The Salt Lake City-based conglomerate said Monday it has organized a business unit to expand the use of "green chemistry" in its products and production processes.

Coined in 1991 by Paul Anastas, the father of Green Chemistry, the term refers to the use of cutting-edge technology by chemists to design products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances.

"Green chemistry has been around for quite sometime now," said Anastas, director of the Green Chemistry Institute in Washington, D.C. "The chemicals industry, though, has always been a bit traditional, so it has taken awhile for its chemists and chemical engineers to embrace the idea."

Don Olsen, spokesman for Huntsman, said the company started using green chemical principles several years ago and already markets products such as solvents that lower the toxicity of agriculture and industrial cleaning agents, carbonates that reduce the volatile fumes given off by paints, and wood preservatives that can be used in place of a known carcinogen.

"With the formation of this new business unit we've committed ourselves to putting a lot more focus on green chemistry," Olsen said. "And one of the nice things about it is that we can take it [green chemistry] as far as we want to go."

Anastas said the use of green chemistry frees companies from having to find "elegant technological bandages" to deal with environmental and health concerns from hazardous spills and unintentional exposure to toxic chemicals.

"Instead of a company spending a lot of money to make something less bad, Green Chemistry allows them to focus right up front on building and designing chemicals that are less toxic and better for the environment," Anastas said.

And it also makes good business sense.

"It is a profitable way to do things," Anastas said. "Not only is green the color of a healthy environment, it also is the color of our money."

Huntsman's business initiative, dubbed the Green Chemistry Strategic Business Unit, will be based out of the company's new $60 million Huntsman Advanced Technology Center at its operations headquarters in The Woodlands, Texas.

Don Stanutz, president of Huntsman's Performance Products Division under which the business unit was organized, said in a statement that the company is eager to expand into the burgeoning "green chemistry" field by taking advantage of the growing availability of "bio-based feedstocks."

Such feedstocks include glycerin, natural alcohols, methylesters, carbohydrates and sugars, and are increasingly available as by-products from the growing production of ethanol and biodiesel fuel, Olsen said.

And Anastas pointed out there is a lot of new and emerging science that focuses on increasing the uses of such feedstocks.

Olsen added that Huntsman's growing commitment to green chemistry fits in well with its recently announced strategy to separate its commodity chemicals business from its specialty chemicals business, where a lot of opportunities exist to use green chemical principles.

steve@sltrib.com