Hi All,
I joined this forum because I'm interested in reading other peoples' opinions on the environmental problems the earth is facing. I'm 22 and will graduate with a BS in Chemical Engineering w/ a minor in Environmental Studies in May 2014. I still have a lot to learn!
Lets see... I try to do my small part in protecting the environment:
- I bought a 2011 Honda CR-Z a year ago, it is a hybrid. I know know, hybrids aren't all that green because the batteries will one day go to a landfill... I would hope car companies recycle/refurbish as much of them as they can. But at least I am using a little bit less gas. Also this car has "auto stop", which means the engine turns off when I come to a stop. No idling at red lights and wasting gasoline/polluting the atmosphere!
- I live at home with my family, including grandparents. My grandparents grew up farmers, so we have a mini garden in the backyard. Corn, cucumbers, peppers, dill (for making pickles), squash, pumpkins (sometimes), strawberries, raspberries (sometimes), and I'm probably forgetting a few more things.
- Since highschool (9 years ago!) I have been pressing my family to recycle more. Plastic, paper, carboard, paperboard. Some examples are yogurt cups, tissue boxes, milk/juice jugs/containers, any and all boxes, frozen meal plastic trays, oh and my favorite: toilet paper roll centers. We have a place in the house to pile the paper products together, and when I started putting the toilet paper roll cardboard centers in there, they tended to fall out of the pile when someone would carry the pile outside. My family got fed up with this, so now my parents buy Scotts Naturals Tube-free toilet paper. Woo hoo! Also, every week we recycle so much (8 people in my house!) that my dad asked the garbage company if we could have a second garbage can to fill up with recyclables. They said no, but doubled the amount of small recycling bins that we have.
- I hope to someday in my career work for a green company, doing something innovating. Right now I'm a paid intern at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, which is a national laboratory that is researching nuclear fusion and it's use as a renewable energy source (like nuclear fission power plants). Nuclear fusion uses lasers, hence the lab name! Pretty neat working here, but I'm more of a research scientist here than a chemical engineer...
Well I think I've written enough. I may not post much but I look forward to reading through the forum.
