Many members of our community will warmly remember Dr. Nina McClelland, who was a champion of green chemistry, a life-long advocate for environmental standards to improve the health and safety of our environment, and a true believer in the value of pro

By Aurora Ginzburg, Ph.D., Education Program Specialist, ACS Green Chemistry Institute

As the year draws to a close we wanted to take the opportunity to highlight some of the significant green chemistry research, educational initiatives, and innovations from 2021. This list is not in any particular order and is limited to 15 entries. Awards recognizing individual scientists—of which there are many in 2021—were not included. We welcome your addition of other significant achievements in the comments on this post!

The green chemistry community lost a leader in the Pacific Northwest last month with the sudden passing of Ken Zarker—manager of Washington State Department of Ecology’s pollution prevention and toxic reduction activities. Ken was a champion of green chem

By Mary Kirchhoff, Ph.D., Director, ACS Green Chemistry Institute

For those of you old enough to remember Bob Hope, “Thanks for the Memories” was his signature song, and the title seems appropriate as I write my last column as GCI Director.  I began my 20-year career at ACS with the Green Chemistry Institute and am pleased to wrap up my time at ACS with GCI as I prepare to retire at the end of the year.

20 Years of Scientific Breakthroughs That Both Change Patients’ Lives and Sustain a Healthy Planet

By Juan Colberg, Seda Arat, Maria Gonzalez Esguevillas, Scott France, Kailey Huot, Rajesh Kumar, Daniel Laity, Manjinder Lall, Johnny Lee, Javier Magano, Jared Piper, Paul Richardson, Philipp Roosen, Rebecca Watson.

One definition for Green Chemistry (GC) is the design of chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use or generation of hazardous substances. Pfizer has embraced this concept and applied it across the life cycle of its products, facilitating process design, manufacturing, and utilization. Green chemistry principles provide a unique framework to guide process development, which ultimately leads to an optimal chemical process from both an environmental and economic perspective.

By Frank Roschangar, Boehringer Ingelheim

More than ever before, pharmaceutical companies are expected to assess the impact of their sustainable development achievements.  However, the lack of a consistent metric system impedes the objective quantification and comparability of key sustainability indicators.  One of those indicators is Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) manufacturing waste, which aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12—Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.

Eight research groups received a total of $300,000 in green chemistry funding from the ACS Green Chemistry Institute Pharmaceutical Roundtable (GCIPR) this fall. The 2021 funded research projects cover a variety of areas, including flow chemistry, greener peptide synthesis, medicinal chemistry, biocatalysis and others. New Request for Proposals in research areas that are important to the pharmaceutical industry are issued each spring. In total, the ACS GCIPR grant program has distributed over $3 million in green chemistry research funding since its inception. To find out more about the program, please visit: https://www.acsgcipr.org/advancing-research/

The 2021 awardees, who each receive $50,000 in research support, are:

A recording of the September 22, 2021, webinar hosted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to educate stakeholders on the Green Chemistry Challenge Awards and the nomination process is now available. The webinar reviewed the history of the awards, the categories within the awards, eligibility requirements, and what is needed to submit a nomination.

The 2020-2021 school year was not an easy one by any means! However, many ACS Student Chapters were able to find ways to continue their activities—and 27 succeeded in still meeting the criteria to receive a Green Chemistry Award. Winning chapters included 21 chapters from the U.S. and Puerto Rico and 6 international student chapters from Nigeria, the U.K., Mexico, India and Costa Rica.

To encourage ACS members to get involved in sustainability policy issues, two ACS committees are collaborating to create a new ACS award. The ACS Committees on Environmental Improvement (CEI) and Chemistry & Public Affairs (CCPA) created a jointly-administered ACS ChemLuminary Award to encourage local sections and divisions to engage in projects that leverage ACS policy statements connected to sustainability. ACS units have the remainder of 2021 to organize and execute activities that will be eligible for consideration for the 2022 prize. ACS ChemLuminary awards recognize superlative efforts accomplished by ACS local sections, divisions, international chapters, or other ACS units.

“It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.  Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.”  This is how the current state of the climate was described in last month’s Interg

On June 11, Helen Sneddon, Ph.D., Scientific Team Director in Medicinal Chemistry at GlaxoSmithKline, presented an overview of the ACS Green Chemistry Institute Pharmaceutical Roundtable tools during the 25^th Annual Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference. A summary of her presentation below provides a quick overview of these free public resources. You can also watch Dr. Sneddon’s complete 20-minute presentation at https://www.acsgcipr.org/tools-for-innovation-in-chemistry.  

The ACS Green Chemistry Institute Oilfield Chemistry Roundtable (OCR) is seeking a one-year R&D commitment to assist the Roundtable’s discovery of friction reducers and high-viscosity friction reducers that are viable alternatives to current polyacrylamide polymers used in hydraulic fracturing.

