Chemists4Future

The Fridays for Future and the Scientists for Future movements were the models for Chemists for Future. Their aim is to build a network of chemists to embed sustainability in the study of chemistry.

In chemistry, we are interested in how a target substance is created from a starting substance, typically in a series of chemical reactions. Our entire materials economy, energy supply, and way of life works in the same way: We manage and live in a linear way without thinking about what comes after, say Sebastian Seiffert, University of Mainz, Daniel Bothe and Istemi Kuzu, University of Marburg, all Germany. They met in the fall of 2020 on the sidelines of a Public Climate School online meeting and founded Chemists for Future, modeled on Fridays for Future, Students for Future, and Scientists for Future.

Chemists for Future aims to build a network composed of all stakeholders from chemistry—students, Ph.D. students, Professors, and experts from industry—to make a difference together. The network is not intended to duplicate existing initiatives that strive for sustainability in chemistry, such as the GDCh Sustainable Chemistry Division, but to complement them.

To anchor sustainability in university chemistry education, an online lecture series, freely accessible to all via YouTube, is to be established. There are already contributions and contributors such as Markus Antonietti, who studies chemical CO₂ sinks, among other things, at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam, Germany, Michael Meier, who is dedicated to polymers from renewable raw materials at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany, and Klaus Kümmerer, who teaches sustainable chemistry at the University of Lüneburg, Germany. Initial results can be found at bit.ly/c4f-youtube.

The initiative wants to achieve (via academic committees) that the online lectures can be evaluated with ECTS credits and be included in master’s programs. The authors invite anyone with ideas or who would like to collaborate to join Chemists for Future—to make sustainability in chemistry a movement (email: [email protected]).