At Beyond Benign, our mission is straightforward yet profoundly impactful: to cultivate a green chemistry community that empowers educators to revolutionize chemistry education for a sustainable future. As we reflect on the past year and the incredible support we’ve garnered, we are thrilled to announce the recipients of our 2024 Community Grant Fund awards. These awards, made possible by the generosity and dedication of our community, are set to fuel innovative green chemistry projects that will make a lasting impact on education and sustainability.

The projects funded this year are diverse and inspiring, reflecting the creativity and dedication of our community. From professional development workshops for middle and high school teachers to symposiums and student awards focused on sustainability, these initiatives are set to make a significant impact. Below, we highlight the remarkable projects and leaders spearheading these transformative efforts.

2024 Community Grant Award Winners – Project Highlights

Title: Professional Development: “It’s Easy Being Green”

Lead Facilitator: Maria Danielle Garrett, Associate Professor of Chemistry Education at Belmont University

Project Description:

The ultimate goal of this program is to expand a sustainable green chemistry workshop series: “It’s Easy Being Green: Budget-Friendly Safety-Conscious Chemistry Labs for the Secondary Science Classroom of Today” – a free professional development program for physical science and chemistry middle school and high school science teachers. Not only does this program provide science teachers with new ideas that they can affordably incorporate into their classroom, but it also has the potential to provide both teachers and their students with the basic skills to “think green” – providing them with new eco-friendly ways of addressing problem-solving in chemistry both within and outside the classroom.

There are three objectives to help reach the goal of this program expansion.  

• Objective 1: A new professional development workshop will be offered during the academic year.  
• Objective 2: Teachers attending the half-day professional development workshop will be eligible to apply for a small microgrant ($50-$100 in value) for curriculum items, lab materials, and/or professional development opportunities that focus on green chemistry topics and classroom applications. 
• Objective 3: A Google Sites page will be developed to help recruit teacher attendees for both the new professional development offering and the summer offering. Teachers who are awarded microgrants will be highlighted on the site. They will be asked to share their ideas and outcomes from the microgrant, creating a green chemistry resource bank for other teachers.

Title: “Waving the Green Flag”

Lead Facilitator: Marissa Clapson, Assistant Professor, University of Prince Edward Island

Co-Organizers: Emma Davy, Educator Specialist (University of British Columbia), Julia Pitsiaeli, BSc. Student (University of British Columbia), Shauna Schetchel, PhD Candidate (Queen’s University), Greg Bannard, PhD Candidate (University of Windsor), Jasmine Hong, PhD Candidate (McGill University), Gagan Daliaho, PhD Candidate (McGill University), Connor Durfy, Research Associate (Western University).

Project Description

The symposium “Waving the Green Flag” will be held at the CSC Conference as a half-day session on Thursday, June 5th. Building on the success of our green chemistry education symposium last year, this project uses a nontraditional symposium model to facilitate education and open discussion about green chemistry principles, acting as a resource for participants to implement current sustainable principles into chemistry education and inorganic chemistry research. 

This project aims to provide an accessible, engaging symposium that facilitates learning through gamification in hands-on activities, looking at application-based case studies of sustainability and synthesis. The nontraditional symposium model focuses on using multi-dimensional learning methods to challenge and educate symposium participants. 

This project aims to foster scientific discourse and provide a space for open discussion and learning about how to implement sustainable green chemistry practices into academia, industry, and education. Our hope is that the participants leave feeling empowered to educate others about green chemistry in academic, industrial and educational settings. We will provide clear, actionable resources that will provide participants with a toolbox that they can use to implement sustainability or green chemistry discussion topics in their own education and research settings.

Title: “IACS Sustainable STEM Innovation award”

Lead Facilitator: Raks Derival, Innovation Academy Charter School

Project Description

This award was created to celebrate the lasting impact of the Class of 2018’s Marissa “Missy” Spera for her passion for green chemistry and protecting the planet. Missy is a standout science student passionate about people and the planet. The student receiving the IACS Sustainable STEM Innovation Award embodies the spirit of the award through their dedication to the community and enthusiasm for science and sustainability.

This year’s award went to High School Senior Richeervy Eng. Richeervy not only excels in the lab but also looks beyond the beaker to the people and environment who are affected by chemicals. For an honors project, this student created safer personal care products not only for themself but also for their loved ones and for members of an often overlooked and historically excluded community. This student spent many weeks in the lab creating new products that are made for People of Color, such as lotions, soaps, and hair masks for the Cambodian community. They designed products to be safe, affordable, and perform well while also preventing waste and designing products to degrade safely in the environment — all key principles and criteria of green chemistry. 

Title: “Innovating Lab Equipment”

Lead Facilitator: John Canal, Simon Fraser University (SFU)

Project Description

The project presents an opportunity to instill in students a mindset geared towards sustainable practices in chemistry, with a particular focus on green chemistry solutions. Embedded within our inorganic curriculum, this educational initiative encourages students to evaluate established experiments through the lens of green chemistry principles and propose enhancements. These enhancements, aimed at minimizing environmental impact, are then integrated into the experimental procedures.

Among the innovations pursued are solventless reactions and the substitution of hazardous solvents with eco-friendly alternatives. Additionally, we aim to introduce students and faculty members to the benefits of waterless condensers. By embracing such technologies, we not only advance sustainability goals but also cultivate a deeper understanding of the resource-intensive nature of conventional chemical syntheses.

Traditional reflux condensers, such as the Liebig variant, have long relied on significant water consumption, averaging 2.5 liters per minute. Beyond the wastefulness of water, there exists a broader energy perspective often overlooked. The water utilized in these condensers undergoes purification at municipal facilities before its use and subsequent treatment at wastewater facilities before returning to the environment. Each step in this process incurs a substantial energy cost. These funds will be used to collaborate with a glassblower to design custom waterless condensers and to assess its effectiveness.