8 weeks of clean living

…and I for one welcome our new robot bus overlords.

While much attention is lavished on air quality issues, the majority of our concern relates to pollutants found outdoors, such as exhaust from cars and industrial emissions. Indoor air quality is also important, especially given the amount of time that one spends indoors. Chemicals that cause allergies, asthma and headaches (among other symptoms) such as formaldehyde, benzene and acetone are often outgassed by common household products. One solution to this problem could be to go to Sharper Image and pick up an air purifier. These purifiers likely do a reasonable job of filtering the air, but they are fairly expensive and require a steady supply of electricity to function.

A little while ago, I visited a friend’s house and was immediately struck by the awesomely sweet smelling air that greeted me upon arrival. It turns out that his roommate is a landscape architect, and had filled the house chock full of plants, which were the source of the fresh air. When I moved down to San Diego, my mom bought me a great book called How to Grow Fresh Air by Dr. B.C. Wolverton. Dr. Wolverton covers 50 different houseplants and rates them all based on their efficacy in filtering chemicals such as those mentioned above. I bought five different plans that were recommended as easy to maintain, and so far none of them have died on me.

My favorite plant by far is the Dieffenbachia (or Dumb Cane, see below); it has grown rapidly, and has big broad appealing leaves. The only gotcha is that it is poisonous, so don’t let your kids or small house pets around it. I’m hoping to buy more plants over the coming months (I might even construct a plant tower using wire shelving), and maybe one day my house will smell as good as my friend’s.

Everyone knows that the iPhone is the only reason to put up with AT&T as a wireless carrier. (Though to be fair to AT&T, basically every US wireless character is pathetic and stagnant.) AT&T’s latest misstep, however, hits very close to home. Apparently, bills being sent to iPhone customers are running over 50 sheets of paper in length (thankfully printed double-sided) due to the inane itemization of every single data transmission made during the billing period. I visit web sites and check my email on my iPhone all the time, and each individual data transfer results in a line item on the resulting bill. The iPhone comes with an unlimited data plan, so each of these line items is billed at $0.00. I can’t imagine a more useless waste of paper. I signed up for paperless billing as soon as I set up my online account, so hopefully I won’t have to find one of these monstrosities in my mailbox. I would imagine that I am in the minority in this regard, though, amongst the hundreds of thousands of iPhone users, and thus we can add millions of wasted sheets of paper to AT&T’s long list of screw ups.

Yesterday I referenced a page put together by Chris Goodall, author of How to Live a Low Carbon Life. Goodall was also recently associated with an article that I find to be extremely disingenuous and misleading. You can find it here. The gist of the article is that driving may be better for the environment than walking, in certain circumstances. Basically the author assumes a beef diet, ignores the environmental cost of extracting and refining oil, along with that of manufacturing automobiles, and bungles in a variety of other ways (see excellent responses here and here) in order to come to a counterintuitive conclusion that reinforces an apathetic response to the environmental challenges of our day. A more thoughtful article would have pointed out how terribly inefficient our agricultural system/dietary choices must be to make walking even nearly as high impact as driving a car, since accelerating and decelerating a human body clearly requires less energy than accelerating and decelerating a car, which is a several thousand pound hunk of metal with a human body in it! (To be fair, the article does get to some of these points in a roundabout way later on.)

As an example of non-ridiculous journalism, this San Francisco Chronicle article (regarding charcoal versus gas for grilling) does a great job of admitting and embracing the complexity inherent in most emissions calculations without striving for the sensationalist headline. Would that all environmental journalism were like this.

In order to join my family for a weekend in Lake Tahoe, I hopped on a Southwest flight from San Diego to Reno. Despite the fact that air travel is a form of mass transit, it is extremely energy intensive, due to the large distances covered and the necessity of putting a huge steel pipe up in the air. For a quick overview of air travel’s impact on greenhouse gas emissions, check out the last couple paragraphs of this page.

Flying therefore represents a conundrum for environmentalists. Unlike driving, which often can be avoided through the use of alternatives such as walking, biking and mass transit, air travel has no reasonable substitute (unless you are John Madden). Thus the decision is ultimately between air travel and no travel. A couple air carriers have attempted to solve this issue by offering carbon offsets alongside plane tickets at the time of purchase, and Boeing is about to introduce its 787, which it touts as one of the most efficient passenger aircraft ever produced. These are positive changes, but it would still be better, environmentally speaking, to avoid a flight rather than take a flight in a 787 with carbon offsets.

Ultimately, then, I think air travel is one of the hardest activities to cut down at the source. On the other hand, certain attitude changes could make an impact. A friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, recently flew from Hong Kong to Toronto for acupuncture. Presumably he could have saved some money and the environment by finding a suitable (if not quite equal, apparently some of the best acupuncturists in the world are in Toronto) acupuncturist in Hong Kong. Further, I often find that short trips to Europe are often met with a bizarre form of moral approbation. When someone announces, “I’m going over to France to spend a couple weeks in the countryside,” one often hears in response, “Oh good for you!” I could be wrong on this, but I feel like travel for entertainment is morally equivalent to sitting on the couch and watching sports for two weeks (if not morally worse due to the substantial environmental impact). Both activities are simply entertainment.

