Dr. Kyle Grice is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. He
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My brain is still buzzing with ideas from the ACS Green Chemistry and Engineering (GC&E) conference last week, and the afterglow is still going strong. It was my first time going to this conference, but it certainly won’t be my last. It was the kind of uplifting and invigorating conference experience that I hadn’t had in a while, and definitely needed.
I wanted to share my experience so folks who haven’t been to an ACS GC&E conference (like me before I went this year) might know what it’s like. Over the last several years I’ve been getting more into the field of Green Chemistry in both teaching and research. I’ve been researching CO2 reduction since my Postdoc, which is certainly related to green chemistry, but only in the last several years I’ve been doing more deliberate work with microwave chemistry, ball milling, and other approaches to minimize solvent use, hazardous chemicals, energy, time, and waste.
A couple of years ago, I got my university to join the Beyond Benign Green Chemistry Commitment (GCC). The GCC helps with support and accountability for making your chemistry more green at your institution. We are also working on making our labs more Green in multiple ways, and have phased out dichloromethane (DCM) use.
I’ve also enjoyed chatting with folks about Green Chemistry on the Green Chemistry Teaching and Learning Community (GCTLC) forums. In addition, I recently co-authored a commentary on replacing DCM in teaching labs with Dr. Dave Vosburg from Harvey Mudd (Dave will show up later in this post).
I usually go to one conference a fiscal year, and had already gone to the ACS National Meeting in August 2024, so wasn’t planning on going to another conference in the 2024-2025 academic/fiscal year, but then I was invited to give a talk about mechanochemistry at the ACS GC&E. I was excited to share our forays into mechanochemistry, so decided to jump at the chance and go to the ACS GC&E. In addition, an in-person GCC summit was to be held before the GC&E (they also have a virtual one), and so I planned to attend that as well.
This year’s ACS GCE was the 29th year, and was in Pittsburgh, PA, which was a short flight from Chicago. The GCC and GC&E events were fully contained in one hotel, which was nice, given the heat wave happening outside. I arrived on Sunday, right at the start of the GCC Summit. During the Summit, we heard from several GCC signers about their various activities at their institutions, including the development of greener labs, the incorporation of systems thinking and green chemistry into lecture, and the development and use of a Green Chemistry-infused GOB book (keep your eyes out in the future for the book!). We also had several small group breakout sessions and discussions that were very useful. It was great to chat with faculty, staff, students, and members of Green chemistry NGOs about all of the things they were doing, and made me very excited for the GC&E. On a more somber note, they also had a celebration of Ed Brush’s life at the GCC Summit and the GC&E, and while I didn’t know him, he clearly made a huge impact on the Green Chemistry Community.
Monday was a workshop day, and there were several different workshops folks could sign up for. I hadn’t signed up for workshops, so used the day to visit friends and collaborators at the Universities in Pittsburgh. Monday evening was the opening Awards dinner ceremony. It was fantastic to hear about all the awardees, including pharmaceutical companies making their processes more Green, young researchers starting their careers in Green Chemistry, and faculty who had made an impact in the classroom. Dave Vosburg was the awardee for the Teaching Green Fellowship, and gave a very short presentation. He’s published several Green organic labs in J. Chem. Educ., and I highly recommend you check them out! His publications are here. It was also the 20th anniversary of the ACS Green Chemistry Institute’s Pharmaceutical Roundtable (GCIPR), and hearing the talks from GCIPR members was a real joy. It was awesome to see the hard work that the pharmaceutical companies were putting in to make their processes and their whole operation more Green and sustainable. The GCIPR does a lot of different things, including giving out grants to make pharmaceutical research and processes more Green.
Tuesday was the start of the conference oral symposia, kicking off with a Keynote from Louise Proud,Vice President, Global Environment, Health & Safety at Pfizer. The great thing about the GC&E was that it was small and manageable compared to huge conferences like ACS National meetings, but not too small. There were 5-6 concurrent sessions, and it was easy to hop from one to another if there were talks in different rooms that you wanted to see. At ACS National, sometimes it takes 20+ minutes just to go from one talk to another, which might be at the far end of the convention center or even out at a hotel away from the convention center. I enjoyed the chemical education talks, as well as the “Green Chemistry solutions for EHS problems” talks. I also popped into the Expo and talked to the vendors. In the evening there was a poster session, with an international group of students and researchers presenting their work.
Wednesday was another full day of talks, and I mostly stayed in the all-day mechanochemistry symposium, where I gave a talk in the morning. Speakers were from all sorts of places, including industry, primarily undergraduate institutions, and PhD-granting institutions, and did mechanochemistry with everything from a mortar and pestle, to ball mills, to twin screw extruders. On Wed I also caught a great talk by John Warner, one of the founders of Green Chemistry and Beyond Benign, as well as the author of the foundational textbook Green Chemistry, Theory and Practice. If you get a chance to hear John give a talk, I highly recommend it! I also met Paul Anastas, the other author of that text and Green Chemistry trailblazer, and both John and Paul are great people.
I wish I could have stayed for Thursday, but had to get back home for various reasons. What really stood out to me at the conference was how wonderful it was to be around all the great folks there. I met so many people with great ideas and projects, including some potential new collaborators. Everyone was interested in advancing sustainability and green chemistry in teaching, research, industry, and beyond. It was truly uplifting to be in a place where everyone recognized and valued the importance of Green Chemistry and sustainability. It felt so wonderful to know everyone there was trying to make things better for humans and the environment. I want to thank all of the organizers and everyone who attended for making it a great experience, and I will definitely be back and look forward to sharing more of my own Green Chemistry Teaching and Research! Until then, see you on the GCTLC forums!
Sincerely,
Kyle Grice
Professor of Inorganic Chemistry
DePaul University