By Matthew Deinhardt, ACS Green Chemistry Institute

Agilent Technologies shares how they are leading the way in sustainable supply chains and instrument production from a holistic approach.

Agilent, a 2021 Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference Gold Sponsor, provides analytical instruments, software, and services for laboratory workflow, from start to finish. The company focuses its services and products to meet the needs of six key markets: food, environmental and forensics, pharmaceutical, diagnostics, chemical and energy, and research. I recently had a chance to interview Agilent’s Michael Frank, Ph.D., Associate Vice President of Global Marketing within the Liquid Phase Separations Division, to discuss how Agilent is improving and “greening” their processes for a more sustainable ecosystem.

Contributed by Kendra Leahy Denlinger, Teaching Professor at Xavier University; Rebecca Haley, Assistant Professor at University of Wisconsin-River Falls; and Heather Hopgood, Assistant Professor of Instruction at Ohio University

Working together to connect chemistry

What do women’s health and health inequity have to do with the ability to identify a stereogenic center? This was a question we set out to answer as we began our journey with the Green & Sustainable Chemistry Education Module Development Project. Before diving into how we have attempted to answer this question, let’s go back to a scenario you may have encountered in the classroom.  Every now and then, chemistry educators get the bold student who speaks on behalf of the class: “Why does this matter?” with the accompanying sigh and eye-roll. In the past, we have answered this question with some broader picture context and the obvious “you’ll need it for your next course.” This answer isn’t all that satisfying for us, or the students.

Contributed by Jonathon Moir, Ph.D., Program Manager, Green Chemistry Teaching and Learning Community (GCTLC), Beyond Benign

As the 2021/2022 school year begins and many students have returned to in-person classes across the U.S., effective strategies for teaching and learning in the midst of an ongoing global pandemic remain top of mind amongst educators at all levels, from K-12 through to higher education. A priority remains the ability to network and collaborate with other educators (especially when in-person conferences and meetings remain uncertain), to share best practices and resources, to help support each other amid change, and to find ways to stay engaged across geographic and institutional boundaries.

Learn more about the ACS Green Chemistry Institute student awards. Deadlines begin on October 8, 2021.

Contributed by Christine Aurigemma, Pfizer, San Diego, CA, USA

The “Integration of Greener, Process-Friendly Approaches for Monitoring Reactions for Pharmaceutical End-Game Chemistry” session featured quality speakers from industry and academia, including the Chief Scientific Officer of a chemistry CRO, on a broad spectrum of topics from microfluidics to process analytics at the plant scale. These presentations touched on various green and sustainable tools and techniques for improving process control while reducing waste and were in alignment with the conference theme "Sustainable Production to Advance the Circular Economy."

By Anthony Maiorana, polymer chemist and writer of The Polymerist Newsletter

If we think about modern industrial chemistry, things really took off around the 1940s as steam cracking, catalytic cracking, and the use of synthetic materials started to become widespread. The widespread availability of refined oil at low costs over the last 60 years created less of a need for refining chemicals from biomass, but crude oil is inherently finite on a human time scale. Over the last few decades we have seen the growth of green chemistry and engineering principles in academia and the chemical industry for numerous reasons, but one of them is the potential future scarcity of oil as a chemical feedstock. If you are reading this then, it is likely through the ACS Green Chemistry Institute and I won’t get into the specifics of green chemistry principles, but I will attempt to write about the utilization of biomass in industrially relevant specialty polymers and plastics.

By Ian Mallov, research chemist at Inkbox Ink

When Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson offered $25 million for the invention of an efficient carbon sequestration technology in 2007, an Oregon environmentalist named Andy Kerr cheekily submitted a drawing of

Thanks to everyone who joined the ACS Green Chemistry Institute^® for the 25_th Annual Green Chemistry & Engineering (GC&E) Conference the week of June 14! The Conference Co-Chairs, Jillian Goldfarb at Cornell University and Guy Humphrey at Merck, did an amazing job organizing programming around the theme "Sustainable Production to Advance the Circular Economy". The success of the conference was due to the hard work of Jillian and Guy, the advisory committee, the symposium organizers, and my wonderful ACS colleagues in the Green Chemistry Institute and the Meetings Department.

By Aurora Ginzburg, Ph.D., Education Program Specialist, ACS Green Chemistry Institute; and Jennifer MacKellar, Program Manager, ACS Green Chemistry Institute

In 2015 and 2020, the ACS GCI surveyed ACS members in higher education to evaluate the status of

We are thrilled to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference when conference attendees gather virtually next month!  The inaugural conference was organized in 1997 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and remains the premier green chemistry and engineering conference in North America, attracting almost 5,000 attendees to last year’s virtual gathering.  The ACS Green Chemistry Institute is proud to organize this prestigious conference with the support of so many loyal sponsors every year.

