Abstract:

Chemical sciences have deeply improved the life of billions of people over the last two hundred years, providing basic human needs and delivering our most complex services. Statistics from the American Chemical Society (ACS) showed that the value of chemicals produced on a global scale in 2009 was about 3.700 billion US dollars. However, at the same time that they deliver desired products, chemical processes have been energy-intensive, have used non-renewable feedstock and hazardous materials and have generated wastes that could harm human health and the environment.

World Commission on Environment and Development Report (1987) defined sustainable development as "development which meets the needs of current generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". The concept supported four basic dimensions: environmental, cultural, social and economical.

This means that the challenge for “chemical makers” is to develop new processes, products and services, to achieve the economic and environmental benefits required by the actual society, using new approaches which set out to reduce the materials and energy intensity of chemical processes and products, minimise or eliminate the dispersion of harmful chemicals in the environment, maximise the use of renewable resources and extend the durability and recyclability of products, in a way which increase, at the same time, the industrial competitiveness.

The four sustainability basic dimensions named above were included as priory objectives in the UNESCO Sustainable Development Educational Program 2005-2014 and Rectors Conference of Spanish Universities (CRUE) guidelines about sustainability introduction in the university curriculum, talk about the need of university students to be instructed according to criteria and values related to sustainability.

Some of the general and transversal learning competences associated with the Organic Chemistry discipline in the Chemical Engineering Degree at Technical University of Cartagena are the capacity to analyze the social and environmental impact of the technical solutions and the use of ethical and sustainable criteria in decisions.

To contribute to the reaching of those competences, the study of the new concept of the metrics of the organic chemical processes, according to the criteria established by the sustainable chemistry philosophy, has been included in that organic chemistry discipline. The description of the different concepts related to that new metrics and the pedagogical experiences carried out in the teaching-learning activities used in the classroom are described in this paper.

Keywords:

Integrating sustainability, organic chemical processes.