but disagree on the reasons for doing them. Yet green chemists – like their conventional peers – may deny that they are making political choices in deciding on what chemistry to practise, or what counts as relevant innovation. Socially robust knowledge reveals the diverse, intertwined processes in which knowledge, not just science, may become “valid” in the context of policy-making processes, litigation, corporate deliberations, or consumer demands. Extended peer review is focused on approving scientific work, whereas other elements can also strengthen scientific and societal knowledges: building alliances, testing demonstrations, changing problem framings, and developing participatory metrics.

Sociologists Nowotny, Scott and Gibbons (2001) argue that the sites for producing scientific knowledge now include industrial studios, corporate boardrooms, and funding agencies. Scientific activity is exposed to greater societal scrutiny in more diverse settings. Societal demands and priorities can now be justifiably used to evaluate and direct scientific research. Depending on their disciplines, some scientists can now interact legitimately with policy- makers, business, NGOs, and citizens as joint participants in research. Conversely, non-scientific actors can help shape problem definitions and criteria for evaluating scientific knowledge. They can also demand greater accountability from researchers for their chosen trajectories. Much science may no longer be accepted as reliable only in terms of established scientific methods and disciplinary cultures. Even if scientific knowledge meets disciplinary norms, it may still face repeated, volatile challenges in courts, the media, legislative processes, and consumer behaviour.

Growing contextualization can help make scientific knowledge more reliable under such pressures. Nowotny, Scott and Gibbons (2001) define socially robust knowledge as knowledge generated through a process that is accepted as transparent and participatory, thus more likely to withstand both scientific and societal testing. Nowotny, Scott and Gibbons explain that contextualization occurs over a continuum of weak to strong social influences. In the weak form, scientists must account for their research decisions to political institutions and may have to adapt projects according to funding availability. They retain control over their research agenda and invoke epistemic norms that exclude societal inputs. In the strong form, scientists interact directly with users of their knowledge, inviting citizens, NGOs, or policy-makers to participate. Societal needs are more likely to be given weight in the choice of research questions and problems.

The continuum model highlights the importance of the relationships between scientists, other experts, and lay people in the openness of knowledge to societal questioning. If researchers are not willing to engage with societal actors, for disciplinary or epistemic reasons, it will be more challenging to mesh societal and technical perspectives. The distribution of expertise and knowledge across a society also matters: if citizens are not willing to acquire knowledge and skills, or to demand input into scientific research, scientists will remain relatively immune from critique.

Socially robust knowledge offers understanding for how changes in political discourses, government institutions, consumer markets, regulation, and other domains may increase the take-up of green chemistry in industry. Nonetheless, as with post-normal science, Nowotny, Scott and Gibbons do not flesh out socially robust knowledge theoretically, stopping short at defining socially robust knowledge as being more participatory and inclusive of societal views. They do not explicate enough what “robustness” may mean and require, nor do they focus on the processes and politics of making knowledge robust, let alone the institutional innovations that may be needed. Their theoretical approach can be extended in at least two ways.

First, making knowledge socially robust can involve the remaking of expert authority and procedures for deciding what expertise is needed and who counts as expert. Nowotny, Scott and Gibbons do not detail why and how expert politics may play a role in shaping socially robust knowledge. Experts and their authority may need to be made robust, along with knowledge. The power of knowledge increasingly depends on the built robustness of expertise beyond disciplinary domains. Challenges to scientific and technical knowledge, notably in genetically modified foods, have often included attacks on biotechnology experts in courts and the media as credible, trustworthy sources of knowledge and as legitimate arbiters of societal priorities. Such attacks can erode scientific authority, making contextualization more important in strengthening knowledge.

Expert authority, knowledge, and robustness are mutually constitutive. Without established, stable expert authority to lend support, knowledge may be less robust. The appearance of newly credible societal experts in combination with existing scientific and technical experts may enable knowledge to be accepted more. Socially robust knowledge may emerge from reworking dominant paradigms of expertise through the influx of alternative experts and expertise, or even different validation processes beyond reliance on technical experts for societal decision-making. This is not simply extended peer review but the making of new experts who can reshape epistemic fields. How the legitimacy of expertise and validation processes is built is a critical issue. To what extent does socially robust knowledge need to be certified by “experts” (as contrasted to lay people) even though they may be newly recognized? Where do the justifications for intruding into epistemic authority originate? Who are challenging epistemic authority, and how do challenges occur?

