Getting Chemistry Out of Its Unsustainable Rut

The Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings are all about showcasing science at its best, but at its worst, science is a massive contributor to climate change, air pollution and energy overconsumption, said Foteini Trigka, a PhD student at the University of Groningen. Trigka was one of the Young Scientists delivering a short talk themed on sustainability at the Lindau Meeting.

Throughout the week, there were regular reminders that chemistry can potentially get us out of this mess. One of the most popular examples of this is lithium ion batteries. While these batteries already power today’s portable electronics, they can also accelerate our journey to becoming a fossil fuel-free world. But there are hurdles to cross before this can happen. For now, there exist serious issues with the batteries’ recyclability, end-of-life, and also the mining of lithium and cobalt.

“My real goal is to work with folks to make lithium batteries as sustainable as lead acid batteries, over 90% of which are recyclable,” said Sir M. Stanley Whittingham, who won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2019 for the development of these batteries. He was one of the panellists at a discussion titled From Linear to Circular: Chemistry’s Pathway to Sustainability. “We are embarking on a big programme to take out all the bad chemicals, such as N-Methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP), which takes up nearly one-third of all the power needed to make a lithium battery,” he shared.

A Handy Guidebook

Another giant contributor to the problem is plastics, and laboratories – especially life sciences and chemistry  are a big part of this. Steven Chu, who won a Nobel Prize in Physics in  1997 and went on to serve as the United States of America’s Secretary of Energy, noted that recycling plastic is extremely tricky and energy intensive. Until then, scientists are coming up with ways to manage the waste. Michael Lerch, a Lindau Alumnus from 2017 who now works at the University of Groningen, has co-created a guidebook for labs that offers numerous practical suggestions to enable them to become more sustainable. There is a comprehensive section detailing how plastic waste can be managed. The guidebook also addresses the carbon footprint of computational research, an aspect that is much less talked about.

Also on the panel was Sajal Arwish, a Young Scientist from University of Münster, who offered a reality check with her point that for many graduate students, academic and funding pressures limit their bandwidth to think about sustainability. Perhaps it’s not reasonable to put the onus completely on them.

Yet, it is students and postdoctoral researchers who are taking the lead in initiatives like “Green Lab”, where laboratories undertake measures to induce a culture shift in everyday practices. “But we need both bottom-up and top-down approaches,” stressed Lerch. “You have to take a scientific approach, document what you are doing, and calculate how much you are saving. This helps to gather support from the administration.”

Young Scientists Lead the Way

Ben L. Feringa, who won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2016 conveyed his sincere appreciation of the zeal with which younger researchers were leading the way to more sustainable chemistry. And there could have been no better demonstration of this than the Next Gen Science Session themed on sustainability. From Kwangwook Ko’s novel approach to deconstruct and recycle commodity plastics to Sayad Doobary-Vobora’s persuasive case for mechanochemistry as a solution to the solvent sustainability problem, the session saw a fascinating diversity of ongoing research by Young Scientists around the world.

Bofan Li from Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore, shared how her lab developed a high performance recyclable membrane that could potentially transform the presently booming but unsustainable membrane industry.

Taking baby steps to a recyclable plastic world are researchers such as Ziyu Cen from University of Chinese Academy of Science, who spoke about the potential of layered zeolite materials in enabling the upcycling of plastic wastes.

Other speakers included Damon de Clercq from UNSW Sydney, who is seeking to find a more efficient material for solar cells that go into solar panels, and Carla Stork from Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion who proposed a method that can make isotopic labeling more sustainable by avoiding the use of transition and rare metals, as well as toxic or expensive reagents.

Everything Is Possible

The final two presentations were by Aswin Gopakumar from Institut Català d’Investigació Química (ICIQ), who offered a glimpse into his soon-to-be patented process of using flash-combusted electrodes for sustainable photo and electrocatalysis, and Sidonie Lavieville from the University of Montpellier, who uses a new class of resistant and recyclable materials called covalent adaptable networks, that can potentially lead to sustainable construction and reduce waste.  

According to Feringa, science can solve our big environmental problems. “We looked at a flying pigeon and built a Boeing 747; we built solar panels that are 10 times more efficient than green plants; I am convinced that in 30 or 40 years we can take carbon-dioxide from the air and do CO₂ conversion or artificial photosynthesis. Everything is possible.”

After all, he added, “Evolution did not power airplanes.”