The United States’ 250th-year-anniversary celebrations and conversations rightly focus on the people, decisions, and actions that made this country great. As someone who was born and grew up outside the U.S., it wasn’t until I lived here that I truly appreciated America’s resilience and the freedoms and opportunities it offers. 

It is not an exaggeration to suggest that throughout America’s history, innovations in manufacturing—and the chemical industry in particular—have had a profound impact on our prosperity, culture and quality of life.

The development of new materials has made the expansion of cities and the construction of roads and railroads possible. Chemical innovation enabled farmers to scale production to feed millions. Advanced materials science has led to innovations around sustainability; for instance, catalytic converters reducing vehicle emissions and water filtration membranes playing a huge role in improving water quality.

We have specialty materials to thank for both the first combustion-engine car and today’s electric vehicles that are powered by rapid advances in battery technology. Chemistry has helped give us instant access to information around the world via the internet and smart phones. Chip technology has become smaller, more precise and more reliable thanks to incremental improvements from chemistry and materials manufacturing.  

To share one more example from everyday life, sporting equipment has also vastly improved. Recent marathon records can be attributed, at least in part, to high-performance foams used in running shoes that improve comfort, energy return and injury protection. Polymers that are impact resistant have helped make football helmets safer

Just about every advancement in our history can be traced to the development of materials that are the building blocks of manufacturing.

Aside from the innovation and products chemistry helped make possible, the industry has led to generations of good jobs that have been a springboard to enhance other industries. Entire towns, small and large, are thriving today because of these jobs that helped them grow.

I’m not naïve. Things in our industry aren’t perfect. We can, and must, always do better. We need policies and approaches that support the development of new sustainable chemistries so that new technologies can be made more sustainable to advance the well-being of all. That can be done by incentivizing research, speeding up responsible approvals, and setting clear standards that apply and are enforced fairly.

When we get that right, I’m confident that chemistry—and the boundless innovation it produces—will help preserve what we’ve accomplished over the last 250 years. More importantly, it will drive the breakthroughs that define the next 250 and beyond.