Summary
This paper outlines the many benefits of utilizing green chemistry activities through K–12 and community outreach, including creating a safe environment for student engagement, creating habits-of-mind for college students, and engaging K–12 students in safer, greener chemistry experiments and activities. Authors present three examples as case studies for including green chemistry within different outreach settings and to highlight green, safe activities for student outreach.
The first example concerns an outreach community. Through a College Student Fellows program, students are trained to be ambassadors to K–12 communities. K–12 students participate in hands-on, safe green chemistry activities (e.g. a lab of creating a dye-sensitized solar cell) guided by college student mentors to increase student interest in STEM subjects through sustainability while inspiring students to consider careers in the STEM fields. The program consists of year-long communication, modeling of effective outreach activities, mentoring from experienced, and engaging youth through an outreach community using hands-on activities that often employ household materials or safe, low-hazard chemicals. The “Green Glue” biomimicry activity, in which students are presented with a set of cards with images that have a technology or product that is to be paired with an animal or organism that they believe was the inspiration for the technology or product, is used. Students make connections and understand that nature is a useful tool for generating ideas that can be translated into greener technologies. Students then create their own “product” (glue) and go through a discussion of adhesives, inspired by the blue mussel that adheres to rocks quite effectively in an aqueous environment (the ocean). The activity uses household substances such as milk, vinegar, and baking soda. The glue is then tested according to green chemistry criteria (performance, safety, and cost), and it is compared to other adhesives that have known hazards associated with them.
The second example is a student-run Chemistry Club attempting to develop new outreach activities. Each activity was chosen based on a set of criteria that included engaging youth through real-world contexst, using safe, nonhazardous materials, and minimizing the generation of waste and hazards. The benign nature of the materials used in the hands-on activities means that all participants regardless of age can work with the materials with minimal safety precautions. One of the club’s favorites is an activity, where polystyrene materials are compared with a compostable packaging material made from renewable feedstocks. Younger audiences like playing with the plant-based material, whereas older audiences can enjoy the hands-on component while also engaging in a meaningful discussion of product lifecycles and their applications to green chemistry. The material can be composted or disposed in household trash, and special precautions are not necessary for transport.
The third example is a Chemistry Outreach course that places 15+ undergraduate students in schools, and after-school programs in the local area. For students with an undergraduate chemistry background, the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry serve as an excellent framework to teach topics of green chemistry and chemical safety. For public outreach or younger K–12 audiences, students rely on a simpler three-part framework: feedstocks, processes, and products. For feedstocks, students are asked where our raw materials come from: renewable or depleting sources? For processes, students are asked questions like the following: How much energy is being used? Can reactions be more efficient with a reusable catalyst? Can less dangerous solvents and auxiliaries be used? For products, students are asked about the potential hazards and lifetime of desired products, byproducts, and waste. To address the point about renewable feedstocks and bring a sense of local sourcing to outreach audiences, a team of undergraduate students designed an activity to generate large-scale bioplastic pieces from chitin and chitosan. Chitin is the second-most earth-abundant biopolymer, found in the insect cuticle, nacre, and the shells of lobsters and crabs. This activity highlights materials sourcing but it also touches on safety by minimizing hazards, as the only reagents required are nonhazardous, food-grade materials (chitin and vinegar), in contrast with polymerization activities that require petrochemical solvents or hazardous monomers.
Relevance for Complex Systems Knowledge
The paper deals with systems thinking and sustainable development.
According to the authors, green chemistry is grounded on a set of design principles that encourage chemists to take a systems-thinking approach when designing and executing a process, reaction, or even an outreach activity. Through this approach, students learn about chemistry via a holistic manner, connecting the practice of chemistry to other disciplines and considering their actions as part of a system rather than as an individual part (or individual experiment).
The next generation of chemists is prepared to design safer and more sustainable chemicals, materials, and products as a response to the continuing sustainability challenges faced in our planet. Green chemistry principles and practices equip chemists with the knowledge and skills to take sustainable action using a systems-thinking lens and create good habits-of-mind toward safe laboratory practices as they move forward through their academic and professional careers. Encouraging students to engage in green chemistry activities through university and college outreach programs empowers them to bring green and sustainable chemistry efforts into their academic and professional endeavors.
