First technical conference - Bonding with sustainable chemistry

When the world is in trouble, chemistry comes to its rescue, Carolyn Bertozzi.

On 22nd November, the Competence Centres hosted the first ZDHC technical conference, "Bonding with Sustainable Chemistry”. The audience was glued to their seats until the very end with the engaging content.

Highlights of the conference were the keynote speeches from Dr John Warner and Dr Prasad Modak.

Dr Warner emphasised the focus on final product evaluation rather than only the ingredients that go into a product and that green chemistry adoption needs more education at the university level.

Dr Modak showed how circularity is not just recycling but also keeping products in longer use and regenerating natural resources. He emphasised embedding life cycle thinking in circularity and sustainability.

As well as the keynote speakers, there were a further 11 speakers all with thought-provoking topics.

• ‍Prasad Pant: Set the context by defining the need for sustainable chemistry and its key attributes.‍
• Dr Catherine Rudisill: Tools that can be used by the chemical industry to evaluate substances and avoid regrettable substitutions.‍
• Euros Jones: The challenges for the replacement of ADCA in footwear and how collaboration can help to resolve these challenges.‍
• Dr N. Sekar: How electron transfer correlation can be done to predict the toxicity of dyes using quantum mechanical descriptors.‍
• Dr Rashmi Naidu: The legal landscape of EU and Indian chemical regulations.‍
• Dr Rahul Nabar: PFAS regulations.‍
• Dr Pierfrancesco Fois: Compliance requirements for colourants.‍
• Dr Dileep Wakankar: Building a product stewardship strategy.‍
• Dr Achala Danait: Exploring pathways to sustainable chemistry.‍
• Dr S. Reshamwala: Bio and bio- based surfactants.‍
• Vikram Dhumal: Creating value from waste through chemical recovery.

In addition to engaging presentations the conference hosted two exciting discussion panels.

Session one: A panel discussion on sustainability solutions from certifications standards followed in which we had Dr Daniel Waterkamp (bluesign), Dr Devender Singh (Eurofins MTS) and John Murphy (Oekotex) as panellists.

Session two: a panel discussion on sustainable chemistry solutions from the chemical industry in which we had Karthikeyan K S(Proklean), Tejas Shukla (Rudolf Atul) and Dr Pankaj Desai (Colourtex) presenting their perspectives.

The conference served as a platform to inspire the textile & chemical industry to embrace green chemistry principles. It also brought home the message that business without environmental responsibility is not acceptable and that the time to act is NOW!!

If you attended the conference, we would appreciate it if you could spare a few minutes to complete a short survey to help us improve future conferences.