The October Meeting will be held virtually this year and we are inviting neighboring upper New York ACS local sections to join us! We will learn about recycling from expert Dr. Alan Eastman.
Agenda:
6:00 – 7:00 PM ET Virtual Networking/Games
7:00 – 8:00 PM ET Seminar on Recycling
8:00 – 8:30 PM ET ENY ACS Business Meeting
Register to receive a link to the meeting the day prior:
https://enyacs.eventsmart.com/
Recycling: what works, what doesn’t, and why?
We’re all getting a lot of pressure to recycle all sorts of things, but seldom does anyone explain why some things can be recycled and why others can’t. In fact, many of us have a lurking suspicion that it’s not worth the bother. Our speaker will explain what really happens during the recycling process, concentrating on plastics and electronic waste, where that stuff actually goes, and why it seems to be getting more difficult to recycle it. The chemistry is important, of course, but we’ll also touch on more mundane things like whether you should wash out all those McDonalds clamshells after you eat the burger inside or whether to leave the cap on the discarded pop bottles. And then we have the economics…
Speaker Bio: Alan Eastman received a PhD in chemistry from the University of Utah in 1975. He subsequently spent nearly 30 years chained to a lab bench in the service of Phillips Petroleum, now ConocoPhillips. Since then, he has basically failed twice at retirement, working as a consultant in spectrometric/chemometric measurements for on-line process analysis, followed by co-founding GreenFire Energy, a growing geothermal firm, from which he retired (again!) and for which he is consulting (again!) Dr. Eastman teaches a variety of classes for the Osher Institute, part of the Division of Continuing Education at the University of Utah. The Osher Institute is a national network of continuing education classes for people over 50. Alan’s classes are generally concerned with the areas where science meets “the real world” and include Climate Change, Energy in the US, Water Issues (including mini-classes on the water shortages in the Colorado River drainage and at the Great Salt Lake), Air Pollution, Plastics, Recycling, and one that he entitled “Music Theory for people who wish they hadn’t talked their mother into letting them quit piano.” In his spare time, Alan plays piano and organ, and plays in two swing bands in Salt Lake City.
