Academic honoured for contributions to green chemistry
Posted on 2 June 2011
Professor James Clark, who has led the green chemistry movement in Europe for the last 12 years, has received the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Environment Prize.
I am delighted to receive this award, especially as it is from the organisation with which I started the Green Chemistry journal and network over 10 years ago
Professor James Clark
Professor Clark views waste as future feedstock and is interested in making chemicals, fuels and materials from chemical, food and other wastes, solving both the problems of increasing waste and decreasing resources.
The award recognises Professor Clark’s “fundamental and applied research contributions to green chemistry, clean technology and sustainability”, and “his educational, publishing and public awareness contributions in the green chemistry area”.
Professor Clark is Director of the Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence at the University of York, which he established in 2006. The world’s leading centre of collaborative industry-academic research in green and sustainable chemistry, it has over 70 graduate researchers working on projects such as natural solvents, microwave chemistry and renewable materials.
He is also President of the Green Chemistry Network which he established in 1998, and the founder of the world’s leading scientific journal in the area, “Green Chemistry”.
The RSC Environment Prize rewards outstanding contributions to chemical sciences and consists of a £5,000 prize and a medal, which Professor Clark will receive at the RSC Awards Presentation evening on 11 November in Birmingham. He will also deliver lectures at four universities on behalf of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
The prize money will help Professor Clark make green chemistry a truly international movement, by exchanging best practice between countries and helping regions to see the potential value in their wastes.
Professor Clark, from the University’s Department of Chemistry, said: “I am delighted to receive this award, especially as it is from the organisation with which I started the Green Chemistry journal and network over 10 years ago.
“The green chemistry movement has made great progress in that period especially through gaining credibility as being academically acceptable and industrially essential. I look forward to the next 10 years building on these foundations and on the enormous corporate drivers for improving sustainability – chemistry really can and should be at the heart of future sustainable development.”
Professor Clark has acted as a consultant to many companies and organisations including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the European Union, Proctor and Gamble, Exxon and Infineum. He sits on the Ellen MacArthur Foundation advisory board, the EU Standards Committee on bio-based products and the UK Government’s Chemical Stakeholder Forum.
Among his previous awards are the Royal Society of Chemistry John Jeyes medal, the Society of Chemical Industry Environment medal, the Royal Society of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce and EU Better Environment Awards, and the Prince of Wales Award for Innovation.
Notes to editors:
- For more information on the University of York’s Department of Chemistry visit www.york.ac.uk/chemistry
- For more information on the Royal Society of Chemistry visit www.rsc.org
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