Russian Federation
Green chemistry is the chemists’ contribution to sustainable development — a contribution whose fundamental role derives from the fundamental role of chemistry for development, embracing nearly all forms of industry and nearly all products used in everyday life. The ‘development’ concept entails a myriad of components related to various disciplines; pursuing sustainable development requires careful attention to all the aspects of each component. Green chemistry interfaces with all the areas of chemistry: organic chemistry, because most substances used in the chemical industry are organic; chemical engineering, because of the need to design new production processes; computational chemistry, because its role in the design of new substances with desired properties is apt for the design of new environmentally benign substances; and many others. Their inherently interdisciplinary nature needs to be reflected in the education for sustainable development and in green chemistry education at all levels of instruction, for learners to mature a comprehensive and realistic vision. The paper highlights the importance of such interdisciplinary outlooks and considers a number of illustrative examples.
chemistry education; community outreach; education for sustainable development; green chemistry education; interdisciplinarity.
1. Introduction
Green chemistry [1–3] is the chemists’ contribution to sustainable development. It is a contribution based on chemical knowledge. Its fundamental role derives from the fundamental role of chemistry for development in general, as chemistry embraces nearly all the forms of industry and nearly all the products used in everyday life. The ‘development’ concept is a complex concept, entailing a myriad of features and components. Although many people have an intuitive perception of what it means (or what they mean by this term), it is not easy to define parameters to evaluate, understand or perceive its level and extent in a given context or at a given stage. Development has an inherent process-character, as it involves changes. There is development if things (care for human needs, availability of goods and services, social aspects etc.) change in a direction that can be considered towards improvement (change for the better). Because of the variety of aspects it entails, development requires the contribution of many disciplines. Development is ‘sustainable’ if it does not jeopardise the quality of life of the future generations, and their possibility of further development, while it takes care of
the needs of the current generation [4]. The sustainability concept was born from the growing awareness that development as it had been conceived and pursued in the earlier stages of the industrial revolution, and up to few decades ago, was creating effects that would jeopardise the wellbeing of the future generations — and, in several instances, also of the current one — through environmental pollution, and would jeopardise future possibilities of further development through resources depletion. For many decades, industrial production and development pattern followed behaviours that would have been justifiable only if the Earth planet were an infinite reservoir capable of incorporating any amount of any substance released into it, or any type of anthropogenic changes (e. g., deforestation) without experiencing significant changes. In reality, the planet is limited and even the enormous masses of the oceans, or the enormous gas system of the atmosphere, cannot behave as unlimited reservoirs. Although some scientists had realised the risks of the earlier development patterns since the late decades of the XIX century, the awareness of the problems stemming from them started growing only in the last decades of the XX century, when undeniable worrying phenomena became objects of intensive research and the information about their existence and impact entered public knowledge.
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