It's Easy Being Green

It’s exciting to see that the Home Depot has brought back one of my favorite programs for the fourth year in a row: their annual Eco-Options Christmas Light Trade-In Event. Bring in any old incandescent string of Christmas lights (working or not) and receive a $3 to $5 credit toward the purchase of a new, energy efficient light strand. You can get a credit for up to 5 strands and you have until the 13th of November to participate.

What is exciting about this year’s trade-in is that they are allowing the credit to be used on all three major collections of LED lights they’re carrying including the Martha Stewart brand. Last year I was disappointed to find my Home Depot stores cleaned out of the few options they actually allowed for trade so props to them for expanding the program this year.

Are you wondering why you should trade up to LED Christmas lights? Click here to read more. If you’d like to know more about what Home Depot does to those old light strands once you trade them in, they produced a quick video this year explaining the process. Now go get your energy efficiency on this Christmas!

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In case you missed it, NPR’s Science Friday with Ira Flatow had a great little teaser this past week about their latest SciFri video. Flora Lichtman recently paid a visit to a geodesic dome home built in “Long Guy Land”, New York. The piece is fantastic and gives a tiny glimpse into a life less dependent on the man or the machine.

I won’t give too much away but I have to give props to former NYC firefighter Kevin Shea for taking an arm-chair idea and running with it. I find it especially funny that his neighbors just don’t get it and actually detest the idea. You can be sure though they would be the first ones knocking on Shea’s looking for refuge or help. Special thanks to the crew at Science Friday for bringing this story to light! Watch the video below and then share your thoughts. Would you live in a geo-dome? Do you have an unconventional home that is easy on the environment and your pocketbook?

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We’re all being confronted with a steadily rising price at the local gas pumps. I can’t believe that already, we’re facing $3.75 for a gallon of unleaded gas in Northern Arizona. I worry about how much higher prices are going to climb and how much this commodity runs my life and maybe even ruins it.

It seems like we will never see prices dip to the levels they were at four or five years ago. I can fondly remember filling up my gas tank in Phoenix with prices hovering around $1.50 a gallon. I can remember when the price climbed to $1.75, people were outraged. But here we are nearly double that amount in a five year period and everyone seems as calm as a Hindu cow. How does that happen? How do we just seemingly ignore the fact that the situation with oil is getting way out of control both with prices and with future supplies? It frustrates my wife and I a lot, so we’re trying to do what we can to limit our demand on oil.

We live about 12 miles away from the city in a small, relatively rural bedroom community. We both commute into town to work but we’re really trying to plan our trips smartly. Before we head to town, we think about where we have to go and what we have to do. Then, we plan our route making one big circuit. Not only does it save you the frustration of having to drive back and forth from one place to the next. It also saves you gas! While 12 miles into town and back hardly seems like a long trip, we’ve programmed ourselves to believe it is. That 24 mile round trip will burn one gallon of gas in our Nissan Maxima. That number makes me cringe, thinking about a 1 gallon container of gas being thrown out the window. When we come up with something we’d like to do in town, we try to think of other things we can accomplish if we’re going to burn the gas to get there. It’s a great, easy technique that we’ve found works really good to make a dent in how much gas we consume.

We’ve also started talking about trying to buy a hybrid car. Our 1999 Nissan Maxima gets about 26 miles per gallon city driving and 31 on the highway. That’s really not bad compared to some other “energy hogs” driving on our roads today. Considering a Toyota Prius hybrid can get 44 miles per gallon, we’ve got a long way to go! We can’t afford to buy a home in our area because prices are way out of line for first time home buyers. So, we’re thinking about investing our money in vehicle that will save us from the pain at the gas pump.

I’ve been doing some research on hybrid cars and I’m just really not impressed with the way auto manufacturers are finding ways to save us money and energy. Chevy has announced a new hybrid Malibu but it’s only rated at 24mpg (miles per gallon) in the city and 32 on the highway. That’s just a 2mpg increase over the normal engine. That hardly seems worth it! Ford’s hybrid Escape SUV get’s about 34mpg in the city, 30 on the highway. That’s pretty decent but the price seems too high starting at $25,075. Buying American would be nice and I’d feel better about supporting some of the last remaining manufacturing that goes on in our country or at least supposedly does. But it seems like once again, the foreign automakers are leading the pack on hybrids. Hopefully American automakers will get their act together or just like our oil reserves, they’ll dry up.

Here’s some cool resources I found on the web while doing my research. The Fed’s fuel economy website gives you details on the current tax credits associated with buying a hybrid car:
Federal Fuel Economy Website

To find rebate and incentive programs offered by your state you can head to the U.S. Department of Energy website:
Alternative Fuels and Advanced Vehicles Data Center

And, for those of you that would like to see some side by side comparisons of hybrids, head to the website by the Union of Concerned Scientists:
Hybrid Center

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So, maybe you’re considering a trip to escape everything during the holidays.  Or, maybe you’re thinking about treating yourself to some time alone after the holidays!  Whatever it may be, there are now more ways than ever to travel in a “green” way.

