The quadruple bottom line: The advantages of incorporating Green Chemistry into the undergraduate chemistry major

Abstract

When the author first became involved with the Green Chemistry movement, he noted that his colleagues in industry who were involved in one of the ACS Green Chemistry Institute® industrial roundtables emphasized the take-home message they described as the "triple bottom line."They noted that introducing Green Chemistry in industrial settings had economic, social, and environmental benefits. As someone who first went to school at age 5, and has been "going to school"most days for 65 years, it was easy for the author to see why introducing Green Chemistry into academics had similar beneficial effects within the context of economic, social and environmental domains at the college/university level. He was prepared to understand why faculty who had taught traditional courses often saw the advantage of incorporating Green Chemistry into the courses they teach. What was not as obvious is why students who were encountering chemistry for the first time were often equally passionate about the Green Chemistry movement. Recent attention has been paid, however, to a model that brings clarity to the hitherto vague term of "relevance"that might explain why integrating Green Chemistry into the undergraduate chemistry classroom can achieve a "quadruple bottom-line"for students because of potentially positive effects of adding a domain of "relevance"to the existing economic, social, and environmental domains.