Second, making knowledge socially robust may entail creating new, pluralistic information flows throughout social spaces, not only between scientists and lay actors but also among political, industry, and citizen actors who are “experts” in their own right. What does societal input look like? What does it mean to increase (or decrease) societal input? What forms, processes, and institutions of social input are associated with making robust knowledge?

Elite-controlled knowledge production is associated with a model of public understanding of science that assumes one-way flow of information from experts into societies. Jasanoff (2005) explains this model is based on “circles” of the public who vary according to their supposed levels of understanding. The majority – the public – may be uncaring onlookers, while a smaller group is interested and moderately knowledgeable, and a small group is knowledgeable but not expert. A technical core is highly expert and can make decisions for the public. The technical core assumes the public will receive and accept the information that it chooses to give. By acquiescing, NGOs, governments, regulators, and consumers can ratify the authority of the technical core.

Ignorance and questions related to science, then, can be rectified by reformulating knowledge to match people’s referents, rather than reconfiguring expertise, developing new institutions for societal input, or questioning scientific knowledge itself. There is less room for alternative visions of information flows and knowledge producers. For example, there could be interactive, multi-directional information flows between people who may be expert in other areas such as environmental health risks, ecological resilience, consumer product use, or resident fears about chemicals (Iles, 2007). These actors may emerge as powerful producers of knowledge in their own right, generating inputs of values, empirical data, priorities, and experiences into technical expert deliberations, to varying degrees depending on the particular situation. They may be able to subject scientific and technological knowledge to testing against their political processes, legal regimes, public debates, and practical applications. Thus creating multi-directional information flows rather than complying with a predefined vision of expert authority may help create a new paradigm of expertise and, perhaps, knowledge that is more socially robust.

Rather than being kept within an elite expert group, epistemic authority may be distributed across a society and take many forms and positions across a spectrum. There are potential innovations for increasing information flows between societal actors and technical experts, validating knowledge, and expanding societal input into technological trajectories. These innovations include parliamentary commissions, public hearings, citizen juries, consumer campaigns, certification schemes setting standards for new technologies, public demonstrations by consumers and citizens to industry, expert–citizen collaborations (informal or institutionalized), and consensus conferences (Kleinman, 2000). Governments, industry, and NGOs can make choices as to whether and how to engage with societal actors and generate information flows. Citizens, consumers, NGOs, and neighbourhoods may also develop means of critiquing scientific and technological developments.

However, less attention has been given to the related process dimensions that may influence whether and how epistemic authority is distributed more or less through eliciting societal input. The ways in which institutional innovations frame the scientific issues (such as placing challenges to industrial chemistry out of bounds) may inhibit more interactive critiques. The scope that societal actors have to contribute their arguments and evidence may be constrained by institutional design, such as failing to permit user-driven categorizations. The degree to which scientists are exposed to public questioning may remain uncertain, discouraging citizen interest in the forum. As a result, ostensibly multi-directional information flows may in practice be more limited and linear.

3. The epistemic politics of greening chemistry

Existing industrial chemistry uses non-renewable petrochemicals to make millions of tonnes of up to 80,000 chemicals every year, generating hazardous pollution and waste (Woodhouse and Breyman, 2005). Reagents are added to petrochemical feedstock. The resulting intermediate compounds are put through reactions to produce a chemical that is incorporated in products such as computers or clothes. The chemicals are used and released into ecosystems and human environments without knowing their longer-term effects. Historically, chemists have designed chemicals without evaluating their environmental and health impacts, and with little accountability to societies for their choices.

Conversely, green chemistry aims to factor environmental and human health concerns into molecular design. ¹ One widely used definition, from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), sees green chemistry as an effort “to promote innovative chemical technologies that reduce or eliminate the use or generation of hazardous substances in the design, manufacture, and use of chemical products” (EPA, 2010a). Green chemistry can be imagined in different trajectories, with varying scopes, aims, and life cycle perspectives that individuals and groups adopt. There can be divergent preferred pathways of industrial transformation. Societal actors may favour regulation, economic incentives, voluntary action, industry education, or market forces as mechanisms of taking up green chemistry. Different participants may be enrolled depending on how their capabilities are understood, such as companies, chemists, government agencies, NGOs, consumers, and residents. Industry can be portrayed as a willing, recalcitrant, or coaxable participant.

