April 22, 2011 is almost here!

[latrease]

What will you section do to celebrate IYC on Earth Day?

[Jefftrent]

The ACS Columbus Section will have Chemists Celebrating Earth Day with a Booth at Franklin Park in Columbus, Ohio from 11 am to 10pm on Saturday April 23.  This is the Earth Day Celebratin sponsored by Green Columbus with many enviromentally friendly organizations securing booths, including music, dance, entertainment, and food.  The ACS Booth will focus on Alternate Energy Demonstrations: 1. Solar powered toys - racing car, vibrating frightened grasshopper, jumping frog, and flying plane.  2. Hydrogen Fuel Cell Car (Thames and Kosmos kit) - Solar Power used to split water into Hydrogen and Oxygen gas then collected gases used to run the small motor through a reversible PEM Fuel Cell. 3. Wind powered table top turbine will generate electricity to turn on an LED light and activate a small music box. 4. Hydropower water wheel generator will tun on a LED to show the water to electricity conversion. 5. Lemon powered digital clock will show electricity from different metal electrodes placed in a lemon or other electrolytes. Hand Outs: Celebrating Chemistry - "Energy - It's Everywhere" Displays: Energy Displays - ACS Committee on Community Activities - Energy Power Points Water Displays - ACS CCA - Water Power Point,  Water in our World Celebrating Chemistry Fundraising: PUR for Pennies project will be advertised with a collection bucket. Audience: General Public, Families and Children. Presenters: ACS Members, and Students. Also we will be a "Day Sponsor" April 22nd for Radio Station WCBE Columbus advertising Chemists Celebrate Earth Day! IYC 2011 links are also on the ACS Columbus Section Website www.sites.colmbus.acs.org

[BryanBalazs]

The California Section jumped the gun a bit (please forgive) by holding our IYC Earth Day event on April 16th at the John Muir National Historic Site in Martinez, CA.  The day was perfect for our wind and sun energy demonstration and H20 electrolysis for H2 fuel generation and pH concept.  A hydrogen bus on display from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory shuttled the public from a school parking lot to the event.   We also collected some money for the Children Safe drinking water program, and all our volunteers got to wear the IYC shirt also (Thanks, International Activitities Committee!!).  Credit goes to Sheila Kanodia, our Earth Day Coordinator, for engaging us in this event which can attract many thousands of attendees over the course of the day.

[DonivanPorterfie]

The Central New Mexico Local Section is celebrating CCED a little beyond Earth Day due to Easter. Our Local Section will be participating in a Los Alamos community EarthDay event sponsored by the Pajarito Environmental Education Center.  This event is an opportunity to show the public that there is such a thing as green chemistry.  When we participated last year there were some members of the public that thought that the last thing a chemistry organization would participate in would be Earth Day.  One at a time we’re winning those folks over.

For this year I contacted the folks at NatureWorks LLC (www.natureworksllc.com) who market a polymer with the trade name of Ingeo.  Ingeo is based on polylactic acid derived from corn.  This technology demonstrates that plastics don’t only have to be made from petroleum products.  Perhpas more importantly that it takes chemists to make such things happen.

The folks at NatureWorks were able to provide us a kit of example items being produced commercially using the Ingeo polyer – either 100% content or a healthy percentage.  I was also able to get some other examples of household items with a significant percentage of Ingeo, e.g. a bed pillow and a belt.  The NatureWorks web site also has some useful publications.  The one apparent limitation on Ingeo is it doesn’t take heat well. So I didn’t find an example of microwave safe cookware made with it.

As a matter of background, NatureWorks is a wholly owned subsidiaryof Cargill and the production facility is located in Blair, Nebraska.

I’d also suggest that for the assortment of plastic items that ACS sells through the Online Store that there be some consideration to seeing if the vendors can offer the same made from the Ingeo polymer.

One of the take home lessons for our public attendees will be that chemistry can provide them the choice of a polymer made from petroleum or a natural product but that means nothing if they don’t choose the natural product alternative when they spend their money.  Even if they maybe have to spend a bit more on the natural product alternative.

Mr. Donivan Porterfield, Chair & Councilor

Central New Mexico Local Section

American Chemical Society