On the evening of Thursday 24 February 2022 RSC Belgium opened its 2022 programme with a webinar talk from RSC President Professor Tom Welton OBE on Green and Sustainable Chemistry.
In the presentation Tom discussed the development of the complimentary ideas of Green Chemistry and Sustainable Chemistry. He showed how regulation has led to innovation, how ideas of the scale of anthropogenic impacts on the environment have changed, and how Green Chemistry and Sustainable Chemistry relate to each other.
From a Belgian perspective it was interesting that Tom highlighted the Solvay process to produce Soda-Ash as one of the first examples of sustainable chemistry. In 1861, Belgian industrial chemist Ernest Solvay turned his attention to the expensive and highly polluting existing process to produce this precursor to soap. Solvay's process was more economical and with its recycling of ammonia, less polluting. The Solvay's constructed a plant in Couillet, today a suburb of Charleroi, and when on to build up an immense fortune based on chemistry.
Tom argued that sustainable chemistry is vital to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and that the future for chemistry lay in 'Safe and Sustainable by Design chemicals'.
Professor Tom Welton OBE FRSC CChem FCGI is Professor of Sustainable Chemistry at Imperial College London. He served as Head of Imperial’s Department of Chemistry from 2007 to 2014 and as Dean of the Faculty of Natural Science from 2015 to 2019. He is a Fellow and the current President of the Royal Society of Chemistry and previously connected with RSC Belgium during our 2021 AGM. Tom's research focuses on sustainable chemistry, with particular focus on ionic liquids and on solvent effects on chemical reactions.
You can relive the full webinar below or via the RSC Belgium YouTube Channel.
