Reflection

Looking back on what I've written and trying to decide what is next

Source

When I started this newsletter I wasn’t sure on a lot of things, but at heart I am an experimentalist so I really only started with the hypothesis that more voices of professional chemists could be useful to the general public.

I eventually settled on this rhythm of writing deeper or more focused posts on Tuesdays and writing about a specific theme on Fridays that was more focused on the current events in the chemical industry. I would say that I’ve grown as writer over the past few months, but the editorial decisions of what to write about and how to write about it have been more challenging than I initially thought.

Since I’ve already cycled through my themes over the past few weeks and we are still in the month of April I decided to list of some of my archives here for people that haven’t been around since the end of 2020.

Solving the Plastic Waste Problems Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5

In this five part series I outlined and tried to give some explanations on how we as a society might solve the plastic waste problem that been plaguing us for decades. I don’t think the issue is as simple as just banning plastics and not using them. I think the way out of this mess is by doing good science and pairing it with good business. I even put out an attempt at writing a policy position on a proposal by some environmental groups.

This theme is somewhat continious because I then did a deeper dive into if chemical recycling of plastics is a legitimate practice with examinging Eastman’s investment into methanolysis of polyethylene terephalate.

How To Get A Job In The Chemical Industry As A Chemist

This was my first foray into writing about the career aspects of chemistry. When I was a younger person this would have been something that I think I would have gotten a lot of value from and I hope it brings some more value to the professional chemists out there. I then decided to follow this theme of careers up and I’ve published two interviews from professionals in the space:

1. I interviewed two high level R&D people and a senior level marketing person at BPS agriculture about how they got to where they are in their careers.

2. I interviewed my former lab neighbor Angela Mohanty about her path on how she went from organic chemist to becoming a teacher

I attended a Zoom cocktail mixer about science and technolgoy policy fellowships and I wrote about my own experiences in who I thought have been my mentors.

Explaining Polymers

Another theme I attempted to expand on was writing about how we are reliant on a lot of polymers we never even think about. While plastics take up a lot of volume in our lives we are reliant on what are known as specialty polymers too. The first foray of mine into this was GE’s giant wind turbines being made with epoxy resins.

I followed this up with trying to explain the concept of platform chemicals and phenol and how phenol is used to make a wide variety of things including epoxy resins.

I wrote about Avantium attempting to commercialize polyethylene furanoate—an alternative to polyethylene terephthalate.

And most recently I’ve written about Kraton’s virus killing polymer BiaXam.

Bigger Complex Problems

There are some really big problems out there where chemistry is a player in the cacophony of issues plaguing society.

I think a lot of it tends to stem from externalizing the costs of our modern lives. Modern life has led to an explosion in population growth, specialization of jobs, and complex supply chains.

Emissions and our modern goods have led to discussions on carbon capture, but is it a realistic solution to our problems? Maybe.

How are we going to feed enough people in the coming decades if phosphorous supplies are dwindling? BPS Agriculture is attempting to help solve these issues.

How can we make chemistry cool again and how can we make manufacturing something that is clean and virtuous?

So what should I write about next? Let me know by replying to this email.

Talk to you next week,

Tony