The Circular Economy of Polymers & Recycling Technologies: Inventing a Sustainable Future in Partnership with Nature

Dr. John C. Warner, Senior Vice President, Chemistry, Distinguished Research Fellow, Zymergen Corporation

A joint event of the Golden Gate Polymer Forum and ACS Silicon Valley Section

Thursday, June 23, 2022, 6:00 PM.  Free/$5 donation.  Registration required by Wednesday, June 22, 2022, at 1:00 PM.  When registering, please indicate your primary affiliations:  GGPF, ACS, or both.  View and share flyer.

Abstract: 

The natural world is a beautiful and intricate system of intertwined and overlapping materials ecosystems that co-emerged over 3.8 billion years in the presence of one another. The vast majority of industrial products and processes have developed relatively independent of each other, not symbiotically as adjacent processes. This pattern of disconnection is not sustainable over the long run. The pathway to create technological ecosystems will require the inventive application of biomimicry and green chemistry – the molecular level mechanistic underpinnings of sustainability. This presentation will describe mechanisms in nature that we should consider when designing the human-built world. Illustrative examples of practical real world deployments will be presented.

Bio:

John is a senior vice president of chemistry and distinguished research fellow at the Zymergen Corporation, where they design and create commercial technologies inspired from nature consistent with the principles of green chemistry.

With over 300 patents, he has invented solutions for dozens of multinational corporations, and his inventions have served as the basis for several new companies. John is a cofounder of the field of green chemistry, coauthoring the defining text and articulating 12 principles of green chemistry. He has been involved with foundational work in the fields of noncovalent derivatization, polymer photochemistry, metal oxide semiconductors, and synthetic organic chemistry. John has received many prestigious international awards, including: named by ICI Services as one of the most influential people impacting the global chemical industries; elected a Fellow of the American Chemical Society; named one of “25 Visionaries Changing the World” by Utne Reader; and in 2017 the German Ministry of Economic Affairs and The Technical University of Berlin announced “The John Warner Center for Green Chemistry Start-Ups” in his honor. He serves as Distinguished Professor of Green Chemistry at Monash University in Australia and as the Global Chair for the Center for Sustainable and Circular Technologies at the University of Bath.

John received his BS in Chemistry from UMass Boston, and his PhD in Chemistry from Princeton University. After working at the Polaroid Corporation for nearly a decade, he served as tenured full professor at UMass Boston and Lowell in Chemistry and Plastics Engineering. In 2007, along with Jim Babcock he founded the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry, a research organization developing green chemistry technologies.  With Amy Cannon, he founded Beyond Benign, a non-profit dedicated to sustainability and green chemistry education. He now advises several international organizations and in 2020 began working with the Zymergen Corporation.