Green chemistry can still take different forms and pathways, depending on whether and how societal actors dispute over its meanings. It is not inevitable that one form will dominate; multiple strands may coexist. Such heterogeneity is seldom acknowledged in the field. Many chemists and engineers presume that green chemistry has its own intrinsic trajectory and definition, rather than acknowledging that other societal actors may have their own visions and narratives of what green chemistry means, and may play a role in shaping the ongoing evolution of the field.

4. State-level experiments in greening chemistry

In this context of voluntary governance in greening chemistry, what has occurred in California since 2006 is astonishing. Instead of allowing chemists and companies to direct innovation trajectories, state government agencies and legislatures are intervening in considering where and how green chemistry could be fostered. Advocacy groups at the state level are becoming more active in proposing alternative trajectories. As a result, California’s experiments in green chemistry policy-making are generating many epistemic tensions among industry, chemists, NGOs, and regulators not only in California but across the US over the future of green chemistry.

A combination of political and structural reasons helps explain why California’s government institutions devote growing attention to green chemistry as contrasted to the federal government’s neglect. California-based policy-makers and industry perceive that the US chemical industry is less competitive internationally and thus more economically vulnerable, especially in the light of the European Union’s recent REACH law. The chemical industry is thus more open to internal and external critiques. Consumer concerns about hazards in consumer products and multiple exposures to chemicals also appeared, as exemplified in the controversy regarding bisphenol-A use in plastic bottles. Environmental NGOs began campaigning to increase public awareness of chemical risks at the state levels, hoping to win state legislative intervention in the face of Congressional inaction. Collectively, these trends created a new space for considering green chemistry.

Equally important, California emerged as a critical site for green chemistry experimentation because of the assumption that the state exerts extraordinary political and policy influence through the California Effect (Schrag, 2006). Historically, many cultural, political, economic, environmental law, and technological experiments have been initiated in California, eventually spreading across the US and worldwide. This is in part because California is by far the most populated and productive US state. As a crucial market, California places manufacturers under pressure to nationalize its environmental and product standards rather than trying to sell different products in different regions. Both industry and environmentalists, therefore, prioritize shaping incipient environmental regulatory efforts in the state according to their goals.

The California Effect, however, is not as influential as it has been understood to be. Over the past two decades, California has often lagged on environmental protection decisions (Schrag, 2006). Interestingly, the European Union Effect comes into play more often as European regulators and industry set leading environmental standards that other countries adopt. Politicians, journalists, and Californian companies now urge that California can help make US industry more competitive by incubating new products and markets. In 2006, the Los Angeles Times noted: “In a report to be released today, the researchers advise California legislators to pioneer a green chemistry strategy because the United States has fallen behind globally in the move toward cleaner technologies” (Cone, 2006a). The California Legislature also aspires to restore the state’s environmental policy influence after decades of stagnation. In 2006, state Senator Joe Simitan declared that, regarding chemical regulation, “Unless the state of California tackles these issues, they are not likely to get resolved. We are going to have to do it ourselves” (Cone, 2006a). In short, California policy-makers hope to resurrect the California Effect through green chemistry innovations.

The new epistemic tensions around green chemistry can be seen in three ways. First, the state government began considering making green chemistry policies. The state legislature commissioned technical assistance from the University of California, held public hearings into green chemistry, and enacted two laws in September 2008. This activity began in 2004 when the Senate Environmental Quality Committee and Assembly Committee on Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials jointly requested a study on how California might reform chemicals policies to address health and environmental concerns. Dr. Michael Wilson, a research scientist with the Centre of Occupational and Environmental Health at UC Berkeley, was appointed as lead author. He conducted extensive literature analysis, held discussions with many environmental health, advocacy, union, government, and industry actors in the US and Europe, and participated in 35 conferences and workshops. Preparing the report involved consulting with a variety of societal actors, not simply chemists and companies, an unprecedented step in the green chemistry field.

