Podcast: Renewables and Conservation

"Hey Mr. Green: I've contacted my power company and switched to 100% renewables. Is it still important to keep up with other energy-saving practices in my home?"

Click here to listen to the answer!

Pox on Fox

Mr. Green is busy on his world-wide publicity tour for his new book. In the meantime, here's a Mr. Green classic column from August 2007.

Hey Mr. Green,
My whole family had embraced the concept of compact fluorescent bulbs (because they are so efficient), but a negative report from Fox News about their mercury hazards has us a little confused. Can you respond to our concern? --Carl in Center Moriches, New York

Hey Carl,
Thank you for calling my attention to this hatchet job, which I never would have noticed because I try to avoid the right-wing contrivances that Fox peddles as fair and balanced.

The people at Fox News are either brain-damaged from huffing mercury (they do seem to have a fondness for the highly toxic) or they have unscrupulously cherry-picked their facts. (In their sniping about the rules to replace incandescents with compact fluorescents [CFLs] "either adopted or being considered in California, Canada, the European Union and Australia," it's surprising that they overlooked the bulb-replacement programs in Cuba and Venezuela. That would've given them a fine opportunity to present compact fluorescent bulbs as part of a communist takeover.)

This classic example of enviro-bashing is full of flaws. First, the Fox writer trots out one report of one environmental bureaucrat's overreaction to a bulb breakage to make it sound like a busted CFL will turn a house into a Superfund site. The fact is, CFLs do contain mercury, but nowhere near enough to provoke panic or evacuation. If you break a bulb, you can do the cleanup yourself, without renting a moon suit or contacting authorities.

The EPA advises the following treatment:

1. Open a window and leave the room for at least 15 minutes (to let the mercury vaporize).
2. Remove all materials (i.e., the pieces of the broken bulb) without using a vacuum cleaner. You don't want even a small amount of mercury lurking in your vacuum. To do so:
   • Wear disposable rubber gloves, if available. (Never touch the bulb pieces with your bare hands.)
   • Carefully scoop up the fragments and powder with stiff paper or cardboard (you don't want the stuff to get on your broom or dustpan either).
   • Wipe the area clean with a damp paper towel or disposable wet wipe. Sticky tape, such as duct tape (yet another use for the versatile material!), can be used to pick up small pieces and powder.
3. Place all cleanup materials in a plastic bag and seal it. If your state permits you to put used or broken CFLs in the garbage, seal the CFL in two plastic bags and put into the outside trash (if no other disposal or recycling options are available). If your state doesn't allow this, consult the local hazardous-waste authority for safe-recycling information. Some hardware stores will also accept old bulbs; to find a recycler near you, try Earth 911, or (800) CLEAN-UP, for a location near you.
4. Wash your hands after disposing of the bag.
5. The first time you vacuum the area where the bulb was broken, remove the vacuum bag once done cleaning the area (or empty and wipe the canister) and put the bag and/or vacuum debris, as well as the cleaning materials, in two sealed plastic bags in the outdoor trash or protected outdoor location for normal disposal.

So much for that part of Fox's story, but I'm not quite done with calling them on their hokum. So read on, if you wish. The Fox piece chides environmentalists for contradicting themselves by promoting fluorescent lightbulbs while having "whipped up so much fear of mercury among the public that many local governments have even launched mercury thermometer exchange programs" and going "berserk at the thought of mercury being emitted from power plants."

Yes, as Fox notes, a fluorescent bulb contains around 5 milligrams of mercury (although some brands, such as Philips Lighting, claim their bulbs have as little as 1.23 to 3 milligrams). What Fox conveniently doesn't bother to mention is that a thermometer can contain 140 times as much mercury as a fluorescent lightbulb, making concern about these instruments eminently reasonable. Nor is it exactly going "berserk" to worry about mercury from power plants. Coal-burning power plants emit 50 tons of the stuff every year, around 40 percent of the total mercury emissions in the United States.

Since residential lighting accounts for about 5.7 percent of our total national electricity consumption--about half of which is generated by coal--creating power for home lighting releases about 1.4 tons of mercury every year. And since incandescent bulbs account for about 88 percent of all bulbs, they are responsible for emitting around 1.2 tons of mercury a year.

Let's imagine for a moment that all 4 billion residential lightbulbs have become CFLs, each one with an average life span of 5.5 years (the minimum for EPA-approved bulbs). That means we'd have to change about 727 million fluorescent bulbs a year. At five milligrams of mercury per bulb, that adds up to about four tons of mercury. Since fluorescents use only 25 percent as much energy as incandescents, installing them in all houses would decrease mercury emissions from power plants by 0.9 tons a year.

