Systems Thinking: Adopting an Emergy Perspective as a Tool for Teaching Green Chemistry

Abstract

Green chemistry is the name of a need, that of encompassing chemistry research and the environmental, safety, health, and societal issues that have been creating unprecedent concerns at a global level. Green chemistry is a modern concept, as the label that represents the entry of chemical sciences in the realm of integrated sustainability studies. To do green chemistry research, we need approaches that take into account the use and availability of resources, as well as the direct or indirect impacts of the applications of new chemistry. Systems thinking is a powerful mindset for addressing the complexity of the interconnections between the traditional and the new aspects of chemistry research. Systems thinking can provide suitable and appropriate conceptual tools for the research, requiring that chemistry teaching provides the necessary familiarity with systemic concepts and practices. In this paper, an emergy (spelled with “m”) perspective is presented as suitable to address the green chemistry didactics toward a systemic conceptual framework, which is now more and more mandatory.