Two years later, Berkeley released a 110-page report that surveyed regulatory, industry, and health issues in terms of closing three gaps – in data, safety, and technology – which favour existing chemicals and deter investment in green chemistry alternatives (Wilson, 2006). The report analyses existing federal and state laws governing chemicals, reviews emerging environmental health science, and highlights important chemical exposure problems in California. Wilson showed how deficiencies in designing and implementing the federal Toxic Substances Control Act affected workers, communities, consumers, children, government agencies, and businesses: audiences that chemists have not usually addressed. For example, California workers faced significant health risks from exposure to occupational chemicals. Wilson urged that California should adopt a stronger regulatory model to stimulate industry to use green chemistry.

To close the data gap, the report argued, the state government should require companies to generate and communicate data on chemical toxicity. To fill the safety gap, the government should develop tools for identifying, prioritizing, and mitigating chemical risks. To overcome the technology gap, the government should support research, technical aid, and entrepreneurial activity in green chemistry. Wilson said, “[M]any policy mechanisms could be employed to achieve these three overarching goals; identifying those most appropriate for California will require resolution by a broad range of forward-looking stakeholders” (Wilson, 2006: 92). Therefore, the state legislature should form an open working group to study and reach agreement on possible policies. Nonetheless, Wilson made it clear that he believed that regulation, not voluntary industry action or professional education, was required to motivate industry.

In response, the State Senate held two public hearings during 2006 in Sacramento and in Los Altos. Environmental NGOs, policy-makers, and citizens participated, highlighting their experiences with chemical health impacts (Risk Policy Report, 2006). Led by Senator Joe Simitan, legislators began developing what would become the two laws enacted in late 2008. The City of San Francisco Board of Supervisors also passed a resolution calling for a state-wide green chemistry policy. Congress took notice, with Senator Barbara Boxer of California helping prompt the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works to hold a hearing on the Toxic Substances Control Act in August 2006. Wilson was invited to testify on green chemistry. Congress failed to follow through with further study and law-making, highlighting the lack of societal input at the federal level.

Second, mass media attention also expanded dramatically within California following the release of the Berkeley report. In the 15 years prior to 2006, the US mass media ignored green chemistry almost completely. The first major reference was a USA Today feature article in 2005. Since March 2006, California newspapers have taken far more interest in green chemistry policy, including the Los Angeles Times, Oakland Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Sacramento Bee, and San Diego Tribune-Herald. ³ Originally focused on the Berkeley report, the media has followed legislative activities with some regularity. Because public awareness of green chemistry has never been investigated, it is unclear whether this new media scrutiny may affect the behaviour and knowledge of consumers.

Third, industry and NGO calls for green chemistry grew within California, as contrasted to national-level responses that were far more tepid. Following the Berkeley report and the state legislature hearings, numerous California-based industry, union, and NGO actors declared their support for regulatory intervention. Industry is more heterogeneous than many analysts, professional and industry associations and chemists believe. For example, John Ulrich, director of the California Chemical Industry Council cautiously supported the report but emphasized that companies much preferred multi-stakeholder dialogue rather than immediate regulation (Risk Policy Report, 2006). The Los Angeles Times reported: “Tom Jacob, DuPont’s Western regional manager of government affairs, said the chemical industry was facing an ‘evolution of public consciousness’ about the risks of its products and ‘government is struggling to adapt’” (Cone, 2006b)

Reflecting this stance, over 25 largely California-based organizations – including business groups, public health advocates, scientific organizations, and foundations – endorsed the report. In addition, from 2006, state regulatory agencies, including the California EPA and the Department of Toxic Substances Control, began exploring regulatory options. Initially, most California-based NGOs were unaware of green chemistry, despite their campaigns to phase out individual chemicals. Californian NGOs have taken a small but growing role in helping shape policy proposals. In particular, environmental health groups such as Commonweal have increasingly emphasized green chemistry as a preventive approach to the health problems that they focus on.

Conversely, the epistemic tensions can be seen in the initial responses of green chemists, policy-makers, and professional associations at the national level. The US EPA did not respond to the Berkeley report and ignored California state activities during the Bush Administration years. Conventional chemists were lukewarm and the ACS magazine, Chemical & Engineering News, reported its release in one paragraph (Hogue, 2006). Surprisingly, the Green Chemistry Institute avoided discussing the report, with its former director, Paul Anastas, believing that the report would undermine his work. He told Wilson that the phrase “green chemistry” should not be in the report, and lamented that he spent his time after the report’s release answering phone calls from companies fearful of regulation. ⁴ Yet Anastas never explained why he did not favour public debate, though some California-based companies had called for regulation.

