A summer workshop has provided a pair of graduate students with a deeper understanding of the benefits of green chemistry, an understanding they are now hoping to share with fellow scientists.

Hassan Kalviri and Samantha Payne are PhD candidates in the Department of Chemistry. The duo were awarded positions at the 2010 American Chemical Society (ACS) Summer school on Green Chemistry and Sustainable Energy held in July in Golden, Colorado.

The week-long annual workshop gives graduate students and postdoctoral scholars the opportunity to explore scientific solutions to global challenges, such as global warming, waste reduction and using sustainable energy. Every year, leading academic and industrial researchers in green chemistry and sustainable energy are invited to present the latest research and discoveries in those areas to the next generation of scientists and engineers.

Mr. Kalviri says the knowledge gained during the experience is worth sharing, not only with fellow scientists, but the general public as well.

“Everything you do in life has an impact on the environment,” he explained. “If you think about every can, bottle or piece of paper you throw away, you begin to realize that we need to be aware of the choices we are making.

“As chemists we have an important role because we are using materials that are sometimes toxic. But it doesn’t matter if you work in a green chemistry lab or not, every chemist should think about the way they are doing things. There is always a better way. As scientists we need to be more responsible than ordinary people, but it’s also something people can think about in their everyday lives.”

In addition to learning new and greener techniques for the lab, the pair learned a lot about what industries are doing to make their products more sustainable.

“When you begin to look at packaging and ingredients in products it gets you thinking in a different way,” said Mrs. Payne. “Normally, when you go to a store you might pick a product because it’s on sale. You don’t stop to think what impact it has on the environment and what goes into making it.”

As future employees of companies who will be choosing or being forced to become greener, the pair say that chemists and chemical engineers need to begin thinking about ways to help this shift that will not only help the environment and meet public demand, but that will also benefit a company’s bottom line.

“We can do all the work we want to be green, but if our discoveries and techniques don’t get communicated to industry and don’t get used, we’re just wasting our time,” she said. “A major theme of the workshop is that green chemistry doesn’t have to cost more, and in a lot of cases it can save companies money. It’s actually beneficial to industry to be green and not just from a public relations view but a bottom line view. We need to make being sustainable something that is appealing to industry so they want to take it up.”