In addition to some of the larger changes that I’ve been making, there are a host of little things I try to do that also have environmental consequences. Time for my first list!

I:

• Turn the water off while soaping my hands, brushing my teeth, and doing dishes (and generally try to waste as little water as possible)
• Turn the lights off whenever I leave a room
• Shop for groceries with a reusable bag, and when I do end up with a plastic or paper bag I use them as trash and recycling bags, respectively (I never have to use actual trash bags)
• Recycle everything that is recyclable, including electronic waste
• Unplug chargers and other electronics while not in use (also, I’ve turned off the circuit breakers for my electric heaters, since they draw power even when not in use)
• Use my cell phone in lieu of having an alarm clock
• No longer initiate or renew subscriptions to magazines or newspapers (they are painfully wasteful and obsolete these days)
• Never buy non-rechargeable batteries (they are awful for the environment, classified as household hazardous waste, and way more expensive in the long run than simply using rechargeables)
• Collect any extra unused napkins given to me at restaurants, etc. for later use, and use cloth napkins for dining at home (I never have to buy napkins)
• Take the stairs
• Reuse packing materials myself, or take the peanuts back to UPS/FedEx stores for reuse
• Pay bills online, and cancel all paper statements from financial institutions
• Try to stop as much junk mail as possible (see this helpful article)
• String as many trips together as possible if I have to use the car (and carpool when possible)
• Let my dishes air dry instead of using heated dry
• Buy environmentally friendly personal care products such as 100% recycled toilet paper, paper towels and facial tissues that are whitened without chlorine bleach, phosphate free dishwashing soap and laundry detergent etc.

There may be some small things that I should be doing that I’m not doing. Feel free to share some small green tips!

Today’s post comes in response to an excellent comment on an earlier post by Lauren titled “Environmentalism’s Socially Awkward Side.” Please read the comment here before reading this response.

Many of the changes that I have been highlighting in this blog have a win/win structure. That is, they tend to both benefit my health or finances along with the environment. For example, buying music online is normally cheaper than driving somewhere and purchasing it at retail, and also eliminates all of the energy waste involved in producing and transporting (essentially obsolete) physical media. It still took a switch in expectations and perspective, however, to change my pattern from buying CDs to buying digital files. Thus I think it is a great topic to write about because I believe that by pointing out the efficiencies involved I might encourage others to undergo a similar shift in perspective.

Not all environmentally friendly actions have this structure. Oftentimes purchasing an environmentally sound product results in a higher bill, not a lower one. For example, buying FSC-certified lumber will set one back a few more bucks than buying lumber harvested without regard to sustainability. (Note that in some grand sense the FSC lumber is probably less expensive to the future global economy when all of the externalities are factored in, despite one’s increased share of the burden.) In these cases it is necessary to draw a line past which one will not make the financial sacrifice for environmental gain. Other environmentally friendly actions come at the expense of quality of life or convenience. For example, taking cold showers or forgoing the use of a car are decisions that negatively impact one’s comfort and perhaps even happiness. Again, it is necessary to draw a line past which one will not make the quality of life sacrifice for environmental gain. Obviously, since I am engaging in this project, I should draw the line very close to the environmental gain side of the equation. In general, however, it seems unreasonable to expect even “concerned citizens” to make some of the financial and quality of life sacrifices strident environmentalism would dictate.

I have certainly compromised on cost over the course of this project. The most salient example of this occurred when I was purchasing some towels and bedding. Clearly the environmentally conscious behavior would involve buying organic cotton towels and bedding, as cotton is one of the nastier crops in terms of pesticide use, etc. Unfortunately, the substantial price difference moved me to purchase conventionally grown product. On the other hand, I have spent more in some cases in order to purchase a more environmentally sound product. All of the toilet paper, facial tissues and paper towels that I buy are made from 100% recycled material, whitened without chlorine bleach, and so on. The price difference in this case is much less significant, and therefore I feel better able to make the green choice.

Quality of life sacrifices are somewhat harder to analyze. Avoiding driving, hot showers and crab cakes can be frustrating at times, and the environmental benefits are intangible. I could go much further in my asceticism, though, and forgo things like refrigeration, movies and paper products in general, so clearly I am drawing a line. A good example of an approach without compromise is No Impact Man. His is an extreme example of environmental asceticism that I find fascinating if not broadly applicable (it’s difficult to bike to work from the suburbs).

