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Contributed by Jarod Davis, Global Policy Director, Social Equity at Dow
Co-Authored with Ashley Baker, Scientific Content Manager (Contractor) at the ACS Green Chemistry Institute
Personal Identify & Professional Experience
This is my 25th year at DOW, and it took me until about the 23rd year to see how much of my professional path is rooted in my childhood, where I grew up, who my parents were, and how they trained me to think.
This story is meant to spark a conversation about how green chemistry flows into environmental justice, and vice versa. People all over are trying to get their minds around this connection; you’re not behind if you don’t have all the answers. These conversations need time to mature, and even if the answers aren’t clear today, we will need to have––and keep having––dialogue around it. If you’re wondering where to start, start with you. Your perspective is the only one made of the sum of all your personal experiences and intersectionalities, making it inherently valuable.
My story begins with growing up on the Gulf Coast in Mobile, Alabama. I am the son of two STEM parents. My dad was an organic chemist who became a community pharmacist, and my mother was a professor of geology. Watching both of them navigate their careers established the foundation of my identity and professional path. As a geologist, my mom referenced the importance of understanding and appreciating planetary boundaries. Moreover, she explained how the Earth formed over millions of years and how we should protect it for the future.
While my mom offered perspectives on the environment, my dad instilled the importance of equity. My father was an old-school community pharmacist who managed his business like what is currently defined as a social enterprise. Having a pharmacy in an economically challenged community often meant that my father was a lifeline to the folks he served. For example, my dad would allow customers to pay for prescriptions with lines of credit, food, or whatever they could afford. Ultimately, his business couldn’t compete with the major retail pharmaceutical chains that emerged in the late ‘90s. However, I still witnessed the concept of health equity throughout my formative years. I didn’t realize I was learning about the interplay of environmental and social issues very early in my life; I had been living and thinking about environmental justice for a long time and didn’t know it.
Pursuing a degree in environmental justice wasn’t common in the mid-1990s. Since I loved thinking about air, water, and waste as a multimedia approach to protecting the environment, I decided to study environmental science at Louisiana State University (LSU).
Upon graduation from LSU, I wanted to go to law school. My dad was very much an old-school kind of scientist and saw other disciplines the same way. So to him, all lawyers went to court, like lawyers you see on television. I knew I didn’t want to be a traditional lawyer, but I didn’t know exactly how to articulate the intersectionality of my various interests. Therefore, I decided to join Dow in California where I had responsibility for regulatory compliance of two chemical manufacturing plants. Then, I worked as an environmental specialist in the same business unit where I learned how business links to environmental performance. After being at Dow for three years, it became clear that my interest was in the intersectionality of business, science, community, and policy. And that is ultimately what I wrote in my application to law school.
I attended Tulane University School of Law in Louisiana, where I received a J.D. with a certificate of specialization in Environmental Law. One of the things I loved about Tulane was the legislative advocacy clinic. The clinic was composed of several like-minded law students with more interest in public policy than traditional litigation.
After I graduated and returned to Dow, the next twenty years of my career journey focused on sustainable policy in one way or another. I had an amazing leader and vice president who encouraged me to lean into my personal identity to truly impact the intersectionality of my career journey.
In the moment, these experiences felt like individual pieces of a larger puzzle I couldn’t see, but now it seems almost poetic in the way they all came together. It’s like a mosaic that helps me look at the concept of social equity and human rights in a new way. I began to see that the intersectionality of who I am personally and professionally aligns with green chemistry because green chemistry exists at the intersection of chemistry, community, consumers, and collaboration.
Building on a Foundation of Performance and Environmental Considerations
The foundation for thinking about environmental justice (EJ) already exists within green chemistry. Green chemistry concepts—like systems thinking, life cycle assessment, and considering how to make the best chemistry decisions for humans and the environment—are rooted in intersectionality.
The challenge is that intersectionality has, so far, primarily focused on balancing performance and environmental factors. But, green chemistry, as it intersects with EJ, adds social aspects to the equation. It asks, “How do we look at environmental and performance impacts in concert with societal impacts?” We're on a journey to answering this, just like my personal and career journey.
So, how do we begin to integrate societal parameters into chemistry thinking?
