In this episode of Five Lifes to Fifty, we sit down with Jenny Liu, Head of Sustainability for the Advanced Performance Materials business at Chemours. Jenny takes us inside the world of chemistry — not just as a science, but as a powerful enabler of sustainability, innovation, and everyday life. From electric vehicles to semiconductors and the hydrogen economy, we explore how advanced materials are quietly shaping the future, and how Chemours is leading the charge through bold sustainability goals and data-driven decision-making.

In this Episode

Shelley: I'm wondering if you could just tell us how you see it and tell us more about the advanced performance materials category that you work in.

[00:59] Jenny: Thanks so much, Shelley. It's a great question. You know, Chemours is a global company and we provide trusted chemistry to make lives better and to, you know, really help communities thrive.

[01:10] And I don't think that many people realize the role that chemistry plays in their everyday lives, our everyday lives. You know, more than 95% of all manufactured goods are touched by the business of chemistry.

[01:24] So really, chemistry is essential for everything that we depend on in modern society. And I believe it's really essential for decarbonization as well. If you think about the computers that we're speaking into, your cell phones that you use for stay connected to the world, but all the semiconductors and advanced electronics that underlies that and enables that,

[01:45] right? And then as again, as we head towards green economy, electric vehicles, batteries, hydrogen economy, you know, ultimately and you know, all the electrolyzers and fuel cells, so we make the membranes and the materials that underpins all of that and really brings that to life.

[02:02] A little bit more about Chemours. You know, innovation really is at our core, so we're focused on how we can make our products and applications, how they can really enable sustainability, not only in terms of our own operations, but but also for our customers.

[02:16] So we tend to have very high-performance materials that our customers use because they need them in the application, whether it's, you know, chemical resistant, temperature resistant for the electrical properties, inert.

[02:26] So they'll use them to solve their problems, which are usually very high-performance application needs. But then also those are enabling things to make society better and to reduce environmental footprint.

[02:38] So we have three businesses. We have a thermal solutions and refrigerant business so that's refrigerants, heat pumps, et cetera. We have our titanium dioxide pigments business. And so that's coatings and performance, coatings and materials and paints.

[02:53] And then we have the advanced performance materials business for which I lead sustainability. You know, some of the brands you might know, you know, Teflon, Krytox, Nafion, these are high performance materials that go into critical medical applications, electronics, we talked about some of the consumer advanced electronics, clean energy, electric vehicle batteries. The hydrogen economy is a big growth area. And then a lot of areas of transportation.

[03:18] So whether it's a safety feature on an airplane, for instance, or the space shuttle, or many, many valves and hoses and other sensor coatings and things that underpin automotive, you know, both a traditional combustion engine as well as a lot of materials in the EV space. Those are the types of...

Episode 14: Sustainable Mining & the Future of Copper

In this episode, we sit down with Andrea Vaccari from Freeport to explore the rising demand for copper and its crucial role in the clean energy transition. From electric vehicles to wind turbines, copper is everywhere—but how will we meet skyrocketing demand sustainably? We discuss challenges in mining, the shift toward responsible sourcing, and why designing for disassembly is key to a circular economy. Whether you're in product design, manufacturing, or just curious about the future of sustainable materials, this episode is packed with insights you won’t want to miss!

In this Episode

Shelley: One of the things I think is interesting and I think would be great to have you introduce to the listeners is the role of copper in the clean energy transition, because I don't think everyone appreciates how much metal is going to be needed to make that work. And it's also great context for those listening who might use copper or metal in their products. [00:44]

Andrea: That's right. Copper and molybdenum especially are really, really critical for the energy transition. When you think about all of our low carbon or zero carbon forms of energy. So we think about solar, when we think about wind, when we think about hydrothermal, even just thinking about LNG and how LNG actually provides power to a grid, copper's in all of that. In wind turbines, offshore wind turbines need lots of copper. I think actually a few tons of copper per wind turbine to be able to not only power the wind turbine, but then the deep sea cables that connect them and that connect them back to the grid. We think about solar power and it’s not just a solar cell; there are batteries involved. And how do you tie a battery storage device to infrastructure and to the Internet? That's copper. [01:02]

