Joel Tickner: Reimagining the Chemical Industry

Free and open to the pubic.

Joel Tickner is Professor of Public Health at UMass Lowell and a longtime leader of the world-famous UMass Lowell Toxics Use Reduction Institute.

While the chemical industry has significantly contributed to economic prosperity and our current quality of life, it is also a major contributor to climate change and plastics and chemical pollution that threaten planetary health. Rethinking the chemical industry will be challenging as the chemicals and materials we use today have been heavily subsidized, optimized and integrated into global supply chains over decades. The chemical industry is one of the least innovative and most difficult to change industrial sectors due to its long R&D cycles, high capital demands, and increasing financialization, and small changes to chemicals and chemical processes will be insufficient to address the industry’s problems. This presentation will provide an overview of the impacts of the industry, the need for and challenge of conversions, lessons from history, and opportunities to advance large scale change over the coming decades.