Contributed by Dr. Michal Freedhoff, Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Green Chemistry Challenge Awards and it’s an opportunity to celebrate a quarter century of groundbreaking scientific solutions that have and will continue to make a positive impact on human health and the environment.

That’s why I’m looking forward to joining you at the Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference in June to present the 2021 Green Chemistry Challenge Awards on behalf of ACS and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). These awards are a wonderful way for us to recognize innovation by American businesses and researchers that have redesigned chemical products and processes to reduce or eliminate the use and manufacture of hazardous substances. These innovations help protect vulnerable communities, prevent pollution at its source, and keep U.S. businesses globally competitive by creating more sustainable products. 

Contributed by Samy Ponnusamy, Ph.D., Fellow & Global Manager – Green Chemistry, MilliporeSigma, St Louis, MO; Srinivasan Ambatipati, Ph.D., Assistant Professor & Coordinator of Chemical Engineering, McNeese State University, Lake Charles, LA

In this year’s GC&E Conference, we have organized a technical symposium on the topic “Design of Chemicals, Novel Chemistries, Synthetic Pathways & Processes that Enable a Circular, More Sustainable Economy”. Case studies will be presented to illustrate how industry and academia have successfully implemented novel design strategies to achieve a more circular and sustainable economy. The examples from the session will describe the design and approaches taken, the challenges faced and how a solution for the challenge was achieved. Also, this session will discuss the importance of implementing sustainability as a basic design criterion to successfully achieve a closed-loop economy.

By David A. Laviska, Assistant Professor at Seton Hall University and Sarah Prescott, Associate Professor at the University of New Hampshire, Manchester

It’s not uncommon for academics working in the sciences to feel a sense of isolation (no, this isn’t a reference to the COVID pandemic that has forced an extra measure of isolation on all of us). Depending on individual research interest(s) and prior training, it’s likely that most chemists feel some sense of “working in a vacuum”. How many of us are lucky enough to have close working colleagues who have expertise similar to our own? In most traditional academic settings, each scientist occupies a unique niche and this intellectual siloing can hinder the sharing of ideas and collaborative innovation, both in the research laboratory and in teaching. The latter can be especially challenging since major changes in the classroom (for gateway courses in particular!) tend to be much more broadly “visible” to all the stakeholders in higher education (students, fellow faculty, and administration).

The ACS Green Chemistry Institute (GCI) Pharmaceutical Roundtable honors the work of Stephen Dalby, Francois Levesque, Cecilia Bottecchia and Jonathan McMullen at Merck with the 2021 Peter J. Dunn Award for Green Chemistry & Engineering Impact in the Pharmaceutical Industry. The team’s innovation is titled, “Greener Manufacturing of Belzutifan (MK-6482) Featuring a Photo-Flow Bromination.”

Contributed by Natalie J. O’Neil, Higher Education Program Manager, Beyond Benign and Mevan Dissanayake, BE Planar PCD Regen Process Engineer at Intel Corporation

What comes to mind when you visualize your future green chemistry or engineering career? Is the term “Green” in your title? Did you find it based on the specific call out for those skills in the job posting? If you are searching for a position, you may be disappointed when limited or no search results appear with the terms “Green Chemistry” or “Green Engineering”. Does that mean these careers do not exist? No, they do—trust us! Many future careers in academia, industry, nonprofits and government agencies have an increasing priority placed on hiring students with the skills to design and apply safer, more sustainable chemicals, materials, products, and processes. Join us to learn how to leverage your green credentials in various career paths and hear how others have built a career under the umbrella of green chemistry and engineering.

Contributed by Natalie O’Neil, Higher Education Program Manager, Beyond Benign, David A. Laviska, Assistant Professor, Seton Hall University and Michael Wentzel, Associate Professor, Augsburg University

This fast-paced and engaging symposium at the 25th Annual Green Chemistry & Engineering (GC&E) Conference will provide educators of all levels (K-12, undergraduate, and graduate) with the opportunity to learn about innovations and initiatives for incorporating green chemistry content in lecture, laboratory, and outreach activities.

Contributed by Eric G. Moschetta (Center for Reaction Engineering - Process R&D, Abbvie Inc.), Benjamin Rizkin (Process Research & Development, Abbvie, Inc.), and Nick Uhlig (Process Development, Gilead Alberta ULC).

The ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable’s flow chemistry team has organized a symposium for this year’s Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference titled “Flow chemistry and continuous processing enabling sustainable chemical development and manufacturing”. This full-day session will include presentations on a broad range of topics with a common focus on process intensification, integrated multi-step processes, efficient use of materials and energy sources, and waste mitigation.