I’ve been meaning to post the next tip for a while now, intending it to be promoting the use of fluorescent light bulbs, given their tremendous energy efficiency (compared to incandescent light bulbs).  The question arises though, do the benefits outweigh the risks?  The problem with fluorescent bulbs is their mercury content, mercury of course being poisonous, even in small doses.  If you break a bulb in your home, the EPA-recommended clean-up procedure looks like something that should be posted in an industrial chemical lab.  Still though, it can be dealt with, and I’d say the benefit still outweighs the individual risk.

Where the real problem comes is with mass disposal.  Fluorescent bulbs are supposed to be disposed of at approved recycling facilities, but we have to be realistic here – the reality is that most of these bulbs are going to end up in the trash, and thus in our landfills.  With all of these bulbs ending up busted up in our landfills, it creates a huge pollution hazard potential, in both our air and our groundwater.  With sales of these things numbering in the hundreds of millions per year now, this could turn out to be real problem in a few years.

So what to do?  Hard to say…  Many say the huge energy savings still outweighs the poison risk, but once these small risks add up, it could turn into a huge issue.  Hopefully industry finds away to reduce or eliminate that mercury content, or at least provide an easy-to-use recycling system that will encourage even the laziest of us to properly recycle them instead of throwing them in the garbage.  As mentioned in the article I link to below, GE is supposedly on the brink of releasing an incandescent bulb that rivals the efficiency of the fluorescent bulb, so maybe there lies our answer.  Time will tell….

Here is the link to the full source article:  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23694819/

Here are the EPA tips for cleaning up a broken fluorescent bulb, as referenced in the source article:

How to clean up a fluorescent bulb

Before cleanup: Vent the room 1. Open a window and leave the room for 15 minutes or more. 2. Shut off the central forced-air heating/air conditioning system, if you have one. Cleanup steps for hard surfaces 3. Carefully scoop up glass fragments and powder using stiff paper or cardboard and place them in a glass jar with metal lid (such as a canning jar) or in a sealed plastic bag. 4. Use sticky tape, such as duct tape, to pick up any remaining small glass fragments and powder. 5. Wipe the area clean with damp paper towels or disposable wet wipes and place them in the glass jar or plastic bag. 6. Do not use a vacuum or broom to clean up the broken bulb on hard surfaces. Cleanup steps for carpeting or rug 3. Carefully pick up glass fragments and place them in a glass jar with metal lid (such as a canning jar) or in a sealed plastic bag. 4. Use sticky tape, such as duct tape, to pick up any remaining small glass fragments and powder. 5. If vacuuming is needed after all visible materials are removed, vacuum the area where the bulb was broken. 6. Remove the vacuum bag (or empty and wipe the canister), and put the bag or vacuum debris in a sealed plastic bag. Disposal of cleanup materials 7. Immediately place all cleanup materials outside the building in a trash container or outdoor protected area for the next normal trash. 8. Wash your hands after disposing of the jars or plastic bags containing cleanup materials. 9. Check with your local or state government about disposal requirements in your specific area. Some states prohibit such trash disposal and require that broken and unbroken lamps be taken to a recycling center. Future cleaning of carpeting or rug 10. For at least the next few times you vacuum, shut off the central forced-air heating/air conditioning system and open a window prior to vacuuming. 11. Keep the central heating/air conditioning system shut off and the window open for at least 15 minutes after vacuuming is completed.

Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Revolving doors are more than just unique eye candy in hotels and office buildings.  The main reason that businesses use these types of doors over conventional swing doors is that they offer tremendous energy savings.  Check out this MIT article, which gives detailed measurements on just how much energy these doors save.  If we used these doors (where they’re available) 100% of the time over their neighboring swing doors, it’d result in a 74% annual energy savings!  That’s huge!  So the next time you see a revolving door and a conventional door next to each other in an office building or hotel, please opt to use the revolving door.  It’s a small thing for each of us to do, but offers significant energy savings if we all do it.

Napkins. In America, we use almost exclusively paper napkins. You see the cloth napkins at fancy restaurants, or perhaps at holiday meals in people’s homes. During the rest of our day-to-day existence though, we largely use paper napkins, and those napkins are the result of many trees being cut down, and much emissions being emitted into the atmosphere to create them. On top of that, all these napkins create a lot of garbage.

