I recently saw a glimpse of my younger self. I met a college student who was just hearing about green chemistry for the first time. The excitement was in his eyes. He was hooked as several leaders in green chemistry were excitedly deluging him with information and ideas.
This student was asking for advice about how he could influence his teachers to include green chemistry in their teaching. He happened to be in a session at the American Chemical Society (ACS)’s National Meeting in Boston, with several big names in green chemistry research, business, and education: John Warner, Buzz Cue, Robin Rogers, and Amy Cannon, among others.
For me, it started in August 1994, when I attended my first ACS National Meeting near my home town as a college student and coincidentally first heard about green chemistry. To hear about the combination of chemistry and proactively protecting the environment, preventing pollution in the first place, I was thrilled.
That was exactly what I wanted to do! I was so inspired. I didn’t even know green chemistry existed until I stumbled on it at the conference. That would steer my education and career path going forward.
Now you might be asking, “how can I get started with green chemistry”?
No matter your place in the chemical sciences or the stage of your career, you can do green chemistry right where you are. A first step can be simply reading and studying to understand what it is all about. Attend a conference or a webinar to learn more. There’s no “one way” to do it or one size fits all.
If you’re a student or educator, you can see how you can start incorporating green chemistry into your curriculum – through seminar speakers or special guest lecturers, by greening the laboratory experiments and outreach demonstrations, getting a student club involved, and incorporating green chemistry into your lectures. Many schools have started incorporating green chemistry because the students have asked for it, and these are example you can follow. Beyond Benign and ACS GCI have excellent online resources for getting started.
If you’re looking into which schools to apply to (whether that’s undergraduate or graduate studies), see who’s teaching green chemistry and/or doing green chemistry-related research. That was one of my criteria when I was looking into graduate schools and it influenced my decision. See if there's a network of practitioners at your school or in the area, or start your own.
If you’re working, you can consider how to incorporate greener and more sustainable chemistry into your research, your products, and your purchasing and business decisions. Not part of your job title? No problem! Let me explain.
You can start by understanding the hazards of the chemicals you're using and creating, switching to alternative solvents, reagents and reaction conditions, rethinking the synthetic route to your chemical, considering biobased feedstocks, and thinking about the life cycle and end of life of your chemistry. Overall, think about the health and environmental impact of the chemicals and how to minimize it. A collection of research tools is available here. There are a number of consortia where businesses and other stakeholders share best practices and collaborate, such as GC3, BizNGO, and ACS GCI Industrial Roundtables.
Maybe you're not working in the chemical sciences but want to choose safer products as a consumer. You can consider what you are buying on the store shelves. Look for companies and products that avoid chemicals of concern. The annual Mind the Store retailer report card is an informative resource. Some eco-logos (like Safer Choice) and standards can be helpful, if they consider the safety of the chemicals being used.
Don’t know where to start? Feel free to reach out to me (email: jentanir@towardsafer.com) for more specific advice. There are plenty of excellent, free resources available online that can help you get started - I’ve included a few in this blog and often share resources on Twitter from @JenTanir.
We are all on this path together. Every little bit of progress will help us get closer to all chemistry being safe and sustainable chemistry.