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Small choices add up to big differences

November 23, 2011 By 3 Comments

Automatic or manual entrance doors?Most Amer­i­cans are faced with a choice when they enter a big retail store... go through the auto­matic doors or the push-open doors?

If you are in a wheel­chair, there’s not much of a choice. But for the rest of us, I’d urge you to choose the man­ual side, because:

1. You will get some addi­tional exer­cise that would not oth­er­wise be part of your life.

2. You will save the energy that it would take to open the doors.

3. You will save the store the cost of the elec­tric­ity it would take to open the doors.

If you make this choice enough times, you will make a dif­fer­ence. If every­one you know makes this choice, we’ll all make a sig­nif­i­cant difference.

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One step forward, two back

November 1, 2011 By 4 Comments

Mobile charging stationI doubt if you read Autoweek mag­a­zine. That’s why I’m shar­ing this story from the Octo­ber 31, 2011 issue.

AAA now has trucks devoted to charg­ing stranded elec­tric cars in six dif­fer­ent US cities. At the moment, that would only be two vehi­cles — the Nis­san Leaf and the Mis­tubishi i. And there are maybe 25 actual cars float­ing around the US. So it’s a near-future-oriented program.

Any­how, I was amused at the thought of a rel­a­tively low fuel econ­omy truck being dri­ven across town to charge up an “ultra-green” car. It kind of defeats the purpose.

Another strange thing is that the trucks charge up the cars to travel another 3–15 miles ... to “reach a charg­ing sta­tion.” Good luck find­ing a charg­ing sta­tion. You might know that most fully-electric cars take about 24 hours to charge from a reg­u­lar house­hold cir­cuit. (A devoted 240– or 480-volt out­let drops the full charge time down to 3–6 hours.)

My con­struc­tive sug­ges­tion? Use a much cheaper tow truck and tow the car to the owner’s home. Or an office or store that has an elec­tric exten­sion cord.

Elec­tric cars aren’t ready for prime time. Yet.

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Label properly

October 17, 2011 By 5 Comments

Recycling at IKEAI love IKEA. But they did not get their trash cans right. What are blue recy­clables and what are green recyclables?

If I’m the only one with that ques­tion, no prob­lem. My guess is that oth­ers might be con­fused too. Many cumu­la­tive staff hours must have been spent on explain­ing which kind of objects go into each bin. And many peo­ple prob­a­bly were just con­fused and threw recy­clables into the trash bin.

The very sim­ple solu­tion would be to have dia­grams of types of objects that go into each bin.

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No bag please

January 28, 2011 By 12 Comments

Most of the time when you go shop­ping in the USA, the per­son behind the counter auto­mat­i­cally puts your pur­chased items in a plas­tic bag. That’s a bad default. Instead, they should pro­vide a bag only if you ask. I’d go so far as to say they should charge you for that bag. Then many would begin bring­ing their own bags.

In 2007, San Fran­cisco was the first Amer­i­can city to ban the use of plas­tic bags. 775,000 gal­lons of oil were used to make the plas­tic bags San Fran­cisco used the year before. (Info from SFGate.com.) Think of what a pos­i­tive impact their leg­is­la­tion has had!

In many parts of Europe, that has been law for an even longer time. And in some Euro­pean stores, you can­not get any­thing to put your shop­ping in. (That can catch an out­sider by surprise.)

The only good thing to be said for plas­tic bags is that they keep plas­tic bag man­u­fac­tur­ers in busi­ness. And pro­vide jobs. How­ever, that’s the same logic as say­ing it’s good to keep mak­ing high-alcohol sug­ary pop drinks that appeal to teenagers — because those com­pa­nies employ many people.

Occa­sion­ally I do get a bag, when I for­get to bring one with me. I’m not try­ing to be legal­is­tic — but I am hop­ing that if you buy and use reusable bags, you will enjoy the pos­i­tive impact you’ll be making.

I give my brother credit for the idea for this post. Thanks Bill!

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They wear out

March 17, 2010 By 4 Comments

oven-partSo, our oven quit. It came with our house. Heather loves it. We thought about get­ting a new one — because, as you know, repair can often cost as much as much — or more — than buy­ing a new whatever.

In this case, the repair costs $100 to 200 less than buy­ing a “new” refur­bished oven. We loved pre­vent­ing our oven from end­ing up in a land­fill. And Heather got to keep the oven she loves. But ouch! That part cost a mas­sive amount!

