Beyond Benign: The Green Chemistry Commitment

To have any chance of eliminating the plethora of devastating neurotoxic and carcinogenic chemicals that characterize modern life and that are doing enormous damage to human health and global ecosystems, we must radically shift the paradigms of the current and future scientists responsible for molecule and material design. John Warner, one of the two seminal founders, along with Paul Anastas, of the field of Green Chemistry, and Amy Cannon have been working assiduously to transform how chemistry is taught and practiced through their non-profit, Beyond Benign, since 1999. Their most recent project is the Green Chemistry Commitment, an initiative to get hundreds of college and university chemistry departments to commit to integrating Green Chemistry into their academic curricula. They are working with academic institutions, chemistry and materials science professors, students, government officials, and a wide range of corporations of all sizes. They have long been teaching workshops all over the country and the world to build the intellectual underpinnings of a new way of teaching chemistry. They are now seeking to get all 700 university chemistry departments in the U.S. (and then beyond) to make Green Chemistry a fundamental, integral part of any credible scientific curriculum.