“If you want to save the world, be a chemist,” Amy Cannon said to a room of students, faculty, and staff at the Nelson Institute’s Weston Roundtable in late January.
As the first person to receive a PhD in green chemistry and cofounder and executive director of Beyond Benign — a global nonprofit dedicated to green chemistry education — Cannon is a passionate advocate for the widespread implementation of this progressive and iterative approach.
But what is green chemistry?
“Green chemistry is all about upstream thinking,” Cannon said. “It involves designing the molecular building blocks of products to be safe for humans and the environment.”
To do so, green chemistry applies 12 principles across the lifecycle of a chemical, from its conceptualization to its disposal, with practices ranging from bi-product waste prevention to designed degradation. These efforts aim to improve the traditional methods of chemistry and encourage safe and sustainable chemical practices.
While this proactive approach may seem intuitive today, history shows that chemistry has a complicated relationship with sustainability. Modern-day issues in Madison such as abandoned hazardous waste areas known as Superfund sites and record levels of PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), better known as “forever chemicals,” stem from past practices that failed to account for the toxicity and persistence of certain chemical products. By designing chemicals with potential consequences in mind, green chemistry can provide safer substitutes for toxic substances and stop pollution at the source.
Yet, “chemists are never taught to understand what makes a molecule toxic to humans or the environment,” Cannon said. “It’s not in our training whatsoever.”
Why is this?
Numerous misconceptions limit implementing green chemistry in research and regulation. When the field emerged in the 1990s, it was met with considerable skepticism from both chemists and the industry. Lingering narratives continue to circulate that green chemistry is both time and cost inefficient, and of little interest to chemists or businesses. However, recent studies confidently debunk these claims, according to Cannon.
Still, as a result of these misconceptions, green chemistry is largely unincorporated in education systems, which, according to Cannon, serve an integral role in standardizing sustainable practices among future chemists. She noted that adopting green chemistry practices can feel overbearing for teachers, particularly those in primary and secondary education, who balance jam-packed curricula and lack access to technical expertise and resources.
“So, how do we bring down these barriers?” Cannon said. “How do we give faculty that confidence and support networks and systems so that they can feel like they could talk to their colleagues so that they have the resources?”
Similarly to the applied principles of green chemistry, the solution must come from upstream.
Rethinking the way we are educating scientists and students is the first step, Cannon explained. The education system is the most powerful means to standardize green chemistry, and with the right support, educators can feel empowered to embrace sustainability and green chemistry as part of their work. At Beyond Benign, chemists foster peer support networks and provide educators with expert resources to integrate green chemistry into their day-to-day teaching practices and research. By uniting these communities of practices, we can create communities of transformation, Cannon said.
What role do students play?
“We’ve seen students be tremendous drivers of change in departments on campuses,” Cannon said.
Naturally, college students are leading green chemistry efforts on campuses. By working with faculty and department heads, students have taken initiative to integrate green chemistry into their research and curricula. At UW–Madison, students are innovatively approaching green chemistry and sustainability. The Office of Sustainability’s Green Labs Certification Program works with campus laboratories to better understand the impacts of research practices and create healthy and sustainable laboratory environments. As a student, it is important to never underestimate your power to demand change, Cannon emphasized.
When looking toward the future of green chemistry, Cannon reminds us to be hopeful:
“The field of green chemistry is progressive. We have to celebrate the small successes in order to get to the big sort of wins … [it’s a] work in progress and a masterpiece at the same time.