So even in the incredibly unlikely scenario that every single dead bulb were smashed, and its contents released into the environment, switching to CFLs would yield a maximum 3.1 tons of mercury each year--the 4 tons in them minus the 0.9 tons of emissions they offset. (If all bulbs used were the longer-lived models, with a life span of nine years, the net emission would drop to 1.9 tons annually even if not a single bulb got recycled. And as lower-mercury bulbs came online, the net release would drop even more.)

Fox simply ignores the fact that people don't have to throw away all those burned-out fluorescents in the first place. About 25 percent are already being recycled, just because the government requires businesses to do so. If consumers were better educated about compact fluorescents, they would recycle more of them, as they have learned to do with other materials. If we created an economic incentive--a stiff deposit on CFLs, for example--recycling rates would vastly increase, just as they have with cans and bottles in states where container deposits are required.

Of course, by focusing on mercury, Fox also fails to note that even the shorter-lived fluorescents would eliminate about 100 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants alone, and an equivalent amount of other pollutants. That's something to weigh heavily even against the heavy metal mercury.

Environmentally,
Mr. Green

Grave Matters

Mr. Green is busy on his world-wide publicity tour for his new book. In the meantime, here's a Mr. Green classic column from February 2007.

Hey Mr. Green,
Why assume that you have to have a lawn on your grave site ("Hey Mr. Green," May/June 2006)? — Herb in Ithaca, New York

Because I've already bought a grave plot, and the cemetery association maintains conventional turf. But I'm sticking with the site, which features assorted ancestors and dearly beloveds, scoundrels and all. Call such a custom deeply spiritual, profoundly human, or just stupidly sentimental, but it remains the preference for many of us.

Environmentally conscious folks who are less attached to tradition can join a growing movement for green burial, which inters ashes or unembalmed corpses in simple caskets, shrouds, or urns in woods or meadows that retain their original character. To learn more, visit greenburialcouncil.org.

Food for Thought on Meat

Mr. Green is busy on his world-wide publicity tour for his new book. In the meantime, here's a Mr. Green classic column from January 2007.

Several readers have written asking why, although I recommend limiting meat consumption, I don't come out and demand total abstinence. Well, call me conservative (ooh, how that would hurt), but at this point, I am not convinced that completely eliminating meat and fish from our diets is best for the environment. I've heard the main arguments--(1) that it takes eight or more pounds of grain to produce a pound of meat, (2) that livestock raising pollutes air and water, and (3) that eating meat violates animal rights--and I'll try to address them one by one.

The grain-to-meat ratio is not as inefficient as it may first appear. The primary grain fed to cattle is corn, which has a relatively low protein content. A pound of beef contains three or four times as much protein as a pound of corn, and unlike corn, it's complete protein. In addition, meat contains vitamin B₁₂ and certain micronutrients not present in grains. It's the old apples and oranges problem--grains and meat are just not the same thing.

Also, not every pound of an animal is produced by feeding it grain. Cattle, for example, put on a good deal of their weight from hay and pasture. Besides, the overfeeding of grain is more a result of popular taste than agricultural necessity. Consumers have been taught to favor fatty "marble" in their meat, which is produced by grain feeding. Some environmentally friendly producers get tasty results by grazing their cattle and cutting way back on the grain.

The simple weight-to-weight comparison also fails to account for the role of livestock in a healthy agriculture. Animals produce manure, which is (and has been for millennia) a very important source of fertilizer. Without livestock, more chemical fertilizers would have to be used. Farm animals also convert nonedible grasses into edible food without the need to plow up land (a major cause of soil erosion). Cattle, in particular, provide another source of fertilizer, since the alfalfa they eat fixes nitrogen in the soil.

This argument also ignores the fact that from time immemorial, food has not been the only purpose of livestock. Any meaningful comparison has to take into account the byproducts of meat production, including leather (a $2 billion industry in the United States). As far as I know, no one has looked closely enough at the entire picture, holistically examining all environmental, agronomic, and economic aspects of livestock growing for different ecosystems. Until they do, and until I see compelling evidence for zero meat consumption, I'll stick with the less radical stance of limiting--not eliminating--meat eating.

The second major argument against meat is that raising livestock pollutes. Yes, indeed it does. Terribly. However, this does not have to be the case. There is nothing intrinsic to livestock production that necessitates the cramped feedlots, hog and chicken factories, and bad grazing practices so notorious for their environmental damage.

