2023-24 Highlights from the Green Chemistry Initiative at UofT!

Contributed by Samihat Rahman, Ph.D. student and Co-Chair of the Green Chemistry Initiative at the University of Toronto.

Hello GCS Community!

I wanted to highlight some of the key events organized by the Green Chemistry Initiative (GCI) at the University of Toronto over the past year. We're a completely student-run GCI and we strive to advocate for and implement green chemistry at the university.

These are only some of the bigger initiatives we did last year, check out our website for more:

• We have a bi-weekly seminar series featuring invited speakers! All talk abstracts from last year's seminars are uploaded on our website.
• Last year we collaborated with Beyond Benign to host a workshop on making your research greener. The workshop includes practical tools anyone can use to make their research more sustainable! We also had a career panel featuring Dr. John Warner, Areej Nitowski, and Dr. Juliana Vidal! The full workshop and panel are available on our YouTube channel. (Our Youtube also has a great series on the twelve principles that was created by the founding members of the GCI!)
• One of our key initiatives is the waste management campaign. This consists of "Shut the Sash!" where GCI members go around the labs and award stickers to chemists who properly shut their fumehood sash when it's not in use! Our energy reduction committee also collects statistics on the department's yearly waste accumulation and energy usage.
• Our biggest event is the annual GCI Symposium. The 2024 symposium was co-hosted with Green Chemistry McGill for the first time! We had over 140 attendees and 14 invited speakers across industry, academia, and research. Look out for this year's symposium!

Follow us on our website, social media, and blog for updates on upcoming events—we have exciting things planned and look forward to collaborating with more GCIs in the future!