During our Christmas webinar, Professor Tom Welton presented how sustainable chemistry is the natural corollary of the concept of sustainable development as described in the UN Sustainable Development Goal 12.4 (SDG 12.4), and described the challenges that it presents.
Background
SDG 12.4 describes the target to achieve the environmentally sound management of chemicals and all wastes throughout their life cycle by 2020, in accordance with agreed international frameworks, and significantly reduce their release to air, water and soil in order to minimize their adverse impacts on human health and the environment.
During his talk, Professor Welton focussed particularly on plastics and showed that both consumers and producers need to act to achieve the environmentally sound management of chemicals and waste.
About the speaker
Professor Tom Welton OBE CChem FRSC, is the current President of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2020-2022), Former Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Professor of Sustainable Chemistry at Imperial College London. He works with ionic liquids in order to develop sustainable solvent technologies and has published over 100 papers, primarily on the structures and chemistry of ionic liquids and their solutes.
Professor Welton was introduced by Julian Braybrook, Government Chemist.
Listen to this webinar
The webinar took place on 17 December, 14:00 GMT. You can now listen to the recording.