The American Chemistry Council expressed antipathy towards the UC Berkeley report. Its representative, Michael Walls, declared: “We have some particular concerns about California adopting its own chemical policy,” and he criticized the report for failing to recognize that the US chemical industry already led in green chemistry (Cone, 2006a). In a press release, the ACC said the UC report was “misleading,” “made sweeping generalizations” and “cherry picked research” that reinforced its themes (ACC, 2006). However, the ACC has rarely addressed green chemistry, primarily through cursory statements such as press releases in 2004 and 2005 supporting the Green Chemistry Research and Development Act in Congress.

National environmental groups also largely failed to respond to the UC Berkeley report. The US environmental movement has ignored green chemistry because it emphasizes conservation, climate change, and renewable energy over industrial transformation (Woodhouse and Breyman, 2005). NGOs such as the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council marginalize green chemistry because they believe they lack the technical expertise, deferring to industry. One exception is Greenpeace, which has called for safer alternatives to chemicals such as phthalates, but does not invoke green chemistry specifically. Instead, several sustainable industry-focused groups such as Clean Production Action have taken the lead because they recognize the potentials more clearly.

5. Creating socially robust knowledge in California?

Together, these state-level developments are providing much more societal input into green chemistry than had occurred in the previous two decades. There is a much broader set of potential participants than the chemists and policy-makers who had overseen the original birth of green chemistry, much to their surprise and, perhaps, exasperation. There also appears to be a correlation between the entry of these new societal actors and the resulting public discourses, and increased industry and NGO attention to the challenges of greening chemistry. Since 2006, the California State Legislature and state government agencies have followed parallel policy-making processes. This state activism contrasts with the federal level, which continues to emphasize education and research, and to avoid public debates about the trajectories of chemistry.

Do developments in California correspond with the concept of socially robust knowledge? Are California government institutions trying to reshape green chemistry to be more of a “speaking back to science” process than a technical enterprise? Or are citizens still largely excluded in a “technical” policy reform process? Much insight into the creation of socially robust knowledge can be derived by critically evaluating developments in California.

Green chemistry policy-making has been government-driven in that environmental NGOs did not instigate calls for greening chemistry. The California Legislature has already enacted two green chemistry laws with little input from scientists or the public. As a result of focusing on regulation, California has witnessed increasingly vehement debates over whether regulation is needed, drawing in more societal actors and putting the accountability of the chemical industry into question. In 2007, Senator Joe Simitan and Representative Mike Feuer began testing proposed bills, believing that only regulation would succeed. Their efforts evolved into two laws: AB 1879 (which requires the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) to make rules for a new chemical screening system) and SB 509 (which creates a clearinghouse for information on chemical toxicity). In particular, AB 1879 asks DTSC to expand the range of design considerations by requiring chemicals of concern to undergo detailed multi-media life cycle assessment to inform regulatory decisions. This could draw in many non-chemist experts to contribute data and evaluations on issues such as product performance, resource consumption, energy efficiency, and public health impacts.

The bills were not visible to Californians because politicians, industry, and NGOs did not attempt to enlist their support (or opposition) and media scrutiny was limited. Indeed, NGOs did not follow the example of their European Union counterparts in running a campaign to enlist citizens in understanding their body burdens and seeking their visions of alternative chemistries, in support of the REACH law that entered force in 2006. Rather, societal engagement took the conventional form of manufacturers and environmental NGOs lobbying legislators through letters and meetings, with little direct interplay between Californians and legislators. In August 2008, following industry demands, Governor Schwarzenegger forced major rewrites of the bills through threatening to veto them. Significant compromises were made in secret, such as removing a requirement in SB 509 that would have forced manufacturers to disclose product ingredients fully. The bills represent a significant shift in the epistemic politics of green chemistry, through legislators claiming a more assertive role for government, demanding that industry practices and design criteria should change, and assigning greater decision-making power on chemical design to regulators. Yet the ability of industry to withstand NGO challenges suggests the paucity of broader societal inputs that can counter the power of those companies that are reluctant to practise green chemistry.

