Introducing RSC Sustainability

On behalf of my co-editors and all the team at RSC publishing, I would like to welcome you to the first issue of RSC Sustainability. This is a very exciting time for all of us who are engaged in creating a sustainable future. In March 2022, the United Nations Environment Assembly agreed to establish a solutions focussed science-policy panel for chemicals, waste and the prevention of pollution.¹ This panel will ensure that policymaking will be supported by the best available research. RSC Sustainability will provide a platform for much of this research.

There have been many attempts to define Sustainable Chemistry, often with an (over)emphasis on differentiating it from Green Chemistry. We at RSC Sustainability do not try to do this. Instead, we welcome all solutions-focused research in the chemical sciences dedicated to solving sustainability challenges and we leave it to you, the author, to explain how your research does this in our Sustainability Spotlight section. However, here is some guidance that can help you in deciding if RSC Sustainability is the right place for your research.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide an excellent framework for advancing sustainability. In his excellent paper The role of chemists and chemical engineers in a sustainable world,² David Cole-Hamilton showed how the chemical sciences and chemical scientists can contribute to all of the UN SDGs, not just the obviously technical ones. We encourage you to think in this expansive way and to not limit yourself to responsible consumption and production (SDG 12).

Another way in which we can view sustainability is through the lens of planetary boundaries.³ It is clear that the chemicals enterprise significantly contributes to the transgression of these. Research to provide technologies to counter this will be welcomed. It is equally clear that chemical sciences research can enable the reduction of environmental burdens across the whole range of human activities, so preventing the transgression of planetary boundaries. Again, we encourage you to think in this more expansive way.

In short, while we recognise that the linear production, use and disposal of chemicals has led to significant environmental harm, we believe that the chemical sciences are a force for good and necessary if a sustainable future is to be achieved. This is the research that we are particularly looking for.

As an inclusive and interdisciplinary journal, RSC Sustainability welcomes multidisciplinary contributions as well as those from the traditional chemical sciences. For example, it is vital that we measure and understand the impacts of the chemicals’ enterprise. The development and application of methods (e.g., techno-enviro-economics) to achieve this is important to us and we consider this very much in scope, so long as the subject of the analysis comes directly from the chemicals’ enterprise.

We also wish to foster discussion. Well evidenced opinions will be welcomed to build the respectful debates that are needed for us to continually reframe and refine the concept of sustainability moving into the future.

RSC Sustainability is a fully Gold Open Access chemical science journal. To ensure that there is no barrier to access, RSC Sustainability will waive its article processing charges (APCs) for all authors for the first two years. After that, we offer a range of options as we endeavour towards open access publishing being available to everyone. These include institutional-level agreements, individual author charges, and discounts and waivers. You can find out more about our support here.

All submitted manuscripts will be judged on their quality, interest and potential impact, to ensure we publish novel and significant contributions. To enable this, it has been my pleasure to assemble an amazing team of inaugural Associate Editors who will handle the peer review of submissions to the journal. I am delighted to introduce you to Francesca Kerton (Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8165-473X), Haichao Liu (Peking University, China, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9175-3371), Vincent Nyamori (University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8995-4593), Cristina Pozo-Gonzalo (Deakin University, Australia, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7890-6457) and Martin Prechtl (University of Lisbon, Portugal, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2155-8006). We welcome your future submissions to RSC Sustainability and are excited to discover more about the research you are conducting. You can find out more about the journal’s Editorial team here, and can submit your work to our Associate Editors online via our journal homepage rsc.li/RSCSus.

Best wishes to you all.

References

1. UNEP/EA.5/Res.8, https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/39944/SCIENCE-POLICYPANELTOCONTRIBUTEFURTHERTOTHESOUNDMANAGEMENTOFCHEMICALSANDWASTEANDTOPREVENTPOLLUTION.English.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.
2. D. Cole-Hamilton, Chem.–Eur. J., 2020, 26, 1894.
3. S. A. Matlin, S. E. Cornell, A. Krief, H. Hopf and G. Mehta, Chem. Sci., 2022, 13, 11710.

---