Green Chemistry and Sustainable Design

Sustainability and green principles have been making significant inroads into the social consciousness; many products are being introduced with labels indicating “green”, “sustainable”, and “organic”. The debate over what these actually mean is ongoing, and no simple answers can be given to questions regarding the sustainability of a given product or process. Our goal is to consider these questions from a chemical perspective. What makes a chemical safe and sustainable? How do we improve our chemical methods to address issues of waste, energy consumption, and safety? And what roles do those from academia, industry, and public policy take in achieving these initiatives?

What we do:

1- Host the annual Green Chemistry and Sustainable Design seminar series - currently constitutes the only formal green chemistry education offered in the College of Chemistry

2- Organize regular journal club meetings - creates a venue for discussion and learning among graduate students

3- Attending relevant professional meetings and make sure academic chemists have a voice in the sustainability movement.

Details:

Our group consists primarily of chemistry graduate students interested in learning about, debating, and ideally formulating some answers to the above questions.  A principal objective of our group is to create a venue for discussion and dissemination of information among undergraduate and graduate students and faculty from the diverse fields relevant to green chemistry and sustainable design, such as chemistry, engineering, toxicology, public health, public policy, environmental science, and business. We achieve this primarily by hosting our annual Green Chemistry and Sustainable Design seminar series, which takes place during the fall semester. These seminars are geared towards considering sustainable chemical design from multiple perspectives, with the class being divided into four units. The first introduces concepts of basic molecular toxicology. The second brings in leading academics who discuss the future of sustainable design research in chemistry - green chemistry. We then consider the role that public policy can take in promoting more sustainable chemistry practices. The course concludes by considering sustainable approaches to chemical production being used in the chemical industry.

Our regular meetings outside of this seminar series are carried out in a non-traditional journal club format, which involves reading, presenting, and discussing current relevant topics in the above-mentioned fields. Additionally we organize informal meetings with UC Berkeley faculty, visit local companies, and attend relevant professional meetings.

In this way we hope to educate ourselves about, promote, and ideally contribute to this burgeoning interdisciplinary field that is green chemistry and sustainable design.

Project mission:

To promote the advancement of green chemistry and sustainable design principles through the creation of a venue for the discussion and dissemination of information among students and faculty from diverse fields such as chemistry, engineering, toxicology, public health, public policy, business, and environmental science.

Required resources:

1. Total project needs: $15,000

Our sponsors:

The Sustainable Products and Solutions Program
http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/responsiblebusiness/SPSProgram.htm

Project page URL:

• http://sites.google.com/site/berkeleygreenchemistry/