In April 2007, the executive government branch began its own intervention, through DTSC’s Green Chemistry Initiative. ⁵ DTSC had given scant attention to green chemistry previously. The Initiative aims to develop policy options, build societal agreement, and encourage industry take-up within a highly polarized political context – which could correspond with promoting socially robust knowledge. The Initiative has mobilized a range of 31 government agencies and departments in a leadership council, emphasizing the importance of direct government involvement in green chemistry. The programme has also sought societal input through multiple pathways. However, DTSC has made important choices regarding the institutional innovations it will use, notably leaving aside ideas such as citizen juries and consensus conferences, perhaps because these were seen as too resource-intensive, time-consuming, and threatening to its control over the process.

One step was the typical science policy of establishing an expert advisory committee to report back by March 2008. The Science Advisory Panel (SAP) comprised 21 members invited from the traditional fields of chemistry and industry (DTSC, 2008a). DTSC, however, diverged greatly from dominant epistemic politics by expanding representation to toxicology, public health, and chemical policy. Several leading green chemists, including John Warner, Paul Anastas, and Barry Trost, helped run the group but were forced to encounter non-chemist views of the challenges. The panel had limited publicity and public access; it initially wanted to close its meetings to the public but DTSC overruled its plan, arguing that it would make the advice less credible. The panel met twice in person in San Francisco, as well as in several conference calls, with several sub-committees meeting more frequently.

The panel produced a report that outlined 37 policy options, while noting that these options were individually proposed and there was no consensus position (DTSC, 2008a). The report accentuated the diversity of panellist views. While the policy options were hardly novel, the report revealed a range of societal concerns by referring to the Berkeley report, the importance of protecting vulnerable groups such as workers and children, and emerging biomonitoring evidence. In contrast to most green chemistry analyses stressing technological change, the panel – inspired by a non-chemist – acknowledged that behavioural change was at the heart of the required industrial transformation. Actors needed to be willing, motivated, and able to adopt green chemistry measures. Most importantly, the panel emphasized broad “life cycle thinking” instead of a narrow life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. Nonetheless, the panel did not respond to societal concerns directly, and treated industry and the public as audiences to be persuaded, not as participants themselves.

AB 1879 also created the Green Ribbon Science Panel as a statutory body to provide scientific advice on how to implement the chemicals screening and safer products regulation required by 2011. Interested people could apply for membership. The panel represents an even wider range of disciplinary and institutional backgrounds, with much overlap in membership with the SAP. Some members represent environmental and health NGOs. Thus California’s experiments appear to have begun building a new paradigm of expertise for green chemistry, at least in terms of making alternative experts newly legitimate and opening new space for societally-grounded questioning of chemistry even if via experts. As seen in the panel’s ongoing arguments over alternatives analysis, its members are producing new justifications for not only testing government decision-maker judgements on what to demand from industry, but also directing industry to pursue different directions in green chemistry. The green chemists and industry officials on the SAP are largely not on the Green Ribbon Science Panel, implying unwillingness to participate in this forum.

Simultaneously, in Phase 1, the Initiative held three green chemistry symposia in Sacramento between October 2006 and December 2007 (DTSC, 2008b). Six brainstorming meetings were held in Los Angeles, San Jose, San Diego, and Sacramento between June and December 2007. In Phase 2, throughout 2008, the Initiative held a series of public workshops. Those workshops, however, were not held in particularly diverse locations: two were in government agency buildings in Sacramento, two in Berkeley, and one in Los Angeles. Unsurprisingly, few citizens or community groups engaged in this forum, though a growing number of industry and advocacy groups became active. One significant outcome of these activities was the formation of an industry coalition, the Green Chemistry Alliance, bringing together business associations such as the California Chamber of Commerce and the Chemical Industry Council of California. In counterpoise, a NGO coalition, Californians for a Healthy & Green Economy, also formed with 35 members ranging from Clean Water Action to Commonweal. These coalitions have dominated most of the subsequent public input into the making of the safer products rule.

Perhaps the most novel process for increasing societal input was the “Conversation with California” web wiki (DTSC, 2010). This was an unprecedented state government experiment: rather than using a structured notice and comment procedure, anyone could contribute their thoughts by typing on the wiki. When launching the wiki in December 2007, the DTSC director Maureen Gorsen declared, “It will capture the input of Californians and experts worldwide and generate new ideas that will play an integral role as we develop these new regulations” (Redorbit, 2009). People could participate as though they were regulation writers. The wiki was divided into four topics: green chemistry; toxics in products by accident; toxics in products by design; and cradle-to-cradle. Eventually, 57,000 website hits, over a hundred contributors, and 818 policy ideas resulted (DTSC, 2008b).