The simplest things, like developing nations, as they come along in the energy transition in a just way and we improve their grids, those are full of copper. Transformers, cabling in houses, as we improve green buildings, it's just everywhere. It really is. And then molybdenum is used in stainless steel and it's used in a number of other applications, but stainless steel especially and we know how much that's used in building and construction, bridges, all kinds of different applications for the energy transition. [02:07]

Shelley: Is it possible to give us any numbers for that, like forecasting 5, 10, 30 years, like how much is needed? [02:36]

Andrea: Right now the total refined copper market annually is in between 25 to 30 million tons a year and we expect that to double by 2050. Now you hear all kinds of different things. So, you hear people talk about doubling, tripling, quadrupling. I don't know, the way that I look at it is whatever number we come up with, we're always going to have the wrong number. But I think there's general consensus that it is at least twice. Just take like an electric car. So, if you take an internal combustion engine vehicle and then you take a fully battery electric car like a Tesla or a Mercedes, you're talking about three to four times the amount of copper per vehicle. And then you've got charging stations which are full of copper. [02:44]

Neil:. Some of these models don't even consider the development that you see in countries which are not electrified yet. So, India for the largest part isn't really electrified and in the next 10 years we will see a huge part of that also taking shape. So, I think you're right. Some of the numbers that I have in my mind, more short term where we'll be needin...

Merck's Jeffrey Whitford joins the team for episode 13 of Five Lifes to Fifty. Jeffrey is Vice President of Sustainability & Social Business Innovation at Merck (known as MilliporeSigma in the US and Canada since Merck's acquisition of Sigma-Aldrich in 2015), and has a deep background in education, communication, advertising, marketing and strategy. He uses those skills to develop and execute compelling platforms to showcase his organization's efforts in Corporate Social Responsibility.

Today, Merck/MilliporeSigma offers a range of more than 300,000 products to support the life science, biomanufacturing, and biotechnology sectors. These products have applications in biotechnological manufacturing and development, laboratory research, and pharmaceutical drug therapies.

In this Episode

Shelley: Merck is a global life science company. Tell us more about the field you're in and the sustainability culture at Merck.

Jeffrey: Yeah, absolutely. So, we are one of the places that most all scientists know of. If you're not in science, you may not have heard of us, but basically we are the one stop shop for scientists to get all of the materials they need to do discovery R&D and then manufacturing for things like pharmaceuticals, drugs, therapies, treatments. But also, certainly if you're in academics, you're doing academic research, we're a place that you're going to go to. But we also do other things like testing. So, if you need a standard to look at the quality of something like what clean dirt is, well, we're the people who make clean dirt that you actually measure against. So, we have such a wide array of things that we're involved in. Like I said, you may not know about us, but we're probably interacting with you in one way or another throughout the day and hopefully helping you make your world a little bit better. [00:40]

Shelley: And I understand that sustainability is deeply embedded into your process. Tell us about how sustainably gets embedded into your product development process. [01:33]

Jeffrey: One of the things that I was given as an instruction, in terms of our ambition regarding sustainability was we don't want this to be just a showcase product here or there. We want this to be something that is systematic within the organization. So that was the guiding light - I was told you need to make it systematic. So, because of that, we looked at the different ways we could go in and address systems, because that is the key to change. So, we try to find where that lever point is in each of our different processes, and that's where we go in. So, for product development for us, we use our product development process. We have a system called accolade, where everything is tracked and driven through. That was the point really where we identified to say if we can get sustainability embedded there, we're going to start to make the change or the transformation to a product portfolio. We have 300,000 products, so it's a big challenge in front of us to think about sustainability across the board. But ultimately that's the place where it starts when we think about the products themselves. I think for us, that's really what we've been thinking about is where are those key lever points that you've got the ability to then take more control into the process and give people guidance about what we're looking to do and the changes that we need to make. [01:43]

Neil: Jeffrey, 300,000 products, how do you start? [03:00]

Jeffrey: I cry a lot. No, this is the hard part when you think about the volume of p...