ABSTRACT
Nature represents the most signicant source of inspiration for researchers, due to the fact that several problems (still unresolved for scientists) have been ingeniously overcome by living organisms, thanks to evolution. A well-known example is represented by plants. Starting from simple materials, such as carbon dioxide, water, and mineral salts, they are able to synthesize a wide range of complex organic molecules, with ecient (and oen stereoselective) processes, under mild conditions (room temperature, physiologic pH, and aqueous media). Moreover, the only energy source required is solar light and the only side product is molecular oxygen. What chemists can do is to search inspiration from these ideal laboratories, trying to replicate the same reactions in an articial way. Although this biomimetic approach has been adopted since early decades of 1900 (see, e.g., Ciamician’s research), only in recent years it has been formulated, together with the concept of green chemistry. During the twentieth century, a series of tragic events in the chemical industry, caused partially by both safety shortage and lack of environmental awareness (e.g., Cuyahoga river’s re, Bhopal, and Seveso accidents), impacted deeply on the attitude of public opinion toward chemistry (and sciences in general). ‰ese episodes, together with the consciousness of humanity of depending almost exclusively on nonrenewable (and pollutant) energy sources, such as fossils fuels, led to a report from the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development, published in 1987, and called “our common future” [1]. ‰is is actually considered as the rst ocial proposal of a sustainable development for industry and, in general, for civilization. If the
9.1 Introduction ......................................................................................213 9.2 Sustainable Methodologies in Photochemistry ...........................216
