Major changes are needed to ensure that chemistry is sustainable and able to deliver on its potential of helping to solve some of the biggest challenges to society, according to leading scientists.
New forms of chemistry are needed because the traditional approaches from the past two centuries have caused much unintentional harm to people and the planet, even as they have led to major breakthroughs and great wealth.
The Stockholm Declaration on Chemistry for the Future, signed by leading scientists, sets out the elements needed to ensure that scientific breakthroughs have a positive impact on society.
“Our chemical processes must evolve from reliance on substances that are toxic, depleting, rare, persistent, and explosive/flammable to substances that are healthful, renewable, distributed, plentiful, unreactive, and degradable,” the declaration said.
“For the future, all parts of our chemical enterprise must act now to recognize that the risk to people, prosperity, and the planet from inaction and preservation of the status quo is far greater than any risks that may be involved with transitioning to a ‘new chemistry for sustainability’ model that brings benefit to people, prosperity, and the planet,” it added.
It also states that teachers, students and working chemists should be trained to integrate health and sustainability in their work, that chemical data and information must be fully available and accessible to all, and that government policies on the chemical enterprise must be aligned with sustainability.
The declaration has been signed by researchers including Paul Anastas, professor of chemistry at Yale University and Ben Feringa, Nobel laureate in chemistry 2016 and professor at University of Groningen.
“This is a call for action. What is being highlighted is not just what hasn’t been done but more importantly what can and must be done now,” Anastas told C&I.
“One of the great challenges facing us is we have all these amazing chemistry solutions, just amazing inventions and innovations, discoveries that have been generated in recent years. But they’re not going to scale for the benefit of society,” he said.
The declaration calls for new chemical processes, new business models, new investment models, changes to the educational system and government policies and incentives.
“The imperatives are to recognise that we can transform the world one more time, just like we did 100 years ago, and realise a future with all of the benefits that chemistry can bring,” Anastas said.
“The difference between what we are capable of doing and what we are actually doing at scale is perhaps larger than ever before,” he said, arguing that too much of the chemistry that is implemented is older chemistry that can be far superseded today.
“If chemistry is indeed the central science which many of use believe that it is, then it does touch everything about our food, our medicines our energy our transportation our building materials, our textiles – everything.
“So, when we say that the revolution of chemistry 100-plus years ago enabled all other innovations that transformed our life that’s the same situation we are in now. Not only are we talking just about implementing the innovations of chemistry today but that will enable and empower new materials, new systems that we can barely imagine,” he said.
Professor Peter Licence, head of the School of Chemistry at the University of Nottingham who has also signed the declaration said: "By embracing the vision laid out in the Stockholm declaration, we can harness chemistry’s full potential as catalyst for a fairer, more sustainable, and resilient world.
“The imperatives we have outlined can only be realised by the collective action of those who recognise the essential role of chemistry in creating a society that is conducive to all life, both now, and into the future."
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