Bonus: C&EN's Future of Chemistry Designing Out Pollution Panel

So I just want to make sure I correct the record on my affiliation because I'm currently with ACS staff.

I lead the Green Chemistry Institute.

My prior role was at GW.

And so just for context, I speak on behalf of our colleagues at the GCI.

So I think it's a great question.

And it made me think about what a revolution actually means, right? If you think about an inflection point in a trend, when you change direction, and apply that to where we are today, I would say we could be, but we need to adapt if we're actually going to start a revolution.

And so what I mean by that is if you look at different metrics, if you take the number of publications within our ACS sustainable chemistry portfolio, for example, that we've had over the last 10 years and other green chemistry journals, It looks like we do have an inflection point.

We actually have significantly increased the number of publications in the space, so researchers are actively working in the space.

But if you look at investment, that has definitely lagged behind the pace at which we're producing some of these innovations.

And translation is both taking a research idea to first commercial application and then scaling it up.

And on both fronts, we're lagging behind the rest of the world.

But especially on the translation phase, on the seed funding stage, we just did an investment report analysis at the GCI.

And if you're interested, the reports are available at the scientific advancement booth just over there at the ACS.

clearly shows that we have a huge gap to fill right now and that we have decreased the investment going into translation of science.

And so that's one of the aspects we're working to address at the GCI.

I do agree with Adelina.

I said I was going to agree with Adelina, but I actually do agree with Adelina.

But I think the words revolution and cusp are really strong for whatever is happening right now.

I think comparing my green chemistry journey at the beginning to what it is now.

I feel like we're in a better place.

We have a lot of resources in different languages.

We have a lot of people talking about green chemistry, summer schools, conferences.

But what's making me think about it, I think we still are talking about the problem about fixing what we messed up instead of like how we don't mess this up in the first place.

And I'm saying this because the UN has a body now, the Intergovernmental Science Policy Panel on Chemical Waste and Pollution.

which is a really long name, but it's basically a panel to give advice on governments and countries of how they should deal with chemicals and waste to avoid pollution.