• Question: Do you make your work 100% sustainable?

    Asked by anon-196630 to Sebastian, Paddy, Lee, Jennifer, Fiona, Eleanor on 11 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Sebastian Cosgrove

      Sebastian Cosgrove answered on 11 Mar 2019:

      The chemistry I am researching is trying to make our lab practices more sustainable. This is by doing work where the catalysts I use (enzymes) are biodegradable, and come from natural sources that are not polluting to the environment. Also, using enzymes means they run at room temperature most of the time, so they require a lot less energy then other methods, leading to more sustainable practice.
      Unfortunately, a lot of work we do with enzymes must be completely destroyed by incineration after doing it to ensure that none of the genetically modified biological material can get into the environment. So a lot of the plastic we use is single use, and is not recycled. Work on biodegradable plastics is therefore essential to make sure that we can decontaminate and compost our waste in the biological sciences, rather than burn a lot of it!

    • Photo: Fiona Scott

      Fiona Scott answered on 12 Mar 2019:

      Achieving 100% sustainability in chemistry can be difficult because every reaction produces some waste. We use a lot of glassware to avoid disposable plastic – which wouldn’t be ideal anyway when we heat reactions to high temperatures. I also carry out my reactions at quite small scale (1 g of product would be considered a HUGE amount) so I’m not wasting chemicals.
      There is a whole branch of chemistry called green chemistry who seek to make the field more sustainable by developing reuseable catalysts and other technologies and techniques that require less waste.

    • Photo: Jennifer Harris

      Jennifer Harris answered on 14 Mar 2019:

      My work place have moved to an online way of working, meaning we’ve become more sustainable as an organisation.

Comments