So what to do? I know everybody isn’t going to stop using paper napkins, so Tip #2 is this: when grabbing napkins out at your average restaurant (McDonald’s to Denny’s, and everything in between), just take one! Many of us often take 2, 3, or maybe even more napkins before we sit down to eat, as we don’t want to have get up and get more, or ask for more, etc. The reality is though, that most times we end up not needing more than one, or maybe we need two, but not that 3 or 4+ that we grabbed. So the next time you go for the napkins at Mickey D’s, just grab one. If it isn’t enough, then go get another one after you’ve used up the first one. Only take what you need!

This helps in all the ways that I already mentioned (less trees felled, less pollution, garbage, etc.), but it also has this benefit – lower cost to you, the consumer! Though we often don’t think about anything besides the food, all those paper goods that the fast food restaurants have to burn through add up to large expenses, and those expenses are passed on to the consumer. So by lowering their paper goods costs, you lessen the likelihood that they have to raise prices on you again anytime soon. Business profit all amounts to revenue minus expenses. So if you can lower their expenses while their revenue remains the same or even rises, then their profit margin remains healthy, and you can continue to enjoy that Big Mac on the cheap.

This is a good video that I originally found posted over on The Lazy Environmentalist. This covers the situation in Britain, but is easily applicable here. The interesting thing I found in this video, that I hadn’t heard/read before, was the economic argument against nuclear power. It doesn’t really provide as much of our power needs as they like to claim. Also, we’re only talking about a roughly 4% reduction in CO2 emissions, so given all the radioactive waste and other dangers associated with it, it’s probably not worth it. We’d be better off pursuing clean renewable options, like solar and wind farms. It’s something to really think about, as talk of new nuclear power stations here in the U.S. has started up again.

This tip is related to the plastic bags tip, so doesn’t get its own full version number…

This is the last I’ll say on the plastic bags issue, at least for a little while. OK, so now you’re refraining from using plastic bags when you don’t really need them, and you’re reusing your old plastic bags when you do need them. So what am I suggesting now?

Eventually, after enough trips, your plastic bags are going to wear out (stretch, rip, etc.). What then? Get new plastic bags from the store? No! Let the problem end with this batch! One option is to buy some canvas bags for hauling groceries, etc., which many people do. What I’m suggesting though is that you use boxes you probably already have lying around.

The revelation hit me recently as I was buying baby supplies at one of the local big box discount stores (Sam’s Club, Costco, etc.). When you buy stuff at these places, they often don’t even give you bags. They just put the stuff back in your cart, and you’re on your own once you get to your car. Nobody seems to complain about this, so it’s obviously no big hardship.

Why not take this same practice to the grocery stores, hardware stores, etc.? When you buy your groceries, tell the bag boy just to put the items directly back in your cart – no bags. Then when you get to your car, just load them up in boxes that you brought along with you (or ask them for boxes – they’ll have plenty!). It can be boxes from the big box stores, grocery stores, moving boxes, banker boxes, etc. – we all have something around, or can easily get some that would otherwise be discarded. These will last a long time! Maybe keep a couple plastic bags handy for potentially leaky items, like juicy meats, ice cream, etc. If you use bags just for those items, you’ll only need a couple/few, and they’ll last nearly forever, too.

The beauty of the box solution is that, besides saving valuable resources, they’ll also make hauling your items into the house easier. You’ll be able to place more items in one box instead of having a gazillion plastic bags hanging from your wrist, and you probably won’t have to worry about it breaking on your way in.

Saving even more oil, and making life easier in the process. Plus, the less bags the grocery store has to distribute, that’s one less cost that goes up for them, which drives up the cost of our groceries. If we all practiced this tip, it could lower the cost of our groceries!

-Ryan

Good post about the problem of cement production and associated carbon dioxide emissions, from the Building Minnesota blog. You can read the New York Times article that inspired it here.

I’m not proposing anything here, just sharing the information. It’s amazing just how many processes and products we have to think about when it comes to global warming. I never would have guessed that cement production alone would account for a whopping 5% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.