The main reason livestock is being raised in this filthy and brutal way is to meet the U.S. demand for a huge quantity of cheap meat. This is exactly why I recommend eating a lot less meat. By eating less but paying more per pound, we could then support farmers who raise meat in an environmentally beneficial way and treat their animals humanely.

People and animals are both victims of the country's long-standing "cheap food" policy that mostly benefits agribusiness. But that's a whole nother topic. (Additionally, we can't stop meat production just by fasting from meat. Whether we like it or not, the worldwide demand for meat is increasing, and you can be sure that many countries we export it to would not apply any pressure for environmentally sound production. Italy, for example, famed for its healthful diet, now consumes ten times as much meat as it did 50 years ago, and it's hard to see what would stop such a trend in industrializing countries like China.)

The third case made against meat, the animal-rights argument, is certainly valid when creatures are made to suffer unnecessarily, as in factory farms. This, however, is again a question of method. There is no reason livestock has to suffer so that McDonald's can sell more bacon burgers--no reason, that is, except to keep those burgers cheap. To stop this suffering, we have to demand a change in the method of production. This is happening, though much too slowly.

Of course, some animal-rights advocates would argue that we have no moral right to take the life of any creature to feed ourselves. I find it hard to accept this argument for two reasons: First, human beings have clearly evolved to consume meat and have probably done so for several million years. Biologically speaking, we are just another type of predator, taking prey just as a shark eats other fish or a cougar eats a deer. The animals we now slaughter for food would be quickly eaten by other predators if we turned them loose. What would we do then to protect their "rights," kill the predators? Philosophically, I find it rather anthropocentric for human beings to extend human laws against homicide to other species, when so many are in the evolutionary business of killing.

Secondly, the brutal truth of agriculture is that you have to kill to be a vegetarian. I smash snails to keep them from eating my vegetables. I don't shoot squirrels, even though they steal my figs and guavas, but I'd be rather pleased if a predator carried a few of them away. Let's face it: Any farmland displaces myriad creatures or requires them to be chased away, fenced out, or killed, so even the strictest vegetarian or vegan has blood on his or her hands. Ecologically, I suppose the purest thing we could do would be to give up all forms of agriculture and revert to a hunting culture. But going full circle back to our predatory beginnings would leave little time for us to engage in these kinds of debates.

P.S. Most of this argument applies to fish as well, which I've covered in other columns.

Why Turn Out the Lights?

Mr. Green is busy on his world-wide publicity tour for his new book. In the meantime, here's a Mr. Green classic column from February 2007.

Hey Mr. Green,
I would like to encourage my son-in-law to turn off the lights when he leaves a room. To do that, I would have to show the cost benefit. Can you help? — Ruth in Watertown, Massachusetts

In olden times, a household authority figure would say, "Turn the lights out," and that would be that. But today's contentious whippersnappers apparently need a detailed financial analysis before flipping the switch. Fortunately, the math is on your side. Electricity rates are based on the number of kilowatts used per hour, or kilowatt-hours (1 kilowatt equals 1,000 watts). All you have to do to find the daily cost of operating a lightbulb is multiply its wattage by the number of hours it burns, then multiply that by the kilowatt-hour (kWh) rate printed on your utility bill and divide the result by 1,000.

So if a 100-watt bulb burns for ten hours, and the power company charges ten cents a kilowatt-hour, it costs a dime a day to keep lit. That's about $3 per month, or $36 per year. Leaving a half dozen bulbs burning would waste more than $200 per year. If your son-in-law turns off the lights and puts the annual savings into an account that draws 5 percent interest, in ten years he will have about $2,650, a nice little sum he could invest in some booming alternative energy company.

Tales From the Crypt

Mr. Green is busy on his world-wide publicity tour for his new book. In the meantime, here's a Mr. Green classic column from January 2007.

After I wrote that "I'll have all the lawn anybody could ever want soon enough in my cemetery plot," Herb from Ithaca, New York, wondered why I plan on being buried under conventional turf when greener options are available. Other readers have suggested that I arrange to have my corpse composted, or to recycle the usable parts by donating them to medical research. Some have just demanded my corpse.

In considering these matters, I realized there's more to this topic than I thought. Looking for connections between death and the environment led to some rather dark philosophizing. I've already suggested that lawns are a type of death denial, in that they're replicas of cemeteries where the owner glides on the mower, godlike and immortal, over the pristine green, enjoying the illusion of immunity from burial below. Replacing lawns with a variety of plants requires us to cope with dirt, death, and decay--literally as well as figuratively.

