Every year as part of the Green Chemistry Commitment Program, Beyond Benign ask our GCC Signers to complete an Audit Questionnaire survey to report on the status of their green chemistry journeys at their institutions. This helps Beyond Benign to assess patterns of where and how green chemistry is included in higher education institutions and allows us to better serve our Signers through the GCC Program.
The Audit Questionnaire asks the Beyond Benign GCC Signers a range of questions about their departments and chemistry courses. For the 2022-2023 year, the responses came from 98 unique GCC Signing Institutions (representing 80% of eligible GCC Signers): 24% of respondents were from Minority Serving Institutions in the US, and 29% from international institutions. Across the board, small- and medium-sized GCC Signers represented the majority of responses.
This report shows the results from the 2022-2023 Audit Questionnaire and includes Green Chemistry Commitment stories from three GCC Signers. Read the full report to see how the GCC Signer community implements and practices green chemistry at their institutions, and see our key findings summarized below!
- Educators at GCC Signing Institutions implement green chemistry within existing courses, where concepts can be linked to longstanding curricular modules. The majority of these courses are introductory-level organic and general chemistry, but Signers also include green chemistry content in more specialized courses.
- GCC Signers often link green chemistry concepts to broader societal issues in their courses, such as health equity, social and environmental justice, and climate change. Educators also discuss the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in their courses, showing how green chemistry can be used as a tool to practice sustainability.
• The majority of GCC Signers integrate green chemistry into teaching laboratories, where Signers also report reducing lab waste as a result. GCC Signers report that they integrate green chemistry into organic, general, analytical, and inorganic chemistry labs most often.
• GCC Signers report collaborating with other departments and offices to include green chemistry content in courses. Respondents indicate it is most common to collaborate with Sustainability, Environmental Science, and Environmental Health & Safety departments and offices.
• The majority of GCC Signers have chemistry student groups in their departments, and conduct community outreach activities and work. In the 2022-2023 academic year, we awarded grants to student groups at eight GCC Signing Institutions to support their work!