In July 2010, people across the US began to notice that the plates, cups and utensils coming out of their automatic dishwashers weren’t as clean as they’d come to expect. The culprit was phosphates – or, more accurately, the absence of phosphates. Phosphates are pros at stripping away food particles and grease, but once they find their way into lakes and streams they can disrupt the ecosystem by causing algae blooms that block sunlight and rob the water of oxygen. So in the summer of 2010, 16 states banned the sale of household dishwasher detergents containing more than 0.5 percent phosphorous. Detergent manufacturers responded by eliminating phosphates from all their products. Researchers at BASF , the world’s largest chemical company, needed to find an a

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