Let’s take, for example, the government’s EJScreen Tool and the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool. These tools incorporate both chemical and non-chemical stressors. Non-chemical stressors—food deserts, lack of access to quality education, poverty, language isolation, and others—help us consider the totality of this question. The next generation of chemists will respond to challenges using a new understanding of community needs and concerns that includes a full spectrum of chemical and non-chemical stressors.
Delivering sustainable chemistry-based products to the market at the intersection of green chemistry, community, and social perspectives will also require new collaborations. People from different areas must share their expertise and personal intersectionalities to enter this new paradigm. I might know how to include air emissions reductions during product development, but I need another expert who can connect this to the social science of product development.
The next generation of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) models will be a work in progress because no one has answered this big question yet. But, integrating societal needs into chemistry and process design will likely be the directional trend moving forward.
The Chemist’s Role in Advancing Green Chemistry and EJ
A few stakeholders—regulators, policymakers, investors, and community members —are driving the integration of environmental justice and green chemistry into product and process development. Chemists' creative thinking is needed to help meet these groups’ demands.
For scientists who want to make a meaningful difference for the communities in areas where they work, look at where your company operates facilities and ask yourself what kind of community engagement is being done or could be done in those areas. What has your company historically done for community engagement, who has been involved in it, and how can you do it better tomorrow?
We can also bring different sets of people to the table to ask these questions. How many R&D scientists have ever been to an environmental meeting in their community? Attending community meetings can introduce scientists to non-chemical stressors in their area. R&D chemists are brilliant. When they sit in a meeting and hear community challenges, they’ll automatically start thinking about how to innovate using various materials science solutions. You can’t fix all the ills of society, but you can target a couple that are important in your community, bring new people into the conversation, and listen to what community members are telling you they need. Community engagement gives context for nonchemical stressors, but the discourse around the connection is very new.
There is also a concept called “community benefits planning.” It prompts you to ask, “How do we ensure that we are measurably uplifting the community and marrying community growth with sustainability and equity?” Within community benefits planning, there are regulatory, policy, societal, and market drivers. For policy, let’s take the proposed UN treaty on plastic pollution as an example. It contemplates circularity in the context of the most vulnerable communities. On the regulatory side, the US Department of Energy has embedded community benefit planning in its grant and funding processes. In the market, there are more and more ESG investors. These investors are asking more questions about the intersection of environmental initiatives to their social initiatives. Finally, having these conversations is becoming a societal expectation. Your kids, grandkids, and neighbors will want to talk about this, and all of these drivers will get stronger and necessitate innovation.
Future Chemists at the Intersection of Science and Society
For the next part of my journey, I am looking forward to seeing how the intersectionality of green chemistry and environmental justice matures over time. For younger people, the connection between social and environmental issues is often more inherent. People already in the workplace can make sure the chemists in the next generation can more easily make the bridge from where we are today to where we want to be tomorrow. But we need to get the academic system and training ready for them.
Future chemists and engineers will need to be equipped to create multi-disciplinary collaborations to answer EJ questions involving non-chemical stressors. In addition, as more institutions take action to improve equity – including welcoming and retaining students of diverse backgrounds – chemists with more varied perspectives and intersectionalities will become industry leaders, bringing new ideas and sensibilities to product and process development. Another important piece of the puzzle is mentorship for young chemists and engineers that helps them connect their personal narratives to creating unique solutions for global sustainability challenges.
For those of you who want to get going now, there are a few things you can do:
Start Where You Are
Start by looking for action you can take in your community and workplace right now, and don’t compare your progress to where you think others are. We’re all new at this.
Freedom
Give yourself the freedom to think about your narrative as a fusion of personal and community wisdom that is powerful for your career.
Authenticity
Bring your true self to your scientific career and to your lab. Your solutions will be innovative because you’re the only one with your perspective.
Dream
We’re at the beginning of this conversation, unlocking the door to give everyone a license to start thinking about creative answers to big questions. What challenges have you faced that you are uniquely positioned or motivated to solve?
I hope to become an observer, an advisor, and a contributor to effectuating change in this emerging field, and that I and others who have worked to make this connection for ourselves can accelerate the integration of seemingly disparate concepts by sharing our wisdom with the next generation of scientists. I’ve taken this journey to connect my story to green chemistry and environmental justice. How will you use your story to design a better future?