On the other hand, I cherish the custom of setting aside sacred places or objects that help us commune with the dead, a tradition that unites so many cultures, from Chinese to African, Mexican to Native American, with my own Catholic brethren--though the spirit of the latter's All Souls' Day, like Christmas, seems to have been subjugated to the vulgar commercialized frenzy of today's Halloween. I'm just waiting for the kiddies in their $200 designer costumes to start demanding gourmet candy, at which point, they'll get one raisin per bag (which overprotective parents will promptly throw away, convinced it's laced with poison).

Anyway, while cemeteries are obviously not a very good idea from a strictly environmental point of view, their usefulness in remembrance rituals is perhaps ultimately beneficial enough that the trade-off is worth it. Being more in touch with our mortality might help us to reduce the desperate consumption that is often driven by fear and the urge to banish death. Owning the "safety" of an SUV, building trophy homes with elaborate alarm systems, "protecting" our families with guns under our pillows (while electing right-wing politicians who loathe gun control and the environment), taking drastic medical measures to maintain our loved ones in a vegetative state--maybe these are, at their essence, tricks to distance ourselves from death and the dead.

Greener burials--which I strongly support--might be more popular if there weren't as many misconceptions about the disposal of remains floating around as there are myths about where your spirit goes to hang out after you're dead. For example, some people think that embalming is required by law. This is only true if your corpse is being transferred across state lines. A requirement for embalming would violate the religious freedom of Jews and Muslims, whose faiths forbid the practice.

Why is this important to know? Because embalming is probably the most environmentally hazardous aspect of how we handle our dead. Treating the typical corpse takes about 2.5 gallons of embalming fluid, in which the active ingredient is formaldehyde, a toxic substance and possible carcinogen. With about 1.7 million corpses being buried each year and eight ounces of formaldehyde per gallon of embalming fluid, we're talking around 250,000 gallons of the poison. (Little wonder the European Union is considering a ban on formaldehyde use for embalming.)

Other concerns that often come up are relatively minor in the big scheme of things. Though there are certainly a lot of resources spent on conventional caskets and burial vaults--about 105,000 tons of steel, 1.6 million tons of concrete, and around 35 million board feet of hardwood--that's but a fraction of the materials used annually in building, road, and automobile construction. A three-ton SUV contains ten times as much steel as the casket you'll ride in if you get killed when it rolls over.

In terms of land use, the typical cemetery can hold between 1,000 and 2,000 dearly departeds per acre, so we're devoting a maximum of 1,700 acres of new cemetery ground each year. Not much land compared to what we dedicate just to parking lots. As always, though, Mr. Green favors a minimalist approach. If there were ever a time to avoid conspicuous consumption, it would be after you're no longer around to enjoy it!

Even cremation, which is more environmentally sound than conventional burial, has come under, um, fire by environmentalists. Some fret about the amount of energy it takes to go from ashes to ashes. Others worry that vast amounts of toxic mercury escape from dental fillings when the bodies that held them are heated to the necessary temperatures. On the first point, thermal processing of a body, starting with a cold furnace, takes an amount of energy equal to that in 16 gallons of gasoline--or about what an SUV burns through in 200 miles. And even this figure is high, because once the furnace is stoked for the day, later customers require far less heat. As for the fillings fear, let's do the math: The average American has 7.22 fillings, each of which contains 50 to 100 milligrams of mercury, for a maximum of 722 milligrams per mouth. With 721,000 folks choosing cremation each year, that's a maximum possible mercury total of 520,562 grams, or about 1,100 pounds. That's also assuming that all fillings contain mercury--and that all the cremated geezers had any teeth left anyway.

One EPA study put the figure at a more realistic 278 pounds per year from all the crematoriums in the country--a fraction of what's emitted by power plants and other industrial facilities. Far more mercury escapes just from fluorescent bulbs that are tossed out instead of recycled. Environmentally, you just can't make up for living poorly by dying well.

Podcast: Refrigerators

"Hey Mr. Green: Should we replace our 1990 refrigerator? I know new models are much more efficient, but my husband asked about the environmental costs of removing and disposing of the old fridge, plus manufacturing the new one."

Click here to listen to the answer!

Make No Bones

Mr. Green is busy on his world-wide publicity tour for his new book. In the meantime, here's a Mr. Green classic column from April 2007.

