By Kathleen in
Conservation
I’ve seen a lot of commercials lately for products that are being touted as environmentally-friendly that don’t really hit the mark (example: “Ford F-150, the most fuel-efficient truck in its class”). I roll my eyes and hope that the American public doesn’t fall for the fake sell. With gas prices in flux, I doubt they will.
While misleading advertising can make a skeptic out of me, I have also heard recently of some corporate and grass roots-led campaigns that are making simple adjustments which produce a positive environmental impact. Case in point: Recent drought concerns and food price hikes have spurred two giant food services companies, Sodexo and Aramark, to pull food trays from hundreds of college campus dining halls around the nation. Trays, you ask? Indeed. Early studies Read the rest of this entry »
As someone who has clicked YES in the past three years to every “sign this petition” offer regarding climate change regulation, I’m a little confused. There are too many groups, alliances, and coalitions to keep straight, and I’m not sure what they’re all really doing. I’ve signed many an online petition aimed to pressure congress into passing legislation that will create “green collar” jobs and stricter gas mileage standards, but the voice in my head has started to ask, fearfully: Does an online petition with 500,000 signatures even cause a ripple anymore? I still reluctantly open emails and click SIGN if it seems important, but in order to get a grip on how I can be involved online, I figured I’d do a little research about who’s who and what’s what:
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Not many women who’ve recently turned 30 can brag that their husbands gave them the gift of a toilet for the big day. I’m not making fun of Nate; in fact, I asked for a toilet. I’ve been thinking lately about upgrading a water-using appliance/utility to use less H20 in light of the overwhelming mess our metro area finds itself in when it comes to water supply and usage.
My ulterior motive for asking Nate for a birthday toilet was that I know the guy is as thorough a web-researcher as you will find, and that he would single out the best, most affordable option available. And he delivered.
In the “olden days,” your average toilet had a three gallon tank. Three gallons of water lost per flush– wow. Nowadays the standard low flow toilet has a 1.6 gallon tank. Our new Australian beauty, the Caroma, is a dual-flush toilet (with a #1 and #2 option, if you will) with a .8 gallon small flush and 1.2 gallon big flush. And the amazing thing is that it flushes like a champ with a 4-inch trap, twice as wide as the average. Check out this video of a guy flushing a large russet potato with the .8 gallon flush: http://mysa.vo.llnwd.net/o2/salife/012707potatotoilet.wmv
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In recent days I’ve started reading a book called Earth: The Sequel, which offers an exciting perspective on current efforts, both public and private, to “reinvent energy.” With a renewed sense of hope in mind, I did a little web-surfing this morning and found an article with some exciting news about our regional power company, Georgia Power.
Georgia Power has, in the last month, launched a green energy program for both business and residential customers in which customers can buy 100 kilowatt-hour blocks of renewable power (solar, wind, water, and biomass) to replace roughly 10% of their normal power consumption at a rate of $4.50 per month. The program has just been certified by an independent consumer protection program called Green-e, which certifies renewable energy programs in a similar way to how LEED certifies green construction projects. Georgia Power’s site claims that buying one 100 kilowatt-hour block monthly for a year will reduce the customer’s carbon footprint the equivalent of a 2,000 mile drive in a car. Nate and I just purchased two monthly blocks of renewable energy, adding an affordable $9.00 per month onto our power bill. Read the rest of this entry »
By Kathleen in
Uncategorized
Though we’ve been getting a lot more rain in Atlanta lately, I’ve clearly been in a blogging drought. Life has gotten in the way, but hopefully a revised shorter-entry approach will get me back on track.
Lord knows, there is a lot to talk about! While critical questions about climate change have gotten little airtime in the presidential race thus far, the “go green” movement is all the rage and countless corporations are hopping on board. I was most amused with a recent Chevy truck ad that featured two men driving other brands of pickup truck who were stranded and out of gas on the side of the road, until a Chevy truck driver who was clearly getting better gas mileage rescues them. Sheesh, I thought, that takes some major spin to get the consumer to be impressed by Chevy truck gas mileage.
Which leads me to my renewed purpose for this blog: what choices can we make that will have the greatest positive effect on our warming planet, and which choices are red herrings?
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By Kathleen in
Carbon offsets
After a few intense weeks of grad school final projects and exams, I am back in action! There has been so much news regarding climate change in the weeks since I last wrote, but I want to focus these next three entries on an innovative concept that has been around for a while: carbon offsetting.
- Carbon offset: A form of certification or credit that an individual or company purchases to mitigate their CO2 emissions.
- Carbon-neutral: Describes a net-zero carbon dioxide release into the atmosphere, brought about by the purchase of offsets. (The Vatican, by the way, is the first country to declare itself carbon neutral for the 2007 year)
- Emissions trading: A business-based, structured process whereby companies and industries buy emissions credits if their CO2 outputs exceed a certain level.
