By EPA Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention Deputy Assistant Administrator Jennie Romer

As a sustainability expert, author, and the first-ever Deputy Assistant Administrator for Pollution Prevention at EPA, I’m thrilled to announce the opening of nominations for the 2023 Green Chemistry Challenge Awards. The Green Chemistry Challenge Awards are a way for EPA to bring attention to groundbreaking scientific solutions that are making a positive impact on human health and the environment. 

The ACS Green Chemistry Institute (GCI) will be at ACS Fall 2022 in Chicago—please stop by our booth (533) in the Expo to chat, test your knowledge and win green chemistry swag! The Expo is open Monday and Tuesday from 11 a.m. – 6 p.m., and Wednesday from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. While you are in the Expo, be sure to also stop by the Recharge & Social Media Lounge to tell us how your chemistry connects to one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Participants will be posting short videos to Instagram. More information about the campaign and virtual participation options will be forthcoming!

By Matthew Deinhardt, ACS Green Chemistry Institute

Returning to an in-person, hybrid meeting this year, we were thrilled to have an in-person Student Poster Award Competition again. While presenting at the Poster Session, students’ research was reviewed by judges for outstanding and superior research and effort in green and sustainable chemistry and engineering. Many thanks to our poster judges: Prof. Tova Williams of NC State, Prof. Alan Allgeier of the University of Kansas, and Dr. Daniela Blanco, who is the CEO of Sunthetics. The poster session and reception was sponsored by Boehringer Ingelheim with prizes generously provided by The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and DeGruyter.

Great Chukwudalu Umenweke of the University of Kentucky pictured with judges Pof. Bova and Prof. Allgeier (Photo Credit: Arthur Lemmon)

By Adelina Voutchkova, Director of Sustainable Development, ACS

Adelina VoutchkovaI had the privilege to join the ACS in the role of Director of Sustainable Development in early June, just as the GC&E Conference was getting underway. During my academic career at George Washington University, I built a robust research program focused on catalysis for a circular economy and helped launch a graduate program in Environmental and Green Chemistry, with a keen eye on developing technologies relevant to greener industrial processes and preparing the future workforce in green chemistry.  I am incredibly proud of the patents, publications, research output, and startup spun from our work, but also deeply aware of the obstacles that slow academics’ ability to fuel the needed growth of industrial green chemical processes. Key obstacles include identifying research gaps in industry relevant to different fields, navigating the landscape to commercialize research products, and quantitatively evaluating the relative environmental impact of technologies deemed as “greener”. With the launch of the ACS Office of Sustainability and the Campaign for a Sustainable Future—a $15 million investment from ACS—I saw a compelling opportunity to help address these obstacles and contribute to both the ACS mission and the green chemistry community that has nurtured my career thus far.

Over the last decade, a steady shift towards a more global pharmaceutical supply chain has occurred. Today, a significant portion of API manufacturing is carried out by contract manufacturing organizations (CMOs), many located in Asian countries.

The ACS Green Chemistry Institute Pharmaceutical Roundtable (GCIPR), established in 2005, is a leading partnership between the ACS Green Chemistry Institute and over 40 pharmaceutical and allied companies committed to catalyzing green chemistry and engineering in the industry.

A team from Merck in Rahway, NJ is the recipient of the 2022 Peter J. Dunn Award for Green Chemistry and Engineering Impact in the Pharmaceutical Industry for their work, “From wood pulp to a candidate medicine: Green manufacturing technologies enable the production of investigational leukemia drug nemtabrutinib from a biorenewable commodity material.”

Electricity has existed naturally since the beginning of time. Over centuries, humans have devised ways to capture electricity and eventually create it.

Once being able to generate electricity, there has been no shortage of ingenious ways to use it – lighting, kitchen appliances, communications and electronics of all kinds, automobiles – to name a few.

The first 19th-century use for electricity was the incandescent light bulb, devised by the great and prodigious inventor, Thomas Alva Edison.  He obtained a U.S. Patent for his lightbulb in 1880. His light bulbs, attached to small generators, started to illuminate the homes of the very wealthy and heralded the ultimate demise of gas-fueled lighting. 

Contributed by Jane Murray, Ph.D., Global Head of Green Chemistry, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany (MilliporeSigma)

Biomass feedstocks offer several advantages over conventional fossil-based starting materials. In addition to providing an abundant source of renewable organic carbon, its oxygenated nature, chemical diversity, and inherent chirality render biomass a highly suitable raw material to manufacture a multitude of high-added-value compounds. Furthermore, structural resemblance to nature-derived or -inspired target molecules reduces the synthetic steps required compared to their petrochemical counterparts.

Contributed by Madushanka Mevan Dissanayake, Technology Development Engineer, Intel Corporation, Natalie O'Neil, Director of Higher Education, Beyond Benign, and Juliana Vidal, Postdoctoral Researcher, McGill University

By Christiana Briddell, Sr. Communications Manager, ACS GCI

Acrylamide-based polymers are the most common friction reducer used in hydraulic fracturing. In a horizontal well, friction reducers, such as polyacrylamides, reduce the energy and pressure requi

By Jitesh Soares, Ph.D., Director, Scientific Advancement

It’s been less than a week since I began serving as the Director of Scientific Advancement at ACS. The first thing that struck me is how Mary Kirchhoff molded this role into a force by building an achievement-based Division with a singular, deep-rooted commitment to its philanthropic mission. I am standing on the shoulders of a giant and look forward to the challenge of living up to lofty expectations with an eye on the ultimate prize – a sustainable planet!

The ACS Green Chemistry Institute is pleased to announce the winners of the Heh-Won Chang, PhD Fellowship in Green Chemistry. This award provides international recognition for outstanding graduate student contributions to advancing the goals of green chem

Kimberly Hazard, Greener Solutions instructor, University of California, Berkeley

The Greener Solutions program at UC Berkeley is a unique and successful program that teaches students applied skills in green chemistry. As a former Greener Solutions student and current co-instructor, I can attest to the program’s pedagogical efficacy and the immense value it provides for students and partners.

Through the program, students have a unique opportunity to work on interdisciplinary teams and partner with companies in a variety of industries trying to identify and evaluate safer alternatives to concerning materials or less sustainable processes. Students who go through this program learn how to apply their academic skills to real sustainability challenges, and often leave inspired to shift their careers in this direction. In addition to providing students with valuable experience, the program also helps build a leadership pipeline for the next generation of sustainability.

Glenn Ruskin, ACS GCI Contributor

Ever since humans harnessed fire over 1.5 million years ago, combustion has been at the heart of our energy creation. Fire from wood was first used by humans to cook meat, provide warmth and protection from wild animals. It wasn’t until the early 19th century, that fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) replaced wood as the primary source of energy generation. Today the vast majority, over 80%, of energy is still generated by fossil fuels, with nuclear comprising 10% and other renewable sources making up the rest.

Dr. Jonathon Moir, Program Manager, GCTLC, Beyond Benign

Beyond Benign and the ACS Green Chemistry Institute® (GCI) are excited to announce that after a year of planning, strategy work, and scoping, the technical development of the new Green Chemistry Teaching and Learning Community (GCTLC) platform is underway! The GCTLC is set to launch in 2023 and will serve as an online clearinghouse of green chemistry education materials, including a searchable library of greener lab experiments, in-class activities, lecture slides, and tutorial videos, among others. The GCTLC will also be a central networking hub where members of the community (including teachers and faculty educators, students, industry stakeholders, and EH&S experts) can collaborate, create and contribute to discussion forums, share resources, give and receive mentorship, post green chemistry jobs and opportunities, and so much more.