Professor Lars Öhrström, Chalmers and Javier Garcia Martinez, President of IUPAC in front of the periodic table in the Magneli hall.

In the morning we welcomed the IUPAC president, Professor Javier Garcia Martinez. He presented his research and several examples of circular economy, including the design of a new generation of plastics that allow disassembly into their monomers and their reconstruction. The talk was followed by a very active moderated discussion led by Lars Öhrström from Chalmers.

The morning session was held in collaboration with Lars Öhrström (Chalmers, Gothenburg), Gunnar Svensson (Stockholm University) and Francisco Vilaplana (KTH, ACES) and organised by Svenska Kemisamfundet in cooperation with IUPAC.

The father of Green Chemistry

In the afternoon, we were very happy to welcome the father of Green Chemistry, Yale professor Paul Anastas. Due to a recent covid infection, he was unable to attend in person and delivered the talk over Zoom. 

Prof Anastas gave an inspiring talk about why he is so optimistic about what the future looks like. “Humanity is good at solving problems” he said, and continued to stress that keys to a sustainable future lie in doing the right things right. He talked about the importance of defining the problem in the correct way in order to enable for the right solutions. One example is that instead of defining the problem as “we need to provide clean water”, the problem description should rather be “we need to provide clean water without using and generating toxic chemicals”. This would steer us towards the right solutions that are renewable and not depleting, healthful and not toxic. Prof Anastas ended his talk by saying “it doesn’t cost a penny to change your mind”!

This talk was also followed by a once again very active moderated discussion led by professor Berit Olofsson, the chairman of the board for SUCCeSS.
Prof. Paul Anastas is the Director of the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale University, USA, and is world renowned as one of the founders of Green Chemistry. He held the King Carl XVI Gustaf Professorship in Environmental Science in 2019/2020, hosted by the Department of Materials and Environmental Chemistry at Stockholm University

 He is also a senior advisor to SUCCeSS.

The book mentioned in the talk - Periodic Table of the Elements of Green and Sustainable Chemistry is available for download here