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Green Chemistry: Designing for a Sustainable Future

Green Chemistry: Designing for a Sustainable Future

FromScience with a Twist


Green Chemistry: Designing for a Sustainable Future

FromScience with a Twist

ratings:
Length:
28 minutes
Released:
Apr 19, 2023
Format:
Podcast episode

Description

⚡ Green chemistry aims to anticipate toxicity and global climate change. Green chemistry is an area of chemistry that focuses on reducing pollution and building a more sustainable world. John explains, "What you may be surprised to learn is that if you look at the curriculum, if you look at the classes that a chemist takes from the very beginning to getting a Ph.D., very few, if any, universities have within that curriculum, any skills, any ability to predict, ‘Will this molecule be toxic? Will this molecule hurt the environment?’ Of the massive curriculum that is chemistry, what has been missing is that. So if you put a box around that and say, ‘What are the skills necessary to anticipate toxicity, global climate change, energy use, all the things that we define as sustainability issues, the molecular mechanisms necessary to address them?’ That is the body of what is called green chemistry."⚡ Building a sustainable future needs to be collaborative. We're all in this together when it comes to building a sustainable future. John explains, "Over time, the two aspects of industry and industry have not become closer together but have actually become a little bit further apart. At the very time we need innovation, at the very time we need creativity to solve these sustainability problems, both aspects of the chemical enterprises are not coming together. So, in an ironic way, the closed-loop metaphor works against us. So this Mobius strip, interesting enough, if you look at it in a certain way, it looks like an infinity symbol, bringing and showing that we're all in this together, and this has to be a collaboration." ⚡ Green chemistry gives us the tools to put sustainability into motion. The desire for sustainability is not enough to make the necessary change. We also need to have the right tools. John says, "You can't achieve sustainability goals just by wanting them. There's a skillset that is required in the lab that will then bring about the technologies and the materials to achieve those goals, and so the relationship between green chemistry. You can have all the regulations in the world, you can have all the desires in the world, but if you don't have the ability to meet those desires, you just got a lot of sad people, and so we need to have green chemistry to move from talking about this stuff to actually doing it."
Released:
Apr 19, 2023
Format:
Podcast episode

Titles in the series (38)

It’s almost impossible to overstate how many aspects of daily life are impacted by science. From technologies that help ensure the quality of the water we drink, to medicines that deliver lifesaving treatments – it’s all thanks to science. Each month, join Ron O’Brien, a science enthusiast from Thermo Fisher Scientific, the world leader in serving science, as he talks to experts who are on the cutting-edge of redefining how we exist. This is Science with a Twist.