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When it comes to driving change and challenging historically accepted procedures and mindsets, students and young people often have a critical role to play. This holds true in the realm of green chemistry and sustainability, where student led groups and grassroots safety movements have had significant impacts on the protocols and standards upheld by university chemistry departments. Student led organizations such as the Green Chemistry Initiative at the University of Toronto and the Green Chemistry Initiative at the University of Connecticut have successfully increased awareness of green chemistry practices, pushed for specific changes within their respective chemistry departments, and created a culture of continuous improvement towards sustainability. At the same time, students in these groups serve as leaders in their community, bringing undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff together and fostering collaboration towards their goals.
We spoke with leaders from both of these Green Chemistry Initiative groups to learn about the history, goals, and impact of their organizations. We hope that their stories will demonstrate the importance of organizations such as these and inspire university students to create their own Green Chemistry Initiatives.
University of Connecticut Green Chemistry Initiative:
- Anietie Williams, President, Ph.D. Candidate
- Chelsea Schroeder, Vice President, Ph.D. Candidate
- Emmanual Adjei, Seminar Coordination Team, Ph.D. Student
The University of Connecticut GCI was started in August of 2024 and is led by a group of 16 students from various departments who are dedicated to promoting green chemistry and sustainability in research and education. The group’s initiatives include seminars & webinars, outreach to undergraduate chemistry classes, subcommittees focused on specific focus areas, and it also convenes additional student members.
University of Toronto Green Chemistry Initiative:
- Samihat Rahman, Co-chair, Ph.D. Candidate
- Karolina Rabeda, Co-chair, Ph.D. Student
The University of Toronto GCI was started in September of 2012 and is led by a group of about 20 executive members. The group aims to provide green chemistry resources in order to promote sustainability in chemistry research and education, and some of its initiatives include a seminar series, annual symposium, and trivia competition.
Can you tell me about how your organization got started?
Chelsea: From my perspective, the way UConn’s GCI got started is Anietie knocked on the door of my lab and said, “I want to start a green chemistry initiative. Will you be the vice president?” And I said, “Yes, sign me up. Let's do it.”
We asked around to get enough people for the four roles required to be an organization at our university and then went through the university’s process of becoming an organization, which included training for student leaders. Once we did that, we hosted our first event. We asked the department, “We are trying to start this organization. Can you give us a hundred dollars to buy ice cream?” We bought ice cream from the UConn Dairy Bar, and we just had this informative session about what is green chemistry because there was an astonishing number of people at UConn who did not even know what green chemistry was or the fact that it existed at all. At the event, we had this QR code for people for people to sign up to say, “I'm interested in helping out.” Once we had that list of people who came to our event, we reached out to them to start fleshing out our executive board. And it's just snowballed from there.
Samihat: University of Toronto’s GCI started with all members of the same lab, Geoffrey Ozin’s lab, who is an inorganic chemist. Since they were inorganic chemists, they were familiar with the green chemistry principles, and they were passionate about starting an organization to promote green chemistry. One of the first things that they did was just ask the department for some money. They mentioned they got around $200, so it's very similar to the ice cream story. The department gave that $200 and told them to get people coffee, get students interested, and if that happened, they’d fund the GCI more. From then on, they started adding more events. There was a seminar series, and they had a journal club, then they started the symposium, which is now one of our yearly traditions.
What strategies are helpful for increasing visibility and gaining traction when your group was new?
Chelsea: Hosting a department sponsored event right at the beginning of the semester was important. There was huge attendance for us, and that really increased our visibility and got a lot more people interested and involved. Seminars are also a great and easy way to get people involved and increase awareness.
Anietie: I've also had conversations with Samihat, who I met at the Green Chemistry Summer School. It was helpful to get an understanding of how University of Toronto’s GCI operates. And that’s also one of the sources of the fabulous ideas we’ve been having.
Why is it important to have student-led groups in the field of green chemistry in particular?
Anietie: From my perspective, professors want to be successful in their research. They have this defined research idea and research projects they've been working on, so it becomes very difficult for them to want to tweak things. They want to be sure that their research is successful, and they have things they’re aiming to accomplish, and sometimes those do not align with green chemistry. As students, we are often more diverse, and if you can organize as many students as possible, then you can have different people who are championing different conversations in different labs, you can now begin to influence green chemistry within the department.
Chelsea: People don’t want to change if they don’t have to. We've run into a lot of professors who are resistant to including green chemistry because that's not how they learned chemistry. How we're taught chemistry hasn't changed for hundreds of years, but we're at the point now where green chemistry is the future of chemistry. We're going to have to adopt it at some point, so we're really trying to push the faculty at UConn to recognize that.
Karolina: I found that when you reframe how you talk about green chemistry, you might appeal to the right reason. So, if money is an issue, I'll always explain to them, if you use less power, you have lower electricity bills. If you have a more efficient reaction, you don’t have to buy as many materials. Rather than telling them that it's a green chemistry principle, you appeal to them through the financial side even though it's hitting the green chemistry principles as well. Reframing your arguments about the green chemistry aspects for your audience is super important to help them understand how useful it is.
What are some other challenges your initiative has faced, and what strategies have been successful to address them?
Karolina: COVID-19 had a significant effect on our GCI, and we went from an organization that was decently populated to less than five people. Something that helped was having an end-of-the-year report from each student leader that summarized what your role was, what you accomplished, suggestions you might have for someone else taking on that role. It helps the incoming leadership adapt to what's been changing.
Samihat: With our senior leadership, we make it a really big role. For our co-chairs or seminar leaders, we make sure that they have their successor lined up in advance so they can shadow and learn how to take on that role.
What are some of the impacts or effects of your organization on the community or your university?
Chelsea: It might be a little early to determine how much of an impact we're having on our community, but something that has surprised me has been the involvement of our undergrads. I organized an event where I went to all of the organic chemistry lab classes when they were doing the only green chemistry even adjacent lab that they have here at UConn, which is alcohol oxidation using bleach. I went to their lecture classes before they had that lab and explained to them that this lab that you're going to do just also happens to be related to green chemistry. I think I hit about 300 students by going to those lectures, and the feedback we've gotten from that was this was the first time those sophomore or junior undergrads had even heard the term green chemistry at all. Our impact right now is first time exposure for a lot of people at UConn.
Anietie: One of the biggest impacts I noticed was when John Warner came for a seminar, I saw a lot of inspiration. That was where we got a lot of people who were motivated and excited to join the GCI.
Karolina: The executive leaders we have in our group are very passionate. We’re really trying to focus to get the green chemistry message to all chemists at different levels. Whatever discipline they go into, we want to make sure they’re definitely aware of green chemistry and the principles. Our GCI has also helped put in an acetone recycler in our chemistry stores a couple of years ago.
Samihat: We're lucky that we have a teaching faculty, professor Andy Dicks, who's been very heavily involved in green chemistry since the start of his career. He's really pushed green chemistry in the teaching side. As of a few years ago, there was a joint effort by professor Dicks and the GCI to create a green chemistry concentration that undergraduates can do in their degree. That's been a big accomplishment, but in general, I think almost every graduate student here has heard of green chemistry because of our group.