“Our 2025 symposium lineup shows that green chemistry is relevant in all areas of chemistry,” said graduate student Karolina Rabeda.
As coordinators of the Green Chemistry Initiative's tenth symposium, Rabeda, Samihat Rahman, and Peter Liu have recently unveiled the list of speakers coming to the city this spring. They hope these experts will compellingly advocate for this perspective at the event, scheduled for May 7-9 at the University of Toronto.
The 2025 symposium theme is Thinking Green(er) in Daily Life. Dr. John Warner, from the Warner Babcock Institute and Beyond Benign, will be the event’s opening speaker.
“Dr. Warner is the co-developer of 12 Principles of Green Chemistry,” said Samihat Rahman, who previously heard Warner speak at the 2024 ACS Green Chemistry Summer School in Vermont.
The coordinators expect Warner and their other speakers will make eloquent arguments against a societal tendency to look away from the potential impacts of chemical manufacturing processes. Though chemists may be among those most likely to understand the potential impacts of a given manufacturing process, Rahman says, historically, this knowledge has not always translated into practicing chemistry with green priorities. “People sometimes chose to focus on end results, rather than impacts or byproducts.”
“Discovery is important and sometimes we need harsh or less green production processes,” Rabeda agreed, “But if it is an important or significant compound, more sustainable methods should be developed in order to make it useful in society.”
The Symposium originated at U of T in 2012 and has run annually, except for a two-year pandemic hiatus. Since returning, it has grown into a joint project organized by GCI, Green Chemistry McGill (GCM), and the ACS Chapter at Queen’s University in Kingston (Q-ACS).
A key message of the current version is that green chemistry is efficient--and therefore profitable. Attendees will hear from L.-C. Campeau from Merck & Company, Dr. Tim Clark from Impact Chemistry, Professors Phillip Jessop and Kevin De France from Queen’s University, Professor Joelle Pelletier from Université de Montréal, Professor Bruce Arndtsen of McGill University, and Dr. Edmond Lam from ACS Green Chemistry Institute. (Dr. Lam is a UofT alum!).
“We are very fortunate to have people who are so respected and admired in chemistry to promote the significance of practicing green chemistry,” said Rabeda.
“We are the only event of this scale run by students in North America,” added Rahman, who also served as chair of the 2024 conference. She said it is exciting to witness its growth. “This year we have participants from students in Kingston and Quebec, and our ambition is to reach as many future chemists as possible.”
What the GCI organizers would like to see, in the long run, is a culture change whereby green chemistry becomes embedded as a primary concern at every stage of the research and deployment of chemicals.
Researchers have the potential to kick off a circular economy when they synthesize a molecule and discover its applications. When a need is established for the substance, process chemists are brought in to create systems for scaling up production and building greener processes for producing a given molecule.
To ensure funding and other kinds of approvals, process chemists have to address the efficiency of a proposed method of manufacture. In recent years, according to Rabeda and Rahman, requirements for environmental impact assessments in this space have also been on the rise. Increasingly, process chemists have to address how much waste is produced when synthesizing a given chemical or compound, or how much electricity goes into its production.
The two emphasized that environmental justice components are also important considerations in contemporary chemistry. Has production of the compound had health impacts, historically? Who has been affected? Samhan offered one example: “Chloroprene, which is part of tire manufacturing, creates cancerous outputs for employees and their families in regions where there are factories.”
As the organizers continue to gear up, they are currently encouraging symposium attendees to submit a poster abstract for a poster networking session, taking place on the evening of May 8th. Presenters are invited to look for opportunities to talk about Green Chemistry within the context of their research. (Abstract submissions can be submitted here until April 16th, 2025 at 11:59 pm EDT).
The symposium will also feature another highlight: a workshop by Philip Jessop and the Department of Chemistry's Kylie Luska, Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream. This workshop, along with the conference, offer an opportunity for attendees to earn up to 6.5 PD hours.
“We plan on covering the topics of materials- and impact-based metrics. The former are those that evaluate the amount of chemicals that are used in a chemical process. These metrics simply look at the quantities of chemicals used and not any impacts that they may have if they are released into the environment,” said Luska.
Impact-based metrics, he explained, look to evaluate the influence that the release of chemicals can have on humans and the environment including such items as global warming potential, human toxicity, aquatic ecotoxicity, and chemical persistence. “As such, impact-based metrics provide a more holistic approach to assessing the sustainability of chemical processes.”
“At the workshop we will present the basis behind materials- and impact-based metrics,” explained Luska, “and then have graduate students work on a case study in small groups to use these metrics to decide which method to process a chemical is the most sustainable.”
Whether it is working to decrease pharmaceutical waste, reducing power use in production sites at labs—including U of T's Chemistry facilities—or finding ways to identify and reduce the economic and social impacts of human chemical use, Green Chemistry Initiative and the upcoming symposium promise to take this vital conversation about promoting sustainability in chemistry research and education to the next level.
We are very fortunate to have people who are so respected and admired in chemistry to promote the significance of practicing green chemistry. —Karolina Rabeda, GCI