Remember my last tip about reducing our use of plastic shopping bags? Well, here’s another reason why we should be trying to curb our usage of them. How about “a heap of debris floating in the Pacific that’s twice the size of Texas”?! This is really bad news, folks. Besides simply polluting our waters, it’s killing off the marine and ovarian life who mistake this trash for food.

The following quotes are from an article about this in the 10/19/2007 edition of the San Francisco Gate:

“The enormous stew of trash – which consists of 80 percent plastics and weighs some 3.5 million tons, say oceanographers – floats where few people ever travel, in a no-man’s land between San Francisco and Hawaii. “
….
“At this point, cleaning it up isn’t an option,” Parry said. “It’s just going to get bigger as our reliance on plastics continues. … The long-term solution is to stop producing as much plastic products at home and change our consumption habits.”

Read the full article here:
Continent-size toxic stew of plastic trash fouling swath of Pacific Ocean

Refuse and Reuse!

“Would you like a bag for that?”

That was the question posed to me at Starbucks after I purchased a single bag of coffee beans (and a beverage, of course ). That’s right; other than my beverage, the only thing for me to carry out of that store as a result of our transaction was a single bag of coffee beans, and I was offered a bag to carry it in.

This reminded me of an email conversation I had with my cousin a couple weeks prior, in which we discussed how out of control our society has become with plastic bags and plastic packaging. We both cited instances where we’d gone to the grocery store to buy only a couple of items, like a bag of bread and some orange juice, and the store clerks were incredulous when we said we didn’t need bags. I bought a deodorant stick at a sports store once, and they automatically put the item in a plastic bag after ringing it up. When I took it out, handed the bag back, and said, “You can keep this, I don’t need it.”, the clerk’s eyes just bugged out, and she asked, “Are you sure??“

Over 100 billion plastic shopping bags are used annually in the U.S. alone. This plastic is made from oil, which is an ever-shrinking natural resource, and one that keeps going up in cost as a result. If we could greatly lessen the demand for plastic, we lessen the demand for oil, and thus keep the cost down (theoretically).

A lot of you might be thinking, “Well, I recycle mine, so I’m OK.” Many people, maybe even most these days, throw in their plastic shopping bags along with the rest of their plastic that they send for recycling. The problem is that the plastic bags are not as easily recyclable as plastic bottles and other containers. So what happens is that these bags get filtered out at the waste/recycling facility, and they simply get thrown in the landfills along with rest of the garbage. And biodegradable they are not….

So the first part of my tip, Refuse, means this: Don’t accept or request plastic bags when you purchase items unless you really need a bag to carry everything. When you only have one or a few items that you can easily carry by hand or put in your pockets, leave the bag.

The second part of my tip, Reuse, means this: reuse those plastic bags! When you buy groceries for the week, or an assortement of household items at Wal-Mart, save those bags that you carry everything home in. Then, when you go shopping the next time, bring those bags back with you, and have the clerks bag your items using those same plastic bags! So that you don’t forget to bring them, keep your empty shopping bags in your car. That way you’ll always have them with you when you go shopping.

Some of the info used for this post was obtained from the Boone County (Kentucky) Public Works/Solid Waste Management website. You can view the original source here.

Welcome to the new blog. I hope you’ll enjoy it and find it useful. Following is a description of the aim of this blog. Please read on, and I hope you’ll continue to visit in the future.

The earth is changing at a rate not seen before in recorded human history. It’s not pretty, and a lot of it can be attributed directly to us (humans). We need to do something, and do something now.

Whereas I believe sweeping policy and business changes are needed at the government and corporate levels, and strongly advocate for those changes, I also believe that we can make individual changes in our everyday lives that can have just as much impact. There used to be a time when we lived our lives as part of a greater society, and not just as individuals living next to each other.

What I hope to achieve with this blog is to get you, the reader, thinking about how all the little things you consume and discard in your everyday life affects the planet at large. We can make such tiny changes in the way we use things everyday, but that will have a very significant impact on the planet, our foreign policy, and our fellow man, if we all make these changes.

My posts here will be tips that you can use to help save the world, but without upsetting your lifestyle in any major way. Simple conservation and substitution is the key in most cases. I hope you’ll join me in my personal mission to help make this planet a better one for future generations of our families to enjoy.

Peace,
Ryan