Sustainable chemistry challenges from a developing country perspective: Education, plastic pollution, and beyond

Making current chemistry practice sustainable is a relatively new issue in developing countries. The current curricula for chemists' and engineers' education barely consider environmental sustainability as its own component. This make it difficult to train human resources to have consciousness about the implications of synthetizing chemicals with multiple applications while also considering the life cycle of the chemical and its final fate in the environment. For example, during the last Latin American Federation of Chemical Associations meeting in 2016, not a single paper was devoted to sustainable chemistry issues. This paucity is a clear demonstration that educational curricula must progress to include sustainability in order to raise the concern of a new generation of professionals. This issue is also linked to sustainable development goals (SDGs) and that of sustainable production and consumption. One element that may help raise concern of sustainable chemistry may be concentrated in problems that raise public interest, one being plastic pollution initially raised as a marine litter issue, but which is a far more complex problem, since plastic polymers contain a great variety of chemicals that complicate recycling and final disposal, but which brings the opportunity to address the issue of chemicals in the environment through some upstream solutions (i.e., before the plastics can become an environmental concern). Without doubt, we need strong education in chemical synthesis and green chemistry principles to address molecular design and minimize impacts ab initio, in addition to a pursuit of material innovation. It is also necessary to think of customers' needs, where chemistry meets economy and social sciences, and which can barely be observed in current chemistry and engineering curricula in developing countries. Possible solutions might be generated from an interdisciplinary, problem-oriented perspective.