Like a covalent bond for sustainability centers: The linking role of green chemistry

CHED 12

Kira JM Matus, kira_matus@ksgphd.harvard.edu, Science, Environment, Development Group; Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 79 JFK St., Cambridge, MA 02138, Paul T Anastas, paul.anastas@yale.edu, Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering, Yale University, 225 Prospect St., New Haven, CT 06511, and William C Clark, william_clark@harvard.edu, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Kennedy School of Government, 79 JFK St., Cambridge, MA 02138.
Green chemistry provides an ideal platform for investigations of how innovation can be deployed by a wide variety of actors to further the broader goals of sustainable development. As part of Harvard's new Sustainability Science Program, members of the Harvard-Yale-ACS GCI Green Chemistry Project have benefited from collaboration and cross-pollination with sustainable development research from a broad spectrum of specific topic areas, ranging from conservation to public health. We have used these links to help design our research to more effectively capitalize on the ability of green chemistry to link science, economics, social development and the environment through a variety of actors. Our findings, such as the output of a recent workshop on “Green Chemistry: Integrating Science and Policy to Promote Innovation for Sustainable Prosperity,” provide an excellent example of how green chemistry can generate knowledge that is broadly applicable across academic sustainable development programs, and to sustainable development as a whole.
 

Green Chemistry as an Integral Component of Academic Sustainability Centers
8:30 AM-11:35 AM, Sunday, August 19, 2007 Seaport -- Plaza A, Oral

Division of Chemical Education

The 234th ACS National Meeting, Boston, MA, August 19-23, 2007