×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Environmental Paradox in perception

Environmental Paradox in perception

Environmental Paradox in perception

(OP)
Today was "Earth Day" and my company celebrated by implementing a paper recycling program (I'm really not sure what took them so long, they're only an 80-yr-old company).  It was a nice presentation with educational pamphlets. I consider myself an enviromentalist, but I'm also an industrialized engineer, as are most in my profession.  Amidst all this hard work to make things more presentable, there were helium balloons.  Now I have 2 kids, and helium balloons are abound around the house, but I was momentarily brought back to my high school chemistry teacher on his soap box, telling the class the helium is a non-renewable resource. It is released from the ground during oil drilling, and once released, it floats forever into space, never to be reclaimed.  So I have to think that on Earth Day, using helium balloons is a slight paradoxical oversight.  Kinda like staunch vegetarians eating cheese and eggs.  Any opinions?

ChemE, M.E. EIT
"The only constant in life is change." -Dan Andia; 1999, Chemical Engineering Progress

RE: Environmental Paradox in perception

(OP)
50-100 years?  So my great-great grandchildren won't have floating balloons?

ChemE, M.E. EIT
"The only constant in life is change." -Dan Andia; 1999, Chemical Engineering Progress

RE: Environmental Paradox in perception

They're already in a world of hurt, anyway, since they'll have to build on top of the garbage we've generated in the meantime.

TTFN

RE: Environmental Paradox in perception

OOPS!  But how many people know where helium comes from anyways - seems like an honest mistake.

Here's another environmental paradox, for your consideration as a ME/ChemE (I'm a civil):  fuel cell powered vehicles hold promise for reducing our future dependency on oil.  But just how much energy does it take to produce hydrogen, then transport it & package it for consumer use?  Will nuclear/coal/oil/incineration be used to generate the electricity needed to produce the "clean" hydrogen, especially in the northeast U.S., where acid-rain is a problem?  What are the life-cycle energy "costs" of using fuel cells?

It's all shades of gray in the end!

RE: Environmental Paradox in perception

What is an enviormentalist anyway?  Everybody is an eviormentalist in one form or another, just ask them!  If you REALLY want to be an "enviornmentalist" (IMHO) then take care of your own little acre of land, clean it up, don't throw trash in it and take care of it yourself.

I was stopped at a stop light the other day and the guy in the car next to me opened his car door and set the fast food tray, from the lunch he ate will driving, down on the pavement.  When the light changed he drove away. That is the perfect example of what an enviormentalist is not.  If all the protesters (and each of us) would just take care of their own little area, what a "wonderful world this would be".

RE: Environmental Paradox in perception

When you consider that thrre are a crop, just like corn, you no more save a tree by recycling paper than you save a corn plant by not eating corn.  With the cols of collecting, transporting, repulping, and cleaning used paper, it ends up costing more than virgin pulp.  Thirty percent of the recycled paper fibers are too short to reuse, but are still transported, etc.  It just shifts the landfill cost from the communities to the mills.  But hey, like lots of ideas, it looks good on paper!

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources