Green Chemistry in Greece: The Green Chemistry Community Gathers Together in Greece to Advance the 2030 Agenda.

Javier García Martínez

doi:10.1515/ci-2023-0125

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Green Chemistry in Greece

The Green Chemistry Community Gathers Together in Greece to Advance the 2030 Agenda.

Javier García Martínez

Published/Copyright: January 19, 2023

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From the journal Chemistry International Volume 45 Issue 1

Group picture of the participants of the 9th International Conference on Green Chemistry, taken at the Zappeion Megaron, Athens, where the event was held.

A few months after the launch of the International Year of Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development (IYBSSD), several hundred chemists joined in Athens for the 9th IUPAC International Conference on Green Chemistry 5-9 September 2022. This meeting was co-organized by the Association of Greek Chemists and the IUPAC interdivisional Committee on Green Chemistry for Sustainable Development (ICGCSD) with the objective of bringing together all relevant stakeholders from academia, research, industry, NGOs, policymakers and society, to exchange and disseminate knowledge and ideas that promote the concept of green chemistry, sustainable development, and circular economy.

During his opening remarks, IUPAC President, Javier García-Martínez said “As we meet here in Athens, a series of consecutive heat waves continue to cause record-breaking temperatures. This summer, many countries have suffered devastating fires that have destroyed more than three million hectares and affected the lives of tens of thousands of people. Along with climate-related trends, such as droughts, this situation is threatening the nutrition security and the political stability of many countries. That is why this meeting is so important to identify and accelerate the solutions we so urgently need. The technologies that will be presented and discussed this week are instrumental to overcome the challenges we are facing”.

During this meeting, Pietro Tundo, founding chair of ICGCSD was presented with the lifetime achievement award by the Association of Greek Chemists and Vivek Polshettiwar, received the 2022 IUPAC-CHEMRAWN VII Prize for Green Chemistry in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the development of novel nanomaterials for catalysis, solar energy harvesting, and CO₂ capture-conversion to tackle climate change. (https://iupac.org/vivek-polshettiwar-is-awarded-the-2022-iupac-chemrawn-vii/)

Vivek Polshettiwar received the 2022 IUPAC-CHEMRAWN VII Prize for Green Chemistry, from Prof. Pietro Tundo (left), founding chair of the IUPAC ICGCSD.

Paul T. Anastas, Director of Yale University’s Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering delivered the plenary talk “Green Chemistry, . . . to solve most of the world’s problems” in which he summarized some of his main contributions to the field of green chemistry over the last decades and comment on the challenges we face to make a significant difference in the way the chemistry enterprise relates with the Planet.

This 9th ICGC is part of a series of international congresses on green chemistry and sustainable development that started in Germany (2006) and is co-organized by the IUPAC ICGCSD. Its current chair, Buxing Han gave a short presentation on the goals, activities, and projects of this IUPAC interdivisional committee and his vision on the future of green chemistry for sustainable development.

With the participation of representatives from 74 countries, the IUPAC International Conference on Green Chemistry is the most global meeting on this topic that included sessions on green solvents, sustainable catalytic and synthetic processes, biomass conversion to fuels, chemicals and polymers, CO₂ utilization, alternative fuels and green energy, benign low-energy chemical processes, nanomaterials for energy and the environment, pollution prevention and remediation, computational chemistry, green chemistry metrics and environmental assessment, sustainable industrial processes, waste recycle and valorization, and circular (bio)economy.

The conference program consisted of 9 Plenary and 17 Keynote Lectures, 200 Oral and 300 Poster presentations. Five Special Issues will be dedicated to the 9th ICGC, in the journals Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC/De Gruyter), Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering (ACS), Green Chemistry (RSC), Sustainable Chemistry and Pharmacy (Elsevier), and Catalysis Today (Elsevier), featuring selected high-quality papers presented at the conference.

Paul Anastas presenting the Periodic Table of the Elements of Green and Sustainable Chemistry during his plenary lecture. (see book of the same title, ISBN 978-1-7345463-0-9, published at https://greenchemistry.yale.edu)

https://greeniupac2022.org/

Online erschienen: 2023-01-19

Erschienen im Druck: 2023-01-01

©2023 IUPAC & De Gruyter. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. For more information, please visit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

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https://doi.org/10.1515/ci-2023-0125