Hey Mr. Green,
In talking about various ways of dealing with food waste, don't forget the pressure cooker. It turns bones into mush that can be mixed with animal food, and the crows and seagulls will eat anything ... nothing is wasted at my house --K. J. in Anacortes, Washington

Hey K. J.,
If I had a pressure cooker (should I?), I'd give this interesting idea a try. Do other readers have comments on this practice? Environmentally,
Under Pressure in Berkeley, California (a.k.a. Mr. Green)

Sludge, Scum, and Septic Systems

Mr. Green is busy on his world-wide publicity tour for his new book. In the meantime, here's a Mr. Green classic column from April 2007.

Hey Mr. Green,
I hate to belabor the issue, but your discussions of garbage disposals make no mention of their effect on septic systems. This question has become the subject of considerable controversy in the 58-unit townhouse complex where I live. What is your considered opinion on the subject? --Joel in Lincoln, Massachusetts

Hey Joel,
When it comes to environmental quandaries, no issue can be belabored too much. It's rather odd that I failed to mention septic systems, having grown up on a farm where it was a memorable event when we finally replaced the outdoor privy with a septic tank and indoor plumbing! Maybe I'm suffering from the repressed trauma of several unpleasant occasions when our glorious new septic system got plugged up and I was recruited to help root through the sewage in the tanks and pipes to fix the problem. Or maybe I'm showing a culturally insensitive urban bias, assuming that everybody's hooked up to a municipal sewer line, when in fact almost 25 percent of U.S. households use septic tanks or cesspools.

In any event, the biggest problem with garbage disposals is that heavy use of them can double the amount of solids going into your septic tank. (Also, excess grease and oil, which often go down the drain, impair the tank's operation.) These solids come in two categories: sludge that sinks to the bottom and scum that floats to the top. The water runs out to a drainfield. Although the solids are broken down by bacteria, enough remain in the tank so that it has to be pumped out periodically--typically every three to five years. So if you use a garbage disposal frequently, the tank will have to be emptied more often. In my area, the cost of pumping the solids from a 1,500-gallon tank is $400 or $500. Obviously composting is a cheaper and more productive alternative--and maybe your complex would be better off investing in a composting program rather than spending your money on more frequent pumping.

I've talked to sewer guys who pump out the sludge and scum for a living, and they complain, with some frustration, about the public's appalling ignorance of septic tanks and sewage in general. "Some of them don't even know they have a septic operation," one pumper lamented. "It's out of sight, out of mind."

Although garbage disposals themselves don't rank among our worst environmental problems, a lot of the stuff people send down their drains does. "They put all kinds of oddball stuff in there: motor oil, paint, you name it," my source said. He pointed out that some of the chemicals in these substances can kill the septic tank's bacteria, destroying its ability to safely break down the sludge and scum. Other things people dump are just plain toxic. Among the substances that should never go down a drain--whether it flows to a septic tank or a municipal sewage system--are paints, pesticides, oils, varnishes, gasoline, and paint thinners.

Additionally, the sludge removed from septic tanks is often hauled to a municipal sewage-treatment plant. Obviously, if the septic tank material is full of heavy metals and other toxic chemicals, it's that much harder for the plant to produce safe effluent. There is a lot more that can be said about sewage and septic tanks. For more information, download the EPA's comprehensive bulletin, "A Homeowner's Guide to Septic Systems."

You could use it as the basis of a local education program. Finally, if you know any macho do-it-yourselfer who wants to take on septic tank cleaning and maintenance, tell that person to stay inside and call a professional. Messing around with the tank can be lethal. As one maintenance course put it: "Toxic gases are produced by natural treatment processes in septic tanks and can kill humans in minutes."

The Latest on Lawns and Lingerie

Mr. Green is busy on his world-wide publicity tour for his new book. In the meantime, here's a Mr. Green classic column from April 2007.

Every so often, us environmental muckrakers, doomsayers, and alarmists actually get to declare a victory. In my rant against the environmental silliness of lawns, I pointed out that one session with a lawnmower could spew as much pollution as driving a car for 100 miles. But now the EPA has given California permission to require catalytic converters on small engines like those used in mowers, a move that will cut the machines' smog emissions by 40 percent. The EPA is now considering setting national emission standards for small engines.

Also chided here was Victoria's Secret's use of pulp from virgin forests for the 350 million sexy catalogs it sends out every year. Under heavy pressure from ForestEthics and its chainsaw-wielding protestors, the lingerie company has agreed to stop using pulp from Canada's boreal forest, and to use 10 percent post consumer recycled paper or paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, in its catalogs. Now I just have to convince my cousin Nubby that recycled paper is not going to let more of the models' attributes show through their lingerie.