Later, Gorsen accepted that the wiki had not realized its potential to catalyse public dialogue (Warren Communications, 2009). The wiki was released just before Christmas, and was poorly publicized, resourced, and facilitated. There was a lack of preparation of citizens and consumers; the department assumed that societal actors would already be knowledgeable about green chemistry, and that green chemistry is a positive good that everyone wants. DTSC treated the public as homogeneous and marginal, not as a source of insights into societal values. This view can be discerned in the questions that were posed to the public (namely, not asking about what people want from chemicals, what types of exposures they worry about, what products they want changed); and in the format of the blog (it was lacking in interaction, such as the capacity to put questions direct to scientific experts to enable more informed commentary). Most of all, contributors could not challenge the existing norms of chemistry: in short, there was no design or thought for extended peer review. This outcome challenges the argument of Hulme and Ravetz that internet methods can help sustain this review, without building broader societal knowledge.

In early 2008, DTSC released a draft report with a compendium of the feedback and a spreadsheet of policy ideas organized into categories predetermined in advance according to the agency’s suppositions about what was relevant to the process (DTSC, 2008b). Analysis of the compendium shows that technical experts from industry, consulting, and academia made most of the comments. These actors included companies such as DuPont, Dow, Johnson & Johnson, and Rohm & Haas; trade associations such as the Consumer Specialty Products Association and Soap & Detergent Association; relatively few professional advocacy groups such as Clean Water Action; and academics such as Amy Kyle. Community groups, let alone consumers, were largely missing. No chemists were involved; no experts, groups, or citizens outside the US participated. The quality of input was variable, ranging from brief remarks to detailed documents.

Most comments targeted regulatory issues. Many participants called for life cycle analysis that is broad and includes social and environmental justice impacts. They also sought alternatives assessment, rather than just the risk assessment that most technical experts have favoured. Many participants also urged that chemical data “be publicly accessible, as much as possible, to allow a free flow of information among users, researchers, the public, and industry” (DTSC, 2008b). Government should ally with consumers by increasing information availability: “A well-informed public would recognize the need to select and buy greener products” (DTSC, 2008b). Clearly, there is growing demand by societal actors for new, multi-directional information flows that treat them as meaningful agents. Nonetheless, a small number of people supported or opposed the rationale for greening chemistry, ⁶ but they were ignored as failing to provide “policy ideas” even though they were legitimate expressions of public input. This underscores the failure of imagination on DTSC’s part in not allowing societal actors to express their priorities more freely. Conversely, over 80 animal testing opponents bombarded the wiki with complaints.

The result of these GCI activities was a final report in December 2008 (DTSC, 2008b). The report made six recommendations, such as accelerating the quest for safer products and creating a cradle-to-cradle economy. One recommendation was to “develop a well-informed citizenry capable of actively engaging in demanding and supporting green products and processes” through educating workforces and societies (p. 33). The report noted, “Most participants [in the wiki] noted that the general public is not familiar with green chemistry. They said that political will, public support, and informed consumer choice will be necessary for a successful green chemistry program” (p. 33). The report also called for empowering consumers to “make informed choices” through product labels and educational outreach to K-12 schools. In principle, the GCI promises to expand the interactions between chemistry and society in ways that could support making socially robust knowledge.

In practice, such views have been marginalized thus far because the public is still seen by government decision-makers as passive recipients of information. These decision-makers are not thinking about how building information flows could help bring in societal actors as joint validators of green chemistry decisions. One example of how the GCI has framed societal engagement is its approach to the safer products rule that DTSC was to make by January 2011. In October 2009, DTSC released a straw rule proposal that would be “self-implementing” (DTSC, 2009a), in that the agency would defer to industry’s choices as to how to redesign chemicals. At a Green Science Ribbon Board meeting that month, Peggy Harris from DTSC explained: “We believe that it is the manufacturer who knows the most about the product” (DTSC, 2009b). The government’s role should simply be to assure compliance. Generally, activists complained that there were no public participation measures in the straw rule.

