The 7^th International IUPAC Conference on Green Chemistry

The 7^th International IUPAC Conference on Green Chemistry took place from October 2^nd to October 5^th, 2017 in Moscow, being hosted by Mendeleyev University of Chemical Technology of Russia. One hundred fifty-eight participants from Belgium, Brazil, China, Estonia, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, South African Republic came to Moscow to share ideas of enabling the humanity with the essential tools of green chemistry to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

Within the ICGC-7 the satellite events have been organized: The School for Young Chemists with the theme “Assessment of Planetary Boundaries for Chemical Pollution”, and two Memorial Symposia dedicated to the outstanding Russian scientists and educators-academician Valentin Koptyug (IUPAC President in 1988–1989 biennium) and Professor Gennady Yagodin (rector of Mendeleev University and the last minister for people’s education of the USSR). They contributed a lot to the introduction of the ideas of sustainable development and green chemistry in the USSR, and then in Russia, as well as all over the world.

The Conference was endorsed by IUPAC and was sponsored by diamond sponsor Russian Science Foundation, platinum sponsors PhosAgro and Sinopec, gold sponsor the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), silver sponsor the Government of Moscow.

The unique topic of the conference was the development of chemistry within planetary boundaries. In 2009, a ‘planetary boundaries’ concept was suggested by Rockstrom et al. [1]. One of the nine planetary boundaries (chemical pollution) is directly related to the releases of human-made chemicals into the environment. Estimation of the limits of this technogenic impact is one of systemic technological challenges that is to be jointly solved by chemists with diverse specializations.

ICGC-7 kicked off on Monday, the 2^nd of October at the Big Assembly Hall of Dmitry Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia with Prof. Tarasova’s welcome message followed by the plenary video-lecture of Professor Martyn Poliakoff, the University of Nottingham, Great Britain “Towards Greener Photochemistry”.

The work of the ICGC-7 was organized in the following subject sections:

• Section 1 “Green Industrial Processes”.

• Section 2 “Sustainable Development Goals and Green Chemistry”.

• Section 3 “Nature-like Technologies”.

• Section 4 “Green Materials, Ionic Liquids, Supercritical Fluids”.

In total, 79 orals (including eight plenary and 11 keynote) and 95 poster reports have been submitted.

The open round table “Capacity-Building: Education and Technical Cooperation”, co-chaired by Vaniya Zuin, Professor of the Federal University San Carlo, Brazil and Liliana Mammino, Honorary Professor of the University Venda (South Africa), members of the IUPAC Interdivisional Committee in Green Chemistry for Sustainable Development, provided attendees with the opportunity to engage in in-depth discussion on key issues of chemistry education. It was an interesting opportunity for comparison and dialogue as many young researchers, students and representatives of international organizations gave their opinion on the best way to teach, to learn and to share knowledge.

The Closing Ceremony was held at Alexander Borodin Memorial Hall of D. Mendeleev University, famous for its’ outstanding acoustics. The ceremony saw the reports of the sections’ chairs, who gave detailed expositions of the session discussions and presentations.

Poster prizes were also awarded during the closing ceremony and were based on the selections of a group of judges, expert in diverse areas of Green Chemistry, who evaluated the posters and questioned the presenters in the poster session held on Monday at Novotel Hotel situated nearby Mendeleev University. The winners of the poster prize certificates were: Mayya Putintseva for the poster “Novel Mixed Matrix Membranes for Energy and Resource-saving Organic Solvents Purification” (St. Petersburg University, Russia, hippopotable@mail.ru); Thokozani Xaba for the poster “Synthesis of silver sulfide nanoparticle through homogeneous precipitation route and the preparation of the Ag2S-chitosan nanocomposites for the removal of iron (II) ion from wastewater” (Vaal University of Technology, South African Republic, thokozanix@vut.ac.za); Gözde Özzeybek for the poster “Determination of nickel at trace levels in blood and urine samples by slotted quartz tube-flame atomic absorption spectrometry after dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction” (Yıldız Technical University, Turkey, gozdeozzeybek@gmail.com).

Special Certificates of the “Green Chemistry” journal were awarded to Dr. Takayuki Katagiri for the presentation “Visible light-induced reduction properties of diphenylviologen with water-soluble Zn porphyrin for carbon-carbon formation from CO₂ with malic enzyme” (Osaka City University, Japan, katagiri@sci.osaka-cu.ac.jp) and to Dr. Kyung-Youl Baek for the presentation “Controlled Synthesis of UiO-66 toward High-performance Detoxification” (Korea Institute of Science and Technology, Republic of South Korea, baek@kist.re.kr).

The Closing Ceremony was followed by the vocal and instrumental concert “Evenings in Russia are so Ravishing…” in which the soloists of the Bolshoi theatre shone. All the attendees were unanimous in their feeling that “chemistry is the music of life”.