The first and most obvious way to travel green is by putting some careful thought and consideration into your trip.  This can be as simple as running your daily errands and considering a gas-saving route to complete them.  If you’re going to be hitting the road, heading to Grandma’s house, you can make sure that your tires are inflated to proper pressure, pack a little lighter and make sure to use that cruise control set around 65 or 70mph to get the most out of your gas mileage.  You could also rent a hybrid car for your trip.  Most of the big rental car companies now offer hybrids and will even teach you how to use them if you’re feeling intimidated about the technology on-board.  There’s now one whole rental car company that rents nothing but environmentally friendly cars in California and Phoenix, AZ.

But with the current green movement underway, there’s now all sorts of environmentally friendly ways to travel about.  You could plan to visit green cities.  One city that’s consistently ranked tops for it’s green way of life is Portland, Oregon.  The city is surrounded by nature, has a great mass transportation system, plenty of parks and open space and a host of environmentally responsible hotels and restaurants.  What could be better?  If Portland, Oregon isn’t in your trip planning future you could look for green hotels at any destination.   There’s now a Green Hotels Association, where innkeepers can pledge to make a difference with their property. You can check out a listing of their members by clicking this link to the Green Hotels website.  If you can’t find a listing for a green hotel in the area you’re headed there’s some steps you can personally take at any hotel.  The number one suggestion: don’t have your room serviced every day.  The wastefulness of washing every room’s sheets and towels once a day when the same people are staying in the room is ridiculous.  You don’t wash your stuff at home that much, why let the hotel do it!  Also, take your own bottles of soaps and shampoos so you don’t have to use the ones at the hotel.  If you do use them, take the leftover with you and get the most out of it before throwing away the packaging.

If you’d like to literally lend a helping hand to the environment and have an unforgettable trip, there’s several groups offering ecological experiences.  One based in Flagstaff, Arizona takes on projects for places like the National Park Service.  You volunteer your time to the task at hand and pay a fee that covers food and expenses, usually for a week at a time.  You can log onto the Wilderness Volunteer website to get an idea on what kinds of trips they have to offer.

Last but not least, when you head out of the house for that trip, shut it down!  Lights are essential to make your house look lived in while you’re away.  But, put those lights on timers so you’re not wasting electricity 24/7.  If you haven’t already, change the bulbs to compact fluorescents.  That will also help you save the cost of energy.   You should also unplug electronics that always suck power, no matter what.  These are your VCR’s, DVD players, televisions and most of all…your computer.  If you’re not going to be home to read your email for a week, turn it off!  There’s so many fun, new ways to tread a little lighter when we head out to travel.

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The idea of turning our waste into energy we all can use has been around for awhile.  Now a professor at the University of California – Davis, has developed a new technique to get more energy out of that garbage.  Ruihong Zhang has been working on her Biogas Energy Project for the past eight years.  Now the university has taken the steps to acquire the license on the product and a power company has even signed on to adapt the unit for commercial use.

The piece of technology Zhang has been toiling away on is called an “anaerobic phased solids digester”.   This type of machine is already in use at wastewater treatment plants and livestock farms around the nation, breaking down the sewage into usable gas.  Zhang has apparently improved the technology to allow the use of more wastes like food scraps, yard clippings and animal manure.  It also apparently cuts the processing time in half and produces hydrogen and methane.  Other systems apparently only produce methane.  That would be a true energy revolution, just like bio-diesel.  Can you imagine the food scraps we don’t eat and animal manure being turned into a fuel for our car?  That would be truly amazing.

UC Davis estimates that about 5 million tons of food scraps go into California landfills every year.  If one ton can produce enough energy for the average day at 10 homes, that year’s worth of food could power 50 million houses for one day or 130,000 houses for the entire year.

If you’d like to read more about Zhang’s system, head over to the website of UC Davis.

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It’s fantastic that Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs or CFL’s are becoming so mainstream. You can find the bulbs just about anywhere, helping consumers save 75% or more energy just by switching out their filament based bulbs. But it seems we’ve reached another “cart before the horse” situation with CFL’s: what to do with the bulbs when they burn out?