The concept of carbon offsetting for personal emissions has its roots in emissions trading, which was developed to hold industries accountable for excessive harmful emissions. While I assumed that this concept grew around the need to mitigate global warming emissions, the most well-established emissions trading structure in the U.S. was initiated in 1990, when acid rain concerns were at their height– companies purchased credits for any SO2 emissions instead of CO2 emissions.
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By Kathleen in
Mutterings
One could say that we’re living in a fascinating moment in history. I would also say that it is overwhelming. In the past two years, spurred by a horrible natural disaster in Hurricane Katrina and the release of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, U.S. media headlines have begun to swim with mention of global climate change. Thank goodness, the national debate has shifted from the question, “Is global warming a myth?” to “Exactly how bad is it?”. In the days when many argued that climate change scientists were overreacting, my take on the issue was that global warming was happening. Ironically, I also managed to avoid reading about much of the evidence that would support my view. Maybe not ironically… maybe intentionally. It’s scary stuff.
The national debate has changed, and I am now sitting neck-deep in overwhelming quantities of complicated, contradicting information about environmental activism and climate change. Because conservation is now “in”, a “light green” movement has emerged, asserting that we can help the planet without changing our lives in drastic ways– how about just cutting your shower a minute or two short? Buying recycled toilet paper? Trading that Lexus SUV in for a Lexus hybrid SUV? It is exciting to see a shift in national consciousness toward concern and conservation, but once everyone (read: corporate America) jumps on the bandwagon, the message is bound to get watered down.
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By Kathleen in
Plastic Bags
A Few Statistics
- Each year, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide, with the US alone burning through 100 billion.
- Producing 100 billion plastic bags takes 12 million barrels of oil
- Worldwide, 1% of all plastic bags are recycled
- Estimates for the amount of time it takes a typical plastic bag to break down range from 500 to 5,000 years
Bag Quest
It happened in stages: First, I started thinking of plastic bags as more than simply a vehicle for my groceries– it was an extra item. Next, I began to realize how many of them there were, eating up the cabinet space below my sink. From there, I began to politely inform grocery employees that I was “fine with a lot of items in each bag,” at which point the grocer would put twice as many items in a bag, but double-bag it. Then I realized that a local grocer had recycling bins for bags and dropped them off when I could. Now I use our odd variety of canvas bags to complete the shopping task.
I don’t have it down to a science yet; in fact, I often curse my way down aisle ten and have to leave a full cart to retrieve the forgotten canvas bags from my trunk. But people, I can’t tell you how great it feels to be free from the single most prevalent consumer item on earth. Granted, now I’m realizing that plastic bags hold most of my food purchases anyway, but the plastic Kroger bag is officially banned from my life, and it wasn’t even that hard.
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Along with more heavily researched issues, I want to post some concise entries that deal with “easy actions” you can take to curb waste and reduce your environmental impact. Reducing junk mail has never been an issue I thought I had any control over, but an article in the NY Times has me thinking otherwise.
Statistics:
- The average American household receives 26 pieces of junk mail per week
- An estimated 100 million trees are harvested annually to produce 4.5 million tons of junk mail
- 44% of junk mail is thrown away unopened
In 2003, U.S. congress passed a bill initiating a national “do not call” list that households could join, making it illegal for solicitors to call those numbers. A number of companies have latched on to this concept for junk mail, charging you a small annual fee ($15-30) to initiate and maintain a process that will cut your junk mail by up to 90%. One company, Greendimes, has over 50,000 customers and claims to have stopped almost 2 million pounds of junk mail from being sent.
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Statistics:
- 24% of the bottled water on the U.S. market, including Pepsi’s Aquafina and Coke’s Dasani, is filtered tap water.
- The San Francisco Department of Public Health has determined that their tap water costs the consumer $.03 per gallon, over 300 times less than the same amount of a typical bottled water
- A Brita faucet filter can remove 99% of existing lead and chlorine from municipal tap water
Making the switch
Given the environmental impact of the bottled water industry, I have a clear conclusion in mind: I don’t want it. Two questions remain, however:
1) Is bottled water more “pure” than tap water
2) What’s the best way to filter tap water?
To answer the first question, I’ll ask two others: what microbial demons reside in tap and bottled water, and who regulates it? Tap water regulation falls under the jurisdiction of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), while the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates bottled water. Both groups consistently screen for water contaminants ranging from microorganisms (i.e. giardia) to disinfectants (i.e. chlorine) to inorganic chemicals (i.e. lead).
EPA and FDA standards for safe drinking water are very similar, and if one were to rate which agency had stricter regulations, it would be the EPA with tap water. In fact, a published article from the FDA’s website states: “Each time the EPA establishes a standard for a chemical or microbial contaminant, the FDA either adopts it for bottled water or makes a finding that the standard is not necessary for bottled water in order to protect the public health.”
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