Graphic shows two hands extending in front of a person wearing goggles and gloves, holding a vessel partially filled with a colorful liquid. Behind the person is a green cloud, along with some white lines.
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Madeline Monroe/C&EN/Shutterstock
Chemistry and allied fields, along with the rest of society, benefit if chemists and colleagues advance the principles and practice of green chemistry. That’s why we all need to be more intentional and coordinated with our actions, and to be responsible stewards of our resources. Inspired by this moment and its opportunity, C&EN is launching a regular column about green chemistry, written by a group of contributors, with this as the first installment.
Portrait of Peter Licence. He’s wearing glasses, a button-up shirt, and a jacket.
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Courtesy of Peter Licence
On Friday, May 23, I was fortunate to witness the public launch of a declaration of intent, the Stockholm Declaration on Chemistry for the Future, which offers a shared approach to catalyze change. The event, held in one of the temples of science—the Nobel Prize Museum in the heart of Stockholm’s Gamla Stan neighborhood—provided a defining opportunity for us all to pause, reflect, and make choices about how we can help shape a more sustainable, resilient future by harnessing creativity, responsibility, and above all else, purposeful chemistry.
The new declaration, which was cowritten by an inspiring consortium of thinkers, innovators, and global citizens, calls out five golden threads that, when woven together, define a logical framework in which we, as a global community of scientists and engineers, can work together to shift the dial and reduce the environmental impacts associated with the molecules, materials, and energy humanity needs. The inaugural signees of this declaration met formally as part of a 4-day summit on the topic of fundamental advances in chemistry for sustainability, which involved 40 delegates drawn from all aspects of the worldwide chemistry enterprise and also included 25 observers, stakeholders, and decision-makers. The summit showcased outstanding advances in both technology and business models and confirmed that innovative discovery is vibrant.
But the event also revealed the simple observation that timely adoption of outstanding science and engineering into the marketplace is problematic. Additionally, our deliberate pace, combined with traditional approaches and feedstock systems that are diminishing in supply yet underpinned by complexity, extreme interconnectivity, and inertia, results in a slow adoption of new discoveries.
The juxtaposition of these two observations is a clear indication of why we now need a clarion call to action: the Stockholm Declaration on Chemistry for the Future. By calling on each and every one of us and the organizations and institutions we represent, the declaration simply asks that we work together to rebuild chemistry for the future by providing responsible educational frameworks, appropriate societal conditions, and effective manufacturing infrastructure.
The keynote event at the Nobel Prize Museum included speeches from luminaries of our global community and contributions from an increasingly engaged and astute audience. The panel considered many questions that encompassed technology, economy, and our delicate ecology, as well as the significance of climate change and impacts on biodiversity, which are both indicators of stresses that we as a society have placed on our planet. Nobel laureate Ben Feringa (chemistry, 2016) spoke passionately from the floor about this moment in time and the urgent need for change; he shared a vision to “reimagine chemistry and to rebuild a circular world, where every atom and molecule delivers value, impact, and beneficial good.”
I agree. We need to stand up and own our future, and to do that we must come together to drive change. In the halls of the Nobel Prize Museum, we were surrounded by iconic personal possessions donated by Nobel laureates of all disciplines, items that clearly brought joy to some of history’s most prominent thinkers and innovators. They were displayed alongside scientific devices and intricate detectors that provided first measurements, and classical ball-and-stick models of DNA, which we now know help us to codify all animate life. It was clear to all of us in Stockholm that each prize celebrated in Gamla Stan, and each treasured possession of the Nobel laureates, possesses a common link, a shared inheritance. They are all made viable, possible, and achievable by harnessing atoms, molecules, and materials!
The amazing things that our industry creates not only enable and maintain life but also inspire us to innovate and achieve greatness. The time has come to make every atom count. Please take a moment to reflect on the new Stockholm declaration and help us create the chemistry of the future. It’s up to us to make chemistry more sustainable, and we really have no time to waste.
Peter Licence is head of school and director of the GSK Carbon Neutral Laboratories for Sustainable Chemistry at the University of Nottingham.
Views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of C&EN or the American Chemical Society.
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