Even though AB 1879 requires alternatives to be explored, DTSC has assumed that its experts will drive the regulatory process. DTSC’s straw rule did not include any role for public input into alternatives assessment, or the procedure of identifying whether safer chemicals exist. At a Green Science Ribbon Board meeting, Professor Timothy Malloy from UCLA and Richard Dennison at the Environmental Defense Fund highlighted the importance of value judgements in discriminating between different desired outcomes and claimed that it should be societal actors, not companies, who should make these judgements, thus making industry more accountable to societies (DTSC, 2009b). Meg Schwarzman, a research scientist at Berkeley, argued that third parties, such as NGOs, should be able to propose alternatives. Conversely, the Green Chemistry Alliance demanded that public access to alternatives data be restricted and that only industry should be able to propose alternatives.

These arguments represent the first steps toward creating new validation procedures for chemistry knowledge if DTSC is willing to acknowledge them. However, DTSC and the GCI are reportedly internally divided over many issues including the role of those who are not chemists or business managers. Because such debates are not occurring in more public spaces, and significant gaps still exist between experts and citizens, the nascent validation procedures are not being built through the work of societal actors but through the conventional bureaucratic processes that industry, NGOs, and regulators are accustomed to. In September 2010, DTSC released a proposed rule for notice-and-comment, but announced a final rule in November that effectively jettisoned the societal input of the previous two years and favoured industry lobbyists (Guth, 2011). This represented an abrupt attempt by Governor Schwarzenegger to bring control back within the dominant epistemic politics, which was nearly successful. Following lobbying and legal threats from the NGO coalition, though, DTSC decided to withdraw the rule and leave it to the incoming Brown Administration to proceed. It remains unclear how committed the agency is to creating greater societal input into greening chemistry.

6. Conclusions: Ongoing epistemic politics

Green chemistry is beginning to emerge as a key battleground for shifting technologies toward greater sustainability. While green chemistry can potentially transform traditional chemistry, many green chemists have been reluctant to engage in societal debate, political negotiation, and education of the public. They have also favoured education and voluntary industry action as mechanisms of achieving change. Arguably, green chemistry has lacked the external incentives (such as societal scrutiny, questioning of chemical expertise, or demand for safer products as opposed to safer chemicals) that might motivate far more vigorous, faster take-up in industry.

State-level developments such as those in California have generated many new epistemic tensions that may expand the distribution of authority over green chemistry more widely across societies. Growing state government, mass media, and NGO attention to green chemistry in California is one example. These tensions appear to be encouraging the growth of socially robust knowledge in greening chemistry, by increasingly subjecting green chemistry decisions to greater public scrutiny and fashioning what may become new forms of testing these decisions through regulatory processes. Regulators, NGOs, and consumers may be beginning to add new criteria of health and ecology to existing chemical norms, therefore affecting research and production. Nonetheless, government decision-makers, chemists, and industry still tend to rely on largely one-way flows of information to citizens, which may mean that priority-setting and scrutiny remain dependent on the willingness of governments to envision different definitions of green chemistry.

Developments in California suggest that socially robust knowledge may emerge more effectively if there are institutions and processes for supporting societal inputs that treat societal actors as powerful agents in their own right. The wiki illustrates what is missing. Though the wiki is an advance in seeking public input, it failed to stimulate new, multi-directional forms of public discourse between regulators, scientists, NGOs, companies, and citizens. Citizens could not propose their own criteria for evaluating green chemistry because they were still viewed as “non-expert,” there was no contact between citizens and chemists, no thought was given to ways that the authority and credibility of societal experts on chemicals could be recognized, there was little room for negotiating what would enter the straw rule, and regulators and industry denied any accountability for their choices. There was no extended peer review in mind.

California’s experiments are already beginning to ripple outward. At the federal level, significant change may be coming to chemical regulation. It had been thought that the Obama Administration was uninterested in chemicals. In September 2009, Lisa Jackson, EPA Administrator, called for an overhaul of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) because of its numerous deficiencies (EPA, 2009). She proposed six principles of reform, including the use of green chemistry, likely in response to the activities that California has helped instigate. This call for reform is now feeding into Congress hearings on TSCA, various reform bills, and a resurrected green chemistry research bill. Likewise, state governments, the American Chemistry Council, and mainstream NGOs are advocating their own principles for TSCA reform. This suggests that societal input is now being linked to greening chemistry and toxics, which is a dramatic change from a decade ago. Much can be learned from California’s experiments about how to achieve wider societal input.