How to Recycle a Stove or Oven

Hey Mr. Green,

Can you please tell me how to recycle a gas range that has served as a stove and an oven?  I've been trying to give it away, but because it requires a lot of repair, nobody wants it. Being the eco-friendly gal that I am, I can't bear the thought of it going into the local dump. Do you have any suggestions?

--Val in Elkhorn, Wisconsin

There are quite a few outfits in your area over near Wisconsin's populous southeast coast that recycle large appliances. So how does an answer guy perched in California know this? Because he went to the premier national resource for finding recyclers, Earth911. All anybody has to do to find local recyclers at Earth911 is type in whatever you want to recycle, plus your address, and a list of recyclers that are closest to you will appear.

If you don’t want to haul the stove to the recycler yourself, you may want to call to find out if they’ll come pick it up.

And yes, you are most assuredly an “eco-friendly gal,” because recycling doesn’t just help keep the dumps from perpetual expansion. Every ton of recycled steel saves 2,500 pounds of iron ore, 1,400 pounds of coal, and 120 pounds of limestone, according to the Steel Recycling Institute. So your old stove can be more cleanly reincarnated, maybe even as an enlightened bicycle, instead of rusting away in a landfill.

How to Find Vehicles That Do Less Damage

Hey Mr. Green,

I drive a Honda Civic coupe, but I am incredibly active outdoors and it’s somewhat difficult to fit all the stuff for my treks into such a small vehicle. Are there any larger vehicles that aren't terribly hurtful to the environment? I also need something that can handle rough dirt roads.

--Dan in Genola, Utah

If you're thinking SUV, some of the hybrid SUVs like Ford’s Escape or Mazda’s Tribute would give you decent gas mileage, though some other hybrids are no easier on the environment than many gas-guzzling conventional SUVs. If space is more of a concern to you than ability to survive on gnarly roads, you might consider some conventional station wagons, too. Audi and Volkswagen have models that get 42 mpg on the highway and 30 mpg in the city. Also, keep in mind that, unlike other vehicles, hybrids usually get better mileage in the city than on the highway, so a hybrid may be a good choice for people who have to do a lot of city driving. For example, the Ford Escape hybrid two-wheel-drive SUV gets 36 mpg in the city and 31 on the road, while Toyota's Highlander hybrid gets 27 mpg in the city and 25 on the highway

You can compare all vehicles of the major manufacturers by going to the EPA's fuel-economy site (sorry, Mr. Green can’t do your homework for you). When you click on any manufacturer, you see the available choices. Another click takes you right to mpg ratings, air pollution scores, and even estimated fuel costs for cars made in recent years, plus mpg ratings going all the way back to 1984, if you’re considering a used model.

Finally, remember that speeding and lousy maintenance can cause any car, no matter how efficient, to burn a whole lot more fuel than it should. So stay under the speed limit and keep your tires properly inflated. For more thorough advice on saving gas, visit the Federal Trade Commission and Natural Resources Canada’s sites. Your tax dollars at work.

Advice About Frosty Appliances

Hey Mr. Green,

I'm shopping around for a more efficient refrigerator. Since I could probably do without a freezer, I'm wondering what would be most efficient: a fridge-only model, a freezer-only model with the thermostat turned way up, a one-door cooler-and-freezer unit, or a two-door unit with the freezer on top.

--Jerry in South Ozone Park, New York

Thanks to toughened federal regulations, modern refrigerators use less than half as much energy as those made 15 years ago. The best place to find the most-efficient models for little or big chills is the EPA's Energy Star site. Simply type in the size and style you're looking for and voila, you get a list of refrigerators that are 10 to 30 percent more efficient than the government's already-strict standard. You'll quickly learn that side-by-side freezer-fridge models are the least efficient. Because freezers are set up to keep things, well, frozen, it might seem like a dicey proposition to turn one into a box to keep your veggies fresh and your beer cool.

However, I found one adventurous tinkerer who rigged his freezer to use a meager 50 kilowatt-hours per year--a fraction of what even the stingiest fridge consumes. He says he accomplished this by replacing the freezer thermostat with one that allows warmer temperatures. I don't recommend such engineering feats to my intelligent but predominantly thermostat-challenged audience, but in the interest of citizen science, I'll refer you to the innovator's findings.

Fishy Claims: Do Marine-Derived Omega-3s Hurt the Ocean?

Hey Mr. Green,

I've heard that omega-3 fatty-acid capsules contain oil from a bottom-dwelling fish that the big supplement companies are fishing into population collapse. Is there any truth to this?

--Eric in Scottsdale, Arizona

There's evidence that omega-3 might help prevent heart problems. Some proponents even claim it staves off dementia, which gives me hope.

But most of the critters used for omega-3 oil are not bottom dwellers; they're smaller fish like anchovies, sardines, mackerel, and menhaden. And if any species, bottom dweller or otherwise, is getting fished into extinction, it's not by the supplement manufacturers. The supplement makers obtain the oil as a byproduct of "reduction fishing"--fishing by outfits whose catch is processed into fish meal, which in turn is fed to farmed fish, chickens, and hogs. (The fact that we roam the seas to net fish to feed other fish and livestock strikes me as one of the screwier aspects of the food system. Why not just eat the smaller fish instead of the farmed salmon that has eaten them? And why not just give livestock homegrown feed?)

Most of the small species caught for fish meal and omega-3 oil aren't endangered, according to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), but concern about overfishing has led 13 of the 15 Atlantic-coast states to either outlaw menhaden reduction fishing in their waters or ban the gear that's used for this purpose. Unfortunately, proposals to extend the ban on fishing menhaden for feed to all state and federal waters in the Atlantic have failed to get out of congressional committees.

Some fish-oil supplements haven't been adequately screened for mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), although the EDF found that most U.S. producers do remove these toxic substances. To be sure you're getting a safe brand, consult the group's list here.

Accounting for All That Goes Into a Hybrid Car

Hey Mr. Green,

Does your analysis of hybrid cars’ energy use account for all the fuels used in shipping cars and parts to different countries, making the batteries, and so on?

--Branden in Austin, Texas

Yes, the analyses I consulted, such as those from Argonne National Laboratory, include "upstream" and "downstream" inputs to the manufacture, distribution, and disposal, or to use another weary metaphor, “cradle-to-grave inputs.”

Shipping by sea is nowhere near the energy drain some anti-globalist and locavore zealots claim. The amount of energy required even to send a car halfway around the world only amounts to only a tiny fraction of what it’s gonna burn on the road! A huge ship can move more than ton of material 1,000 miles on only a gallon of fuel. The international shipping average is estimated around 422 miles per ton per gallon, and that’s a fairly conservative number because it includes less efficient ships that may well use more fuel that those hauling cars. Like it or not, this is a major reason why multinationals can afford to be multinationals.

Right here on terra firma is where we burn the bulk of our fossil fuel. In fact, of all the cargo shipped by sea, about a third is oil itself, almost all of which is burned by us clueless land-lubbers. People who harp about the evils of long-distance shipping might just be projecting their own local energy waste onto “distant ships sailing into the mist,” as Bob Dylan pictured them in his astoundingly allusive and complex “Jokerman.”

A typical semi truck with a 30-ton load burns about six to eight times more fuel per ton-mile than the biggest cargo ships, but that’s nothing compared to air freight, which can guzzle from 30 to 100 times more fuel per ton-mile as a large ship. Also, a lot of the fuel used in ships, known as "bunker fuel," is actually recycled oil, though this isn’t nearly as environmentally friendly as it sounds. This fuel is, as you can imagine, quite dirty, so the real problem with ships is less energy use than toxic emissions of sulfur, nitrogen oxides, lung-clogging microparticulates, and other pollutants. This is why the International Maritime Organization has begun to take steps to force ships to clean up their emissions near U.S. and Canadian coasts – thanks in large part to a long campaