How much water is in your kettle? April 21, 2008

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the issue of climate change.  But, there are lots of small things that, when multiplied, can make an appreciable difference in how much energy we use.

Do you heat water for coffee, tea, or cocoa?  There’s one thing that I know I am guilty of: putting too much water in the kettle.  When I fill my travel mug in the morning, I want it to hold as much as possible.  It’s annoying to be rushing to leave the house, only to find that your mug is only 2/3 full.  So, what do I do? Make sure there’s plenty of water in the kettle before I turn on the stove.

As it turns out, it’s a very wasteful thing to do.  A recent Ethical Living Blog in the UK Guardian states the people routinely boil twice as much water as they need.   The Energy Saving Trust, a non-profit organization charged with cutting emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) by promoting the sustainable and efficient use of energy, concluded that if residents of the UK were to each boil the water they need to make a cup of tea instead of filling the kettle every time, they could save enough electricity in a year to run nearly half of all the street lighting in the country.

So, what can you do?  It just takes a minute to measure the amount of water required to fill your cup or mug and then adding it to the kettle before putting it on to boil.  If you do, you’ll have started the day by doing something good for the environment.

For a future post - which is more efficient, using an electric kettle, or the stove?  Comments are welcome in advance.

Greening your office March 26, 2008

Apparently even those who are dedicated environmentalists at home tend to be slackers in the office.   Is it the lack of ownership of the situation that makes people less dedicated, or maybe the anonymity?  At the risk of appearing to be a vigilante, I’ve started to do the following:

• I try not to print.  This has two benefits.  Aside from saving paper, it helps keep my desk neater.  There are some times that I have to print. When making copy edits I still prefer to have a hard copy.  When I can, I print double-sided, or if it’s a PowerPoint presentation, I print 2 slides on a page if not too many numbers or graphs are included.  One important step, from Dan Costa’s article at PC Magazine, is to use Print Preview (in the File dropdown menu in Word, or via the icon with paper and a magnifying glass).  Make sure your document isn’t just one line too long (if so choose Shrink to Fit) or that your spreadsheet isn’t spilling over into unnecessary pages.
• I turn out lights when I leave a conference room, and have been known to duck into unused rooms to turn lights off.
• I bring home my discarded papers to recycle.  Even though we all have blue recycling bins, the paper goes into the same garbage as everything else, so I keep a pile of recycling under my desk and bring it home every so often.  This has also encouraged me to print less.
• I have a china cup and often make my own coffee or tea.  Aside from decreasing the amount of garbage I generate in a day, it also saves money.  I must admit, however, that I often go to the cafe to buy coffee in the morning with my colleagues because I don’t want to miss the social aspect.

This leads me to one of the things I think is most important for us all to remember.  We don’t have to be perfect.   Whether it’s recycling or budgeting or dieting, we can’t expect to live up to impossible standards.  The point is that if we all try a little, we can make a difference.

Big Green Purse March 21, 2008

Big Green Purse is a website founded by Diane MacEachern, which focuses on the power of women to impact environmental issues by their shopping choices. According to Diane, women spend (I wonder if she means “control the spend”?) of $.85 of ever dollar spent in the marketplace, therefore women can influence change by choosing environmentally-safe, socially responsible products and services.

Diane has also just published a new book , also called Big Green Purse. Try to get it at your local library and save a tree!

No water / tap water / bottled water March 19, 2008

As World Water Day approaches, this Saturday March 22, it seems fitting to talk about bottled water. Maybe the tide is starting to turn. Beverage Digest reported that bottled water sales in 2007 grew only 9% vs. 16% in 2006 (excluding vending machines and Wal-Mart). Let’s hope that some of this is attributable to more consumers just refilling their water bottles with tap water.

An article by Richard Brill in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin details all the reasons why we shouldn’t buy bottled water. The discarded bottles at the side of the road or in people’s trash are only the tip of the iceberg. Apparently 90% of the environmental impact takes place before the bottle is opened. Read the article for some startling facts.

“What’s wrong with tap water?” ask members of The Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School’s Environmental Stewardship project. They found that it’s actually permissible for water labeled “spring water” to come from a tap, and that 25% of bottled water comes from municipal water systems.
What can you do?

1. Stop buying bottled water. If you must, buy it in a large container, so the plastic to water ratio is lower. Try not to buy it from a local producer to reduce its carbon footprint.
2. Recycle any plastic bottles you do purchase.
3. If you try to do good by reusing your plastic bottles, be aware that over time plastic bottles leach chemicals into the water, especially if cracked or exposed to high temperatures (e.g. a hot car), so only reuse them a few times.
4. Reusable glass or stainless steel is best. Here are a few places to order reusable containers: kleancanteen.com & mysigg.com.

Lastly, remember how fortunate we are to have safe and convenient tap water. Celebrated since 1993, World Water Day is an international day of observance and action to draw attention to the plight of the more than 1 billion people world wide that lack access to clean, safe drinking water. Major events and activities are being planned in New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle as well as select local communities. Instead of buying bottled water in the week ahead, drink tap water and sign up for the Walk for Water in New York, Los Angeles or Seattle, or for the Virtual Walk for Water, this Saturday, March 22, World Water Day.

Back to the future: Windpower on the seas again March 19, 2008

This is a bit off topic, but I can’t help but mention a newsworthy event. I read on the Lingua Franca blog that today The Beluga Group signed a contract to furnish a diesel freighter with sail power. The sails, by SkySails, a German company founded in 2001, are not like the sails of old. A 160 meter kite-like sail helped to propel the MV Beluga SkySails across the seas last month, and as a result 20% less fuel was consumed. The savings during the 2-month voyage added up to 2.5 tons of fuel, or $1000 a day. The goal is to save twice that much as the technology is improved.

There’s something majestic about seeing even the modern-looking kite-sail on the open sea:

SkySails expects that ships fitted with the special sails will be able to reduce their fuel consumption on average from 10-35%, and for short periods as much as 50% depending on the actual wind conditions and the time deployed.

Can you compost in the city? March 18, 2008

This is the little copper pail that sits on my counter so that it’s easy for me to drop my organic waste into it. I like its warm look, and I also like the fact that by using it I have reduced the amount of garbage I have to put out for pickup considerably. I have a big bin at the side of my house where I dump the scraps, old leaves, newspaper and dirt and wait for it to turn into rich black compost. I’ve been doing this for a couple of years, and it isn’t difficult. But, as I spend more time in the city, I wonder how it would be if I lived in an urban area. The collecting part would be easy. In the Bay area , some residents are provided with a small green bucket for their food scrap recycling.

They’re lucky enough to have curbside pickup of the food scraps and yard waste, which are then composted.

In NYC, it seems that it would be almost impossible to compost, but as it turns out, the Department of Sanitation established the New York Compost Project in 1993 to promote composting to NYC homes and businesses. They run composting workshops, including Indoor Composting with a Wormbin (participants receive a plastic wormbin, 1 pound of red wriggler worms, and a free copy of Worms Eat My Garbage) and Composting in the City or Backyard Composting, which offers a full overview of the production and use of compost. Those who are really dedicated can enroll in the Master Composter Certificate Program, which in addition to 18-23 hours of classroom instruction, 2 field trips, and 15 hours of supervised training also encompasses a 15-hour community service project.

NYC residents can take advantage of free compost givebacks coming up this spring, and can purchase large compost bins for only $20 instead of the usually $70.

Turn worn-out Crocs into footwear for others March 18, 2008

SolesUnited^sm is the name of a program set up to collect used Crocs^tm so that they can be repurposed into footwear that can be donated to those in need around the world.

How it works:

1. Wear your Crocs until the tread is worn and you don’t want them anymore
2. Donate old Crocs at a participating location, or mail them to the SolesUnited program.
3. They will be sorted, ground up, made into new SolesUnited shoes, and then sent to approved non-profit locations around the world.
4. The shoes are then donated to those in need.

So far, SolesUnited has donated over 1 million pairs of shoes. The goal for 2008 is to send a total of 2 million pairs to Armenia, Cambodia, Chad, Darfur, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Malawi, Mali, Moldova, Philippines, Romania, Swaziland, Tanzania, Thailand, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe.

“Plastic Loose Fill”, otherwise known as packing peanuts March 17, 2008

One of my favorite parts of writing this blog is using the tag surfer. By reading other blogs, not only have I been encouraged by the number of people taking an active role in promoting the care of our environment, but I’ve also learned so much about solutions that are addressing some of the issues that used to seem very troublesome. One of these issues is the problem of what to do with what we commonly call packing peanuts, or peanuts, but what the industry calls Plastic Loose Fill.

Believe it or not, there actually is a Plastic Loose Fill Council, whose mission is to develop, promote and implement the original use and subsequent recovery, reuse and recycling of polystyrene loose fill, or peanuts. The PLFC offers a Peanut Hotline on the website, where you can search for one of the 1500 peanut collection sites in the US.

Since I have been known to bring home boxes of peanuts from my office in order to save them from the landfill, this caught my eye. However, aside from the information about collection sites, something else on the site caught my eye. Keeping in mind that this site was created by major manufacturers of polystyrene loose fill, it was still interesting to read the following “facts”:

• Plastic loose fill can be reused.
• Over 30% of all EPS* loose fill is reused.
• The minimum recycled content in EPS loose fill is 25%.
• Post-consumer recycled-content EPS loose fill is sold throughout the United States.
• There are hundreds of collection sites for EPS loose fill in the US.
• Collection centers report that, on average, 50% of their loose fill needs are met with reusable loose fill donated by consumers.
• EPS loose fill is non-toxic, inert and made without chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).
• EPS loose fill is less than 1/4 of 1% of landfill volume.
• EPS loose fill is over 99.6% air.
• It takes 40% to 50% less energy to make EPS loose fill than to make a comparable amount of paper packaging.
• Atmospheric emissions from the production of polystyrene are only 1/2 to 1/3 of those from the production of a comparable amount of paper.
• Waste water volume from polystyrene production is 1/3 of that resulting from producing a comparable amount of paper.

*EPS= expanded polystyrene

It’s been a long time since I took a science class, and this all sounds almost too good to be true. In any case, I’d still not rather put them in a landfill, so whatever I can’t use for my own packaging needs can go to one of the collection centers for reuse. The UPS Store is one of the main supporters of this recycling program.

These peanuts are light as a feather, so there’s no excuse for not recycling them!

Salvage! March 17, 2008

When I started this blog I had planned to write about things I found discarded in my neighborhood. However, I’ve been surprised to find that many of the things I’ve found lying around have been at my own house.

my old door — and a toilet seen on the street

 

I’ve just learned that in some parts of the country, there are “thrift stores” for building and remodeling materials. One example is The Rebuilding Center, located in Portland, OR and in other locations in the US. They accept many types of reusable building or remodeling materials and will provide you with a receipt for a tax-deduction. Their website includes a list of items they will accept, or you can call them to ask about an item that’s not listed.

 

The items are sold to the public for prices that are from 50-90% below list. Some items are relatively modern and are just good deals, but others might be vintage materials or cast-offs from old houses being updated.

 

The non-profit Rebuilding Center diverts 4.5 million pounds of reusable building materials from landfills each year. There are currently over 500 successful centers repurposing building materials throughout the US and Canada. Unfortunately, the list doesn’t include any in New York. Sounds like a great opportunity for someone with a bit of building experience!

Pots, pots, pots March 16, 2008

According to the Missouri Botanical Garden, in the horticultural industry alone, about 350 million pounds of plastic is produced each year. Above is a small example of my own contribution to the problem. It seems ironic that gardeners, who are connected to the earth and who are trying to make a positive impact by improving its appearance, are inadvertent accomplices to the landfill debacle. Happily though, the tide is now turning, and there are some good options becoming available.

If you live near the Missouri Botanical Garden, you’re in luck. If not, there’s still a chance that a similar program will come to a town near you when town officials learn that since 1998, the Garden’s Plastic Pot Recycling Program has saved over 300 tons of plastic from ending up in a landfill. It’s the largest program of its kind, recycling both plastic pots and polystyrene cell packs and trays. The program has garnered great support from the gardeners in the St. Louis area.

The initiative has been so successful that the Garden eventually purchased three recycling trailers, which were placed at area garden centers where they were filled by customers on a weekly basis.

For 2008, the fleet of trailers will be expanded, and additional collection sites around the city will be established.

The garden pots and trays are recycled into landscape timbers, useful for building retaining walls and landscape borders. Timbers can be cut with a circular saw and drilled similar to wood.

Even better than a recycling program, Ball Horticultural Company has introduced Circle of Life™ Biodegradable Pots in partnership with Summit Plastics Company. The pots, available in several sizes, are made from rice hulls and when empty can just be crushed and added to a compost pile, where they will decompose in approximately six months. It may be some time before either of these options is readily available nationwide, but I’m happy to see that progress is being made in this area.