In general, then, I think it makes sense for this blog to pay ample attention to the “no-brainers” like drinking tap water, driving more efficiently and turning off standby electronics. Hopefully, given the win/win structure of these activities, the barriers to changing one’s habits will be relatively low, and the changes will actually get made. The impact of these “easy” changes can still be substantial: if every household in America replaced just one lightbulb with a CFL, it would save enough energy to light over 3 million homes for a year and prevent greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to taking 800,000 cars off the road (according to ENERGY STAR).

I certainly wouldn’t expect the general public to make many of the changes that I am making, but if they made a few, and saved some money and the environment in the process, that would be progress.

After rearranging my entertainment center, I kept my Kill A Watt plugged in to discover what the resulting energy consumption looked like. Over the course of 215 hours, my new set up consumed only 1.49 kWh of electricity. This is in comparison to 7.3 kWh of electricity over 164 hours previously. The 215 hour period included watching several movies and playing lots of music through my speaker system. In between uses of my equipment, however, I used my power strip to turn off all the components and prevent idle energy use, which seems to have made a substantial difference (along with ditching the cable box).

I have a floor lamp that I have always thought might be an energy offender. Last night I plugged it into the Kill A Watt to see what I could find out. Astonishingly, over a 2 hour and 24 minute period, the lamp managed to use .75 kWh, or approximately half of the energy use of my entertainment system over the course of approximately 9 days. Upon further inspection, it turned out that this floor lamp draws over 300W when switched to its brightest setting (it has one other setting at which it draws over 180W). To put this in perspective, if I turned on every single CFL in my house (which essentially means every light in my house) I would still be drawing less electricity than if I had all the lights off and this single floor lamp on. By my calculations, I’ve already spent more than twice as much on electricity for this lamp than the lamp itself cost (it costs me approximately two dollars per month to run it, and I got it off of craigslist for $10). Needless to say, I’m going to be looking for an alternate floor lamp.

UPDATE: This short article gives some good everyday examples of how much energy a kilowatt-hour represents.

My roommate Marci told me about a series of lightbulb exchange events being hosted by the City of San Diego and SDGE. I was able to go to one yesterday and trade in five incandescent bulbs for five compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs). Check out the schedule for future trade-ins here (the events at Scripps seem pretty cool since one can also get a 2-for-1 pass to the aquarium at the same time).

CFLs have been covered to death as one of the easiest ways to save energy, as well as a little bit of money (Lighter Footstep has a good article about them here). Normally the savings on one’s electric bill far outweigh the higher upfront cost of CFLs (let’s say you pay $.10 per kWh and replace a 60W incandescent with a 13W CFL, over an 8,000 hour lifespan one would save around $35). When you can trade in incandescents you already have for free CFLs, however, it’s all profit.

CFLs do have a couple drawbacks compared to incandescents. They take about half a second to actually turn on, and then another 30 seconds to reach their full brightness. During this warmup, they use approximately as much energy as an incandescent, so it’s not really worth putting a CFL in a closet or somewhere where one doesn’t use the light for more than a few seconds. In the majority of use cases, though, they are preferable and indistinguishable from their incandescent counterparts.

I switched over most of my lightbulbs to CFLs back when I moved in, and now every fixture in the house has a CFL, except for the one in my closet and one out on my porch whose devious enclosure I haven’t been able to penetrate…

UPDATE: Green Wombat just posted a great article about the opportunities and challenges that Think and Tesla face in entering the global automobile market. Check it out!

A couple of nights ago I watched the 2006 documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? directed by Chris Paine. Though at times the movie threatened to degenerate into Michael Moore-esque theatrics and disingenuous editing, in general it was an entertaining glimpse into the factors behind the “failure” of electric vehicles (most notably represented by the GM EV1) in the mid-90s. The movie downplays some limitations of the EV1, such as its two passenger capacity, cost of production and charging time, but overall provides a compelling argument that there was a reasonably-sized (and sometimes fanatical) market for such a device.

Unfortunately, GM was too shortsighted to see the potential competitive advantages offered by developing EV (electric vehicle) technology, choosing instead to focus on drawbacks (for GM) such as the lack of a substantial maintenance revenue stream (EVs require almost no maintenance compared to their gasoline counterparts). Now GM’s CEO Rick Wagoner and R&D chief Larry Burns realize that the cancellation of the product was a mistake (see quotes at the bottom of the EV1’s Wikipedia entry), and GM is hard at work creating a spiritual successor to the EV1, the Chevy Volt (see below).

Other (more exciting and dynamic) car companies are also developing EVs. Tesla Motors is producing a sports car called the Tesla Roadster, which gets from zero to 60 in approximately 4 seconds while getting the equivalent of 135 MPG. The first production models should be in the hands of early adopters by the end of this year. Think Nordic is developing a more economical EV called the Think City, which will hopefully make it to the US by late 2008. Though these cars share some of the limitations of the EV1, they promise to be practical vehicles for a wide range of users.