Interdisciplinarity as a key to green chemistry education and education for sustainable development

Abstract

Green chemistry is the chemists’ contribution to sustainable development — a contribution whose fundamental role derives from the fundamental role of chemistry for development, embracing nearly all forms of industry and nearly all products used in everyday life. The ‘development’ concept entails a myriad of components related to various disciplines; pursuing sustainable development requires careful attention to all the aspects of each component. Green chemistry interfaces with all the areas of chemistry: organic chemistry, because most substances used in the chemical industry are organic; chemical engineering, because of the need to design new production processes; computational chemistry, because its role in the design of new substances with desired properties is apt for the design of new environmentally benign substances; and many others. Their inherently interdisciplinary nature needs to be reflected in the education for sustainable development and in green chemistry education at all levels of instruction, for learners to mature a comprehensive and realistic vision. The paper highlights the importance of such interdisciplinary outlooks and considers a number of illustrative examples.