By Jeffrey Whitford, Vice President of Sustainability & Social Business Innovation, MilliporeSigma
You may be thinking that the big picture is looking a bit tough at the moment, but I think there’s another way to look at it.
When you think about the idea of Green Chemistry it’s not that old – especially in science years. The idea started to percolate in the ‘90s. The first Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference was in 1996. Dr. John Warner and Dr. Paul Anastas introduced their groundbreaking 12 Principles with the publication of Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice in 1998. No matter what the official start date, the important thing is that it happened—which has kickstarted so many other things. Lets dive deeper.
Beyond Benign is building a growing green chemistry community of educators that are helping to transform chemistry education for a sustainable future. Because of their work, 250 universities and colleges have committed to embedding green chemistry into their curriculum which means that almost 2,000,000 students each year are now exposed to this thinking. This impact will continue to grow—feeding the all-important talent pipeline.
My Green Lab promotes consistent and broadly applied sustainability best practices into the lab. Whether it’s something as simple as shutting the sash, maintaining your ultra-low temperature storage through the “Freezer Challenge”, or getting your lab “My Green Lab Certified”. This culture change is helping to expand the expectation of practices in the lab that help drive sustainability through rigor and accountability.
Next, let’s take an organization like Change Chemistry. It’s all in the name but this time with a different audience—B2B or B2C companies. Change Chemistry catalyzes this group of companies to think of different ways to innovate and strengthen their businesses by reducing risk through using things like Green Chemistry.
And rounding out the list is of course the ACS Green Chemistry Institute. Serving as a centering organization to help drive sustainability in science, connecting the dots between education initiatives and education requirements for higher education, centering and showcasing research and best practices in the field through the Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference, and convening advocates and champions to drive the work farther and faster. The ACS GCI’s Industry Roundtables have play a leading role in catalyzing green chemistry and engineering in industry.
These organizations have all been inspirations to MilliporeSigma, the life science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. From our commitment to Green Chemistry, to driving it into our products and our ever-growing portfolio of biobased solvents and greener alternative products, to groundbreaking tools like DOZN that are helping put theory into practice.
As they say, it may take a village, but I’ll be honest I like our village and our chances to make something incredible happen driven by Green Chemistry.
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