Circular Chemistry

Our popular Promoting Chemistry Applied to World Needs webinar series, hosted in collaboration with IUPAC CHEMRAWN, is back for its second year! Each webinar features experts who connect chemistry to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and IUPAC’s Top 10 Emerging Technologies.

Join us on April 9th at 10 a.m. EDT for the first session of 2026! In this session, Professor Chris Slootweg of the University of Amsterdam will introduce circular chemistry as a framework for redesigning chemical production around reuse, recovery, and the conservation of critical raw materials. Through examples such as phosphate recycling, safer and more sustainable phosphate flame retardants, and liquid organic hydrogen carriers for large-scale hydrogen transport, Chris will demonstrate how chemistry can serve as a practical tool for addressing waste, resource depletion, and the demands of the energy transition.

Register for the series and meet us online on April 9th. You’ll receive the Zoom link and access to the full series upon registration.

While there is a lot of discussion about WHY we need sustainability (Climate Change, Forever Chemicals, Human Toxicity, Ecosystem Degradation…) and WHAT we should do to measure and characterize sustainability (LCA’s, UN SDGs, Circular Economy, Safe and Sustainable by Design, Planetary Boundaries…) It is especially important to discuss HOW we should make these changes. This is the domain of Green Chemistry.

When a researcher contemplates a new experiment, when an inventor imagines a new product, he or she makes several small and large decisions that will have profound impact on the ultimate sustainability of what they do. If they do not have the skills and tools to understand the sustainability implications at the mechanistic molecular level (green chemistry), it is unlikely that they will successfully achieve sustainability objectives. This presentation will discuss how green chemistry can be integrated into the earliest stages of research and development to ensure maximum sustainability. Real world, commercialized examples will be used to illustrate key points.

In this webinar, you will learn:

• The Why’s and the What’s of sustainability are important, but solutions come from How (green chemistry).
• It is not enough to simply WANT to create sustainable technologies, there are certain critical skills required, as defined by the 12 principles of green chemistry.
• Not only does green chemistry have moral and ethical implications, but it is also a pathway to accelerate R&D and lower costs. (If you truly understand green chemistry).
• Several commercialize products illustrate the reality of green chemistry’s successful implementation in the real world.

Speaker:

John C. Warner

CEO & CTO, Technology Greenhouse, LLC

John Warner is one of the founders of the field of green chemistry. He wrote the book that provides the definition and 12 principles of green chemistry with Paul Anastas in 1998.He received his B.Sc. from UMASS Boston and his PhD from Princeton University.As an industrial chemist, he has over 350 patents and has worked with hundreds of companies worldwide and serves on the sustainability advisory boards of several multinational companies. He received the Perkin Medal in 2014 from The Society of Industrial Chemistry.As an educator, he was a tenured full professor of chemistry and a tenured full professor of plastics engineering at the University of Massachusetts where he started the world’s first PhD program in Green Chemistry. He has over 120 publications in synthetic methodologies, noncovalent derivatization, polymer photochemistry and metal oxide semiconductors. In 2004 he received the Presidential Award for excellence in science mentoring (PAESMEM) from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and President George W Bush and in 2022 he received the August Wilhelm von Hofmann Medal from the German Chemical Society. In 2007 he cofounded Beyond Benign, a nonprofit green chemistry education organization with Dr. Amy Cannon.As an entrepreneur, John’s inventions have led to the founding of many companies in the fields of photovoltaics, neurochemistry, construction materials, water harvesting and cosmetics. In 2016 he received the Lemelson Invention Ambassadorship from the Lemelson Foundation and the American Association for the Advancement of the Sciences (AAAS).