CFL’s contain a small amount of mercury. Of course, we’ve heard the dangers surrounding mercury for years. That’s why most thermometers gauge temperature using an alcohol solution instead of mercury. It’s toxic and can cause major environmental problems by building up in living organisms over time and eventually work its way up the food chain. So, throwing CFL’s out isn’t a really great option where they just end up in a landfill and release the toxic mercury into the ground. The technology already exists to recycle CFL’s easily and put those chemicals to use in more bulbs. However, there are only a few recycling centers set up at this point. Unless you live in the Pacific Northwest or Minnesota, you’re going to have to pay a premium to recycle those bulbs. In fact the three companies online that offer you a shipping container to mail those CFL’s back for recycling charge between $15 and $75 per container!

Wal-Mart is doing their part to get people into the CFL spirit by selling boat loads of them at stores nationwide. I think they should do their part just like they’ve done with the plastic bag recycling bins seen at most stores. They should setup bins so customers can deposit burned out CFL’s when they go shopping. Here in Flagstaff, our city’s hazardous waste disposal center will take the CFL’s and ship them out but that means driving all the way out to the dump. That’s hardly convenient either. It seems until more people start demanding easier CFL recycling, it’s going to continue to be an cost prohibitive chore.

For more information on properly disposing of CFL’s or what to do if one breaks in your house, head to the Energy Star website. If you’re interested in paying for one of those $15 shipping containers, you can head to Sylvania’s Recyclepak website. What do you do with your CFL’s when they burn out? Does your city or county make it easy to recycle them? Tell me about your experience.

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Now more than ever, American companies need to step up their game and innovate. We’re now in the race of our life with growing economies all across our globe and if we don’t smarten ourselves up, I’m afraid of where we might find our great nation a few decades down the road.

One industry I’ve felt needs to get much better at the innovation game lately is the good ‘ol Detroit motor works. For too long American automotive companies have been stuck on bigger, badder, more oil-guzzling tanks that ferry soccer Moms from one end of the city to the other or for dear old Dad to simply drive daily back and forth to the office.

While greener vehicles are on the rise, I think American automakers have been slow to think ahead and join the trend. GM started out remarkably several years back when they unveiled the EV-1 but then later recalled the vehicles and mothballed the program for reasons we will probably never fully understand. Fast forward 15 years later and here we go again with most of the American automakers releasing some sort of all-electric vehicle to compete with the ever-growing foreign car market.

I’ve been a huge proponent behind the release of Nissan’s Leaf and both Homestead Hottie and I dream of parking one in our own driveway sometime in the near future. Speaking of the Leaf, did you know you’ll soon be able to use your cell phone to pre-heat or pre-cool the cabin of your car while it is plugged into the power outlet? That’s a new little fact I learned today while reading about all the negative side-effects to letting your car idle in the driveway so you can pre-heat on those cold winter days.  I also need to give some love to my American ingenuity too, namely Chevy’s brand new Volt.   I am ecstatic that GM seems to be jumping on the electric bandwagon too, trying to innovate and develop the cars of our future that will help evolve and lessen our reliance on foreign oil. Speaking of oil, remember that pesky disaster in the gulf thanks to BP’s Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill that lasted for months?

GM has taken ingenuity and environmental stewardship to a new level by finding a way to recycle those oil-soaking booms that were used to skim the spill off the ocean’s surface. So far the automaker has been able to help divert about 100 miles of the oil soaked booms from landfills by turning it into new plastic parts used under the hoods of the Volts. The recycling process will produce about 100,000 pounds of plastic resin for the Volt’s components, enough material to supply the first year production needs of the Volt’s roll out.

Image courtesy GM

The parts are used to deflect air around the Volt’s radiator and are made from 25% of that boom material and another 25% or recycled tires coming from GM’s Milford Proving Ground vehicle test facility. The remaining 50% is a mix of post-consumer recycled plastics and other polymers.

The parts, which deflect air around the vehicle’s radiator, are comprised of 25 percent boom material and 25 percent recycled tires from GM’s Milford Proving Ground vehicle test facility. The remaining is a mixture of post-consumer recycled plastics and other polymers. There is no doubt this development helped the Volt land its latest award of Green Car of the Year by Green Car Journal.

Image courtesy GM

The recycling initiative doesn’t just end at the Volt though. GM has started recycling their manufacturing materials at every stage of their lifecycle. They are using renewable materials in cars and trucks that are at least 85% recyclable. Used tires, old plastic bottles, denim and nylon carpet are all redirected from landfills and reused in select GM vehicles.

GM facilities worldwide recycle 90 percent of the waste they generate. The automaker recently announced more than half of its worldwide facilities are now landfill-free – all manufacturing waste is recycled or used to create energy.

This is American ingenuity and innovation I can be proud of and more companies need to be striving to do the same. They also need to not rest on their laurels and continue pursuing even better ways to make their manufacturing processes even more environmentally friendly and sustainable.  Have you considered buying a new electric car?  Maybe you’ve already purchased one.  Leave a comment below and let us know your experience.

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