San Antonio—Chemists, engineers, educators, and more gathered in San Antonio June 15–18 for the 30th annual Green Chemistry and Engineering (GC&E) Conference to talk about industry, innovation, and infrastructure—a timely theme as the community reflected on how far it’s come in the last 30 years.
While modern chemistry has its origins in published texts around the 17th century, the 12 principles of green chemistry weren’t published until 1998, when Paul Anastas and John C. Warner authored Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice—2 years after the first GC&E Conference took place. In 2001 the Green Chemistry Institute (ACS GCI) became an official part of the American Chemical Society, one of the largest scientific societies in the world, and in that same year, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry recognized research areas that many considered green chemistry.
“I cannot think about chemistry without thinking about asking why. How can I do it different? How can I make it safer?”
“It was optimistic, exciting, it was a motivating approach to spark innovation, and I think we can all agree that this is working,” Adelina Voutchkova-Kostal, director of sustainable development at ACS, said about the first green chemistry conference to a full ballroom of people before the Tuesday morning plenary. “Thirty years later we see that green chemistry is on the brink of becoming chemistry. And that, to me, is a real sign of success.”
Today, the field of green chemistry is strengthening the bonds between industry, academia, and nongovernmental institutions as the 12 principles transform the way chemists approach their work and give young researchers tools and ways of thinking to help them address some of the world’s biggest challenges.
Attendees take part in group activities during one of the morning workshops offered during the Green Chemistry and Engineering Conference, June 15 in San Antonio. Credit:
Chad Isaiah
Anastas referred to the students in the room as the green chemistry generation—their excitement and interest in green chemistry is the result of a community who believed that chemistry should inspire hope and who were invested in supporting each other over the last 30 years: “I’m not certain about much in this world, but what I am certain about is the only way to repay the giants of the past, who you never knew, is to work for the people of the future, who you will never meet.” It is this thoughtfulness that has grown a community ready to meet a moment of challenges and changes in a world more globally connected than it’s ever been.
The green principles have been changing chemistry
Julie Zimmerman, vice provost for planetary solutions at Yale University’s School of the Environment and one of Tuesday morning’s keynotes, noted it’s rare for a scientific field to be able to point to an exact moment when a set of ideas—in this case, the 12 principles of green chemistry—fundamentally changed how an entire discipline thinks. “We went from asking the question ‘Can we make it?’ to ‘Can we make it safely . . . , with less weight . . . , with less energy . . . , to degrade . . . , with abundant feed stocks. . . . Can we make it compatible with life?’ ”
After 3 decades in the field of green chemistry, reviewing papers and manuscripts, listening to presentations, and taking part in peer review, Zimmerman is convinced that many of the challenges the world faces aren’t from a failure of intelligence but from a failure of imagination and framing. “Environmental problems are rarely a failure of intelligence or chemistry. . . . In fact many challenges we face today are the direct result of engineering success. . . . Climate change is not evidence that chemists and engineers failed; it is evidence . . . [they] succeeded beyond anyone’s imagination.” She continued with examples of abundant energy and transformed agriculture systems but reminded those in attendance that we were optimizing for the wrong objectives, objectives that didn’t include atmospheric stability, biodiversity, or resilience. The objectives could be made better by asking better questions—a skill she believes is one of the more transformative parts of green chemistry.
This year’s conference featured morning plenaries discussing innovation, value chains, the workforce, and policy and all-day workshops for those interested in teaching green chemistry, using mechanochemistry for sustainable innovation, connecting with frontline communities, and communicating science better. There were also full days of technical sessions, recognition through awards, and spaces for industry attendees to connect with graduate and undergraduate students, such as at special poster sessions.
“Thirty years. That is long enough for ideas that once seemed radical to become commonplace . . . , for a movement to become a field, and . . . for a generation of students to become leaders,” Zimmerman said.
Graduate student attendees get excited to see each other right before the evening student poster session at the Green Chemistry and Engineering Conference, June 16 in San Antonio. Credit:
Chad Isaiah
Green chemistry is changing the future
The green chemistry field appears to resonate with undergraduate and graduate students, with many of them pursuing programs at schools that specifically offer green chemistry in the curriculum. “I like something Paul Anastas said, that ‘green chemistry is the chemistry of common sense.’ To me, it feels like how chemistry should have always been,” said Davi M. de Farias of the University of São Paulo. “I don’t see how I could work with chemistry without green chemistry. Sometimes we chose the standard path but not the natural path. Green chemistry is supposed to be natural, look to the environment, these kind of things. And I think our generation is more concerned with this kind of thing.” De Farias was introduced to green chemistry in his master’s program, and its introduction has helped him look at the big picture and “put priority into the things that really matter.”
Yasmini Portes of Stockholm University went to Europe for a master’s program that included an introduction to green chemistry course she could add to her coursework, but after being exposed to the concepts, she felt like “it should be the baseline,” with every chemistry course including it as the standard, not an addition.“
I cannot think about chemistry without thinking about asking why. How can I do it different? How can I make it safer?” said Michele Schmidt of North Carolina State University, who was introduced to the field 5 years ago. She feels like she now has the responsibility to bring these green ideas together and to her students: “I think the future generation, the ones that I’m teaching or will be teaching in the future, they will start learning these concepts very early in their lives, so they can make smarter choices and a better future.”
The hope that the community 30 years ago felt that chemistry should inspire can still be found today. “I feel very hopeful for the future,” said Vijay Shah of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He’s studying chemical engineering and sees incorporating green principles in engineering, in general, as a persistent challenge—noting that the Chemistry Department at his school has shown itself to be more eager to incorporate them into coursework. But he “sees many up-and-coming instructors who are interested in entering academia who want to see the tide change.” He himself has hopes to remain in academia and can see himself as an educator where “one of my main goals . . . is to bring the principles into the classroom . . . and not only do what we’re doing now more sustainably but also ask, What products are we making and why? What societal purpose do they serve? And really fundamentally rethinking the role of the chemical engineer in society.” Shah believes that engineering can solve well-defined problems but sees many of the problems that society as a whole is confronting as more social and cultural than technological: “I do really think that a lot of what we’re kind of pushing up against and where we kind of see resistance in society is where we are hitting cultural and social barriers that engineering [as it mostly is now] is not equipped to solve.”
“Thirty years later we see that green chemistry is on the brink of becoming chemistry. And that, to me, is a real sign of success.”
The ACS GCI is equipping institutions and industry with educational and other resources, like green chemistry case studies and free teaching modules, to help anyone interested in the transition to incorporate green chemistry. And organizations like Beyond Benign are getting higher-education institutions to commit to incorporating green chemistry into their chemistry curricula through programs like the Green Chemistry Commitment (GCC) program, “in their own timeline, in a way that works for them,” said Juliana Vidal, a senior program manager at Beyond Benign. This approach recognizes that green chemistry is done differently in various places. Institutions that are part of the GCC program are eligible for grants to help transform their curricula or help students host green chemistry events. Vidal says this work is more important now than ever, and the students who have these green chemistry tools and skills will become competitive in the workforce: “Industry supports our work . . . , and we’re already seeing some job posts with wording like ‘Green chemistry experience preferred.’ ”
“The students, they themselves, they’re ready [for green chemistry],” Vidal says. That student readiness makes the challenge of the moment one of making sure academia and industry are ready and moving in tandem enough to accelerate a thoughtful transformation of a centuries-old field.
