![]() On a political level, we need to see a greater recognition of the risk element scarcity poses, and moves need to be made to support better recycling practices and an efficient circular economy. As individuals, we need to question whether upgrades to our phones and other electronic devices are truly necessary, and we need to make sure that we recycle correctly to avoid old electronics don’t end up in landfill sites or polluting the environment. Protecting endangered elements needs to be achieved on a number of levels. Unless solutions are provided, we risk seeing many of the natural elements that make up the world around us run out – whether because of limited supplies, their location in conflict areas, or our incapacity to fully recycle them. With some 10 million smartphones being discarded or replaced every month in the European Union alone, we need to carefully look at our tendencies to waste and improperly recycle such items. The issue of element scarcity cannot be stressed enough. The smartphone you may be using right now to look at this unique Periodic Table is made up of some 30 elements – over half of which may give cause for concern in the years to come because of increasing scarcity. If you are a chemist who wants to use the EuChemS Periodic Table in your native language, please click on the button below and follow the instructions for a submission of a new translation. ![]() Translations for the EuChemS Periodic Table (edition 2 | 2021) can be downloaded below. Support notes for teachers are available for download here. Support notes, which explain in more details the updates made to the EuChemS Periodic Table (2021), are available for download here. ![]() Please note that the work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution NoDerivs CC BY-ND. The Periodic Table is available for free download. Play the EuChemS video game ‘Elemental Escapades!’ online here! If we behave responsibly by cutting our dependence on fossil fuels and never using it from conflict resources, we can save our beautiful and diverse planet and restore carbon to its rightful green colour. This updated version of the EuChemS Periodic Table graphically highlights the problems of carbon in our world now. For millennia these two processes, compounded with CO 2 absorption and release by the oceans, have been in balance justifying the benign green colour given to carbon in the 2019 Periodic Table.īurning carbon-based fuels (coal, oil, gas) pumps so much extra CO 2 into the air that photosynthesis and the oceans can’t keep up so CO 2 levels rise leading to global warming and climate change that will cause severe disruption to all forms of life in the planet very soon if we do nothing.Ĭhanging the colour of carbon is a clarion call to everyone, especially those responsible for the outcomes of COP26, to do all in their power to reduce their CO 2 emissions for the good of the next generations.īut why is it also grey, defined as “From conflict resources”?Ĭarbon, especially oil, can come from places where wars are fought over the oilfields or where oil revenues are used to fight wars.Īs with all other conflict minerals, EuChemS calls on all oil refiners and users to avoid buying from oilfields tainted by conflict. The carbon cycle balances photosynthesis, by which plants grow taking up CO 2, with respiration (breathing), by which we and all flora and fauna live and give out CO 2. Grey because it can come from conflict resources. Red because it will very shortly cause serious problems if we do nothing to restrict its use. Green because it is plentifully available in the form of carbon dioxide (too plentiful), carbonate rocks and vegetation. The main change to the EuChemS Periodic Table is to convert the colour of carbon from the benign green colour to a tricolour of green, red and dark grey. The European Chemical Society (EuChemS) is releasing an updated version of its iconic Periodic Table, first produced for the International Year of the Periodic Table in 2019.
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