Filed Under: environment, Life Tagged With: ,

Could be better

February 19, 2010 By 2 Comments

evil-and-badThe Chinet Cor­po­ra­tion came out with a prod­uct that should never have been released to their ador­ing pub­lic — take­away cups to use in the com­fort of your own kitchen. The idea is, you brew your own cof­fee, mix it with your favorite milk and sugar sub­sti­tutes — and then put it in this dis­pos­able cup with a lid. That way you don’t have to wash a cup. You can just throw it away when you get to your office!

I might sug­gest — buy an insu­lated mug with a han­dle — and wash it. Land­fill con­tri­bu­tion? Zero. Wal­let depre­ci­a­tion? Zero.

And on their home page, they have the bold­ness to say, “Help Pre­serve Nature, Learn More”. Admit­tedly they try to be envi­ron­men­tally aware in some of what they do — but sell­ing such a com­pletely unneeded prod­uct is not respon­si­ble. Shame­ful, even.

Apolo­gies to those of you who wanted a light and fluffy post for your Friday.

Update: See the com­ments. I changed the title in Shane’s honor. He has a good point. (I had titled this post, “Evil and bad” — a bit excessive.)

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A great drink

May 25, 2009 By 2 Comments

ice-t

As it gets hot out­side (for those of you in the north­ern hemi­sphere), you need some­thing cool to drink.

My enviro-suggestion is a water with essence drink. All you do is put a herbal tea bag in the bot­tom of your glass, throw some ice on top, pour on some tap water, wait 5 min­utes, and stir. You can add sweet­ener if you like, though unsweet­ened works for me.

It has a more sub­tle fla­vor than iced tea. The tea bag will last for at least two fills.

I paid $2 for 25 pep­per­mint tea bags at Big Lots a few days ago, so the total cost per 14-oz glass is maybe 10c, even if I fac­tor in the cost of the elec­tric­ity it took to make the ice. (If you really want to get tech­ni­cal, I rode my bike to the store, so there was no fuel cost either.)

Enjoy!

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: , , ,

Earth Day is today

April 22, 2009 By Leave a Comment

trash

What can you do for Earth Day?

  1. Walk some­where instead of driving.
  2. Pick up some­thing along your walk­ing path and recy­cle it.
  3. Rinse, repeat. (In other words, do this on days other than just Earth Day.)

You might be sur­prised what your local recy­cler will accept today. These days, we have more in our recyc­ing bins at the end of the week than in our trash bins, almost.

Besides sav­ing energy through recy­cling, you will be increas­ing the enjoy­ment of those who walk on the path after you.

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Small change

April 6, 2009 By 2 Comments

cup-insulator

Here’s a way you can help the envi­ron­ment in a small way... say no to a cup insu­la­tor sleeve the next time you get coffee-to-go.

You will:
– save that much addi­tion to the land­fill
– save the cof­fee shop the cost of the insu­la­tor
– save the trans­port costs for that insu­la­tor sleeve to the shop and to the land­fill
– pre­vent trees from hav­ing to be chopped down

You say, “I don’t want to burn my hands!” Well, take a moment at the shop to let the cof­fee cool. You can’t drink it that hot, any­how! Use the extra time to pray, to enjoy look­ing at the peo­ple in the line or to read the newspaper.

If every­one would do this, thing of the cumu­la­tive dif­fer­ence it would make!

Iron­i­cally, this sleeve says, “Do as lit­tle as pos­si­ble.” I would add, “...to the environment.”

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Great transport idea

April 3, 2009 By 4 Comments

occasional-car

Some­times you just have to get there in a car. But buy­ing a car is hugely expen­sive. Even if you get an ancient beast, the repair costs can break your bank.

There’s a way around this. It’s the Occa­sional Car Club. You pay an hourly rate and 24c a mile, which includes gas and insur­ance. It’s a great thing if you just need a car for a few hours and aren’t going far. This spreads car own­er­ship across more peo­ple than just you. If this caught on, fewer cars would have to be made.

This con­cept is already work­ing in Europe. My buddy Rob, who lives in Stuttgart, Ger­many, is part of such a plan.

It’s not for every­body (and obvi­ously you have to live where some­thing like this is offered) — but it would be a great thing for some people!

By the way, the cool car shown in the above pic — and on their web­site — is not avail­able for rental.

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