Canadian Chemistry Conference and Exhibition is the premier conference for the Canadian Society for Chemistry. The mission of the chemistry conference is to be your forum; a venue where you can embrace learning, exchange knowledge, build innovative ideas, advance your career, and advance the chemistry profession.
Taking part in the Canadian Chemistry Conference and Exhibition is an opportunity to grow, learn, connect, and celebrate all that Canadian chemistry has to offer.
This is the first year of the inaugural Green Division and there will be tons of green chemistry-related symposia and workshops throughout the conference!! Several will be led by Beyond Benign team members! Read more about them here.
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Beyond Benign Talks
Green and Sustainable Practices in Chemistry Education (CE/GC)
Barb Morra, University of Toronto; Jonathon Moir, Beyond Benign; Nimrat Obhi, Beyond Benign; Andrew Dicks, University of Toronto; Olivia Mann-Delany, University of Toronto
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Chemistry education plays a critical role in training the next generation of chemists and engineers to consider the holistic impact of their work and actively explore ways to use more sustainable practices. This session aims to explore how educators can integrate green and sustainable chemistry practices into their classrooms, teaching laboratories, and programs. The session will be split into two parts: oral presentations followed up a workshop.
Part 1 (what are others doing with green chemistry in education?): This component will bring together instructors, teaching assistants, technical staff, and other educational stakeholders and provide them with a platform to showcase the creative ways they incorporate green and sustainable practices into their departments and curricula. Participants are encouraged to provide their unique perspective into the development, implementation, and learning outcomes of their pedagogical work, while considering how their efforts could be adopted by other instructors, particularly those with limited resources or experience with green and sustainable practices.
Part 2 (how can I add more green chemistry to my teaching?): The second part of the session will involve a workshop that provides an opportunity for educators to learn how to further adapt and implement more green and sustainable concepts into their own classrooms and laboratory using a guided inquiry approach. Workshop participants will work in small groups with facilitators to explore simple and effective approaches to updating their existing course/laboratory content and establish action plans toward implementation.
Bringing Green Chemistry into Your Lab – A Workshop for Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Fellows (GC)
Tuesday, June 17th from 8:00-11:40am in room 203 at the Rogers Center Ottawa
Jonathon Moir, Beyond Benign; Juliana Vidal, Beyond Benign; Nimrat Obhi, Beyond Benign; Barb Morra, University of Toronto; David Laviska, ACS GCI; Galen Yang, McGill University; Shauna Schechtel, Queen’s University
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Research laboratories are some of the most energy and resource intensive spaces on university and college campuses. They generate large amounts of both hazardous and non-hazardous waste (including solvents, reagents, solids, glassware, filter paper, drying agents, disposable gloves, and column waste) daily. However, this is often considered a necessary evil and an acceptable price to pay to make innovative discoveries for the betterment of humanity. Fortunately, this does not need to be the case; research in higher education can be done in a way that allows for discovery and innovation to take place without generating large amounts of waste and subjecting students, postdoctoral fellows and researchers to hazardous compounds and laboratory conditions. Importantly, there are many safer alternative reagents, solvents, and laboratory materials that can be used to reduce risk of exposure. This approach, known as green chemistry, utilizes a set of twelve practical principles for research and bench chemists to help reduce the use and generation of hazardous substances for humans and the environment.
This workshop introduces green chemistry and how its associated twelve principles can be applied at the graduate and postdoctoral level in research laboratories across universities and colleges in Canada. The workshop will explore examples of how green chemistry has been successfully introduced into research labs in different subdisciplines of chemistry and will provide an opportunity for participants to work in small groups through guided discussions to identify ways of improving their own laboratory practices and research to shift towards greener and more sustainable practices.
Register Here.
