By Beyond Benign Co-Founder Dr. Amy Cannon
Over the past year, we teamed up with the UMass Lowell Center for Sustainable Production to form an Expert Committee on Sustainable Chemistry (ECOSChem), a group of 20 leading representatives from industry, government, academic, and non-profit organizations from across the world, to develop an actionable definition and criteria for “sustainable chemistry.” This definition and criteria are to help inform policymakers, industry researchers, educators and so many others in building a more sustainable future through chemistry.
The term “sustainable chemistry” is often used in conjunction with “green chemistry.” Many organizations have looked to better define the term to unify those working toward a more sustainable chemical enterprise. We got involved with this project to understand better how to communicate the central role that green chemistry plays in achieving a sustainable chemical enterprise – and, ultimately, how the sometimes “competing” approaches complement each other or, at times, are different.
Green chemistry is a central tool chemists (molecular designers) use to address sustainability through our trade. We use the foundational 12 principles of green chemistry as those guidelines – and these principles are meant to work together as a collective to provide a more holistic understanding of how we approach molecular design and challenge us to consider the best approaches. Even though we use the principles of green chemistry as the foundation for our work in green chemistry – we recognize that there is a diverse and rich history of approaches that others have taken to all move towards the same direction – toward creating more sustainable, greener, safer chemical products for our global society. We also recognize that it’s not only chemists that need to get involved in realizing this vision – it’s also policymakers, businesses, investors, and activists. Therefore, it’s important to communicate the work we do as chemists and chemistry educators and work with those central and peripheral to the field to advocate for and ultimately implement these greener practices.
Whether your personal or organizational approach comes from green chemistry, environmental chemistry, or sustainable chemistry, we are all working toward one goal and having one end in mind: having a society where the molecular building blocks of the products we use every day are healthy and safe for humans and the environment, regardless of industry sector, and with equity and justice embedded in how we create and use these chemicals. We hope the definition is useful to guide those working within or around the chemical enterprise to work together and advance the many goals required to achieve healthy, just and safe chemical products.
Find more information about the Sustainable Definition project and read the final report here.
In 2013, Beyond Benign created the Green Chemistry Commitment (GCC) program with guidance from higher education institutions as a framework to unite the global Green Chemistry community. The GCC goal is to infuse Green Chemistry into Higher Education and give scientists the required skills to design processes and products less hazardous to human health and the environment.
Below, we talk with Williams about her life and work.
“In an ideal world, Green Chemistry wouldn’t exist as a sub-discipline. We need to move to a way of thinking where sustainability is considered as part of everything we do. Signing this commitment is symbolic of the growing integration of Green Chemistry across all Chemistry teaching and research at York. The next generation of chemists have enormous potential to accelerate the shift to greener chemistry, and it’s an honour to be part of that process.” – Professor Helen Sneddon, Head of the GCCE.
Sustainable action begins with a conversation.
Green Chemistry gains another recognition! The 
How did you become interested in science?
What was the process of becoming part of the GCC community like for you?
Southern University: A 2021 Green Chemistry Commitment (GCC) signer, Southern University will use its award to design a 3-year project to implement green chemistry across the entire Chemistry department. Fundamental concepts and real-life applications of green chemistry will be introduced and taught in these courses to provide students an insightful perspective of the significant role green chemistry plays in solving environmental issues such as global warming and pollution, along with hands-on approaches in chemistry laboratory courses.
Michigan State University: A GCC Signer since 2018, MSU is using the award to pilot and evaluate green chemistry and project-based laboratory curriculum designed for organic laboratory courses for STEM and BA chemistry majors. This award will support the work of undergraduates as they beta-test the student-facing curricular materials to plan and carry out each investigation and to design protocols to evaluate each project on key green & sustainable chemistry principles, using appropriate metrics.
University of California Berkeley: UC Berkeley, a founding GCC Signer since the program launched in 2013, has been a leader in green chemistry education. With this award, the University will build upon the work it has done to integrate green chemistry in first year- level general chemistry. Through this award, the University will start a complete redesign of the curriculum for its sophomore-level organic course to explicitly integrate GCC Student Learning Goals.
