The direct reduction of carboxylic acids to alcohols is also a challenging transformation, traditionally falling under the same LAH or DIBAL regime. Alternatives such catalytic hydrogenation of carboxylic acids to alcohols exist, although usually requiring rather high pressures of hydrogen and may also rely on precious metal catalysts and specialized ligands. While there are numerous examples of hydrosilylation of esters and amides, reductions of free carboxylic acids tend to require a large excess of the silane reagent and use noble metals (e.g., Ru, Rh 24 and Ir 25 ). Recently, base metals such as Zn and Mn 27 have been found to reduce acids to alcohols employing a silane reductant. For accomplishing these reductions, our goal was to develop a green technology that avoids all transition metal-based reagents, takes place efficiently in an aqueous medium under mild conditions, and is very tolerant of functional groups present in the starting acid. The approach developed is based on use of dipyridyldithiocarbonate (DPDTC) that reacts with acids to form the corresponding 2-pyridylthioesters that can be easily isolated, or used in situ. Treatment of these intermediates using either Ni catalysis together with a silane leads to aldehydes, while their reactions with NaBH4 in 95% EtOH at rt directly affords the targeted alcohols.