April 22,1970 to April 22, 2010! How will you celebrate 40 years of Earth Day?

[chemik00l]

Please tell us your plans!

[DonivanPorterfie]

Clint,

The Central New Mexico Local Section will be participating in a community (Los Alamos, NM) Earth Day event that attracts several hundred folks from the community.  We are planning to have a table at the event to provide information on ACS green chemistry.  I'm also ordering some stuff (e.g. CCED coasters) from the ACS Online Store to have available.

The organizers of the community event also produce an Earth Day insert for the local paper in which the Local Section will have an ad mentioning the Green Chemistry Institute (www.acs.org/greenchemistry).  The organizers also have a Earth Day dinner locally at which our Local Section will have a table.  The theme of that dinner is "Nativo Meal" - traditional and contemporary dishes made with ancient foods, including corn, squash, beans, chile, bison, turkey, trout, nuts, seeds, berries and cocoa.

P.S. Some advice for the ACS Online Store folks would be to include some of the ACS Green Chemistry publications in their "Chemists Celebrate Earth Day Merchandise" category of products.  I plan to show some of these publications at our Earth Day event table.  We may then contribute some of them to the library associated with the Environmental Education Center that sponsors the community Earth Day event.  I also purchased a "green chemistry" book from one of the publishers in the Exposition at last week's national meeting in San Francisco.  The EPA also had a booth with some green chemistry information in the Exposition.  Their booth reminded me of the "Real World Cases in Green Chemistry" publications.

Mr. Donivan Porterfield, Chair-Elect & Councilor

Central New Mexico Local Section

American Chemical Society

[ruthwoodall]

Nashville Section has several activities planned:

1. We have a Boy Scout event planned where they earn their CCED badge

2. We are partnering with the Metro Nashville Earth Day in the Park that draws over 10,000 participants on April 17th. ACS volunteers, Women in Science Volunteers from Middle Tennessee State University, our High School Affiliate chapters, and  student members host a booth doing Earth Day activities centered around the Earth Day 2010 theme.

3. Each student member chapter is celebrating by hosting "Green Chemistry" activities. One event has already been held at Fisk University.

4. We are sponsoring contests in the schools.

5. We have also posted on our web site and sent announcements to all of our schools and members with a link to the CCED web site.

[jenbach]

The Sewanee Student Affiliates of ACS are going to participate in our campus and community's Earth Fest on April 17.  Our SAACS group bought piggy bank made out of recycled denim jeans(with the CCED logo)  to give away to participants who answer a short quiz about the chemistry of jeans.  We will also be giving away paper copies of Celebrating Chemistry and Honorary Chemist stickers from the ACS store.

[k_lindblom]

That's great Jennifer!  Thanks for posting your story and photo.  Happy CCED week to the folks in Sewanee and everywhere across the country!

[Georgeruger]

I am interested in knowing more about the Boy Scout CCED badge.  I tried a google search expecting to find useful information, however I just found tons of information that was not relevant.  I have been working with several Boy Scout troops in my area, and I was one myself.  The CCED badge could be another way for my local section to introduce these youth to chemistry, in addition to the Chemistry merit badge.  Where is a good information source to start?

[latrease]

George,

You may find information about the Youth Activity Patch Program at www.acs.org/earthday. Click on the Student and Educators tab.

The Youth Activity Patch Program is a great way to share the current CCED theme with youth groups as well as to encourage them to pursue careers in the chemical sciences. If you carry out this program in your local section, please post pictures of the event.

Happy Earth Day!

LaTrease

[ruthwoodall]

ruth.woodall@tnchamber.org has sent you a photo gallery from Metromix.com:

Byrd's Eye View - Earth Day Festival

This article can also be accessed at this location:  http://nashville.metromix.com/events/essay_photo_gallery/byrds-eye-view-earth/1886957/content

Nashville Celebrated Earth Day last Saturday with thousands of others at Centenniel Park by helping them make and take mini green houses.

[609030]

The Toledo Section (NW OH and SE MI) just celebrated "Plants the Green Machine" yesterday, April 25th, at our local hands-on museum, Imagination Station. Faculty from the University of Toledo Dept of Chemistry and Dept of Biology hosted a great event that introduced multiple common topics in biology seen through chemistry's eyes - osmosis, capillary action, etc. We tried something new this year. Instead of having just hands-on tables, that some people just walked past, and free give-away items, we structured the event around a Trivia quiz. Answers were available at the various stations, after you did the activity, and on posters throughout the event - get 8/10 right and you could have two small prizes out of the Prize Box - millimoles, Earth Balls, Periodic Table cards, etc. It was great - everyone did ALL the activities AND read the posters. They truly earned their prize! We also dished out 225+ servings of L N2 ice cream - the lightest whipped ice cream you will ever eat.

[DonivanPorterfie]

As noted earlier our Central New Mexico Local Section participated in a community (Los Alamos, NM) Earth Day event that was hosted by the Pajarito Environmental Education Center (www.pajaritoeec.org) that had participation by several other community, commercial, and government organizations.

The CCED coasters were quite popular, especially the one’s made from recycled denim.  Also popular were the CCED wrist bands but having the coasters invited the question if the wrist bands were also recycled.  The information on the ACS Online Store web page doesn’t indicate and there is no printed information with bags they come in.  So may be something to look into.

In talking to some attendees they were initially of the thought that “chemistry” and “Earth Day” were incompatible concepts so I think our presence helped correct that impression.

Some topics I think we’d like to address with our participation at the same event next year is (1) plastics recycling and more importantly biodegradable plastics and other materials and (2) LED based lighting and the chemistry involved.  For the former we could have on hand some PLA polymer based cups and such.  The latter is along the lines of the “energy” theme for 2011.

I do believe next year we would be interested in being able to purchase multiple copies of the JChemEd Earth Day issue.  We had some teachers stop by so it would have been nice to have been able to have a few copies that we could have handed out to such attendees.

We did contribute a copy of the several ACS Green Chemistry publications as well as a couple from commercial publishers.  Before our contribution the library of the hosting environmental education organization had only 1 item out of about 700 with “chemistry” in the title.  So we have made a significant change in that statistic and hope to do still better over time.

fyi – Pajarito is Spanish for “little bird”.

Mr. Donivan Porterfield, Chair-Elect & Councilor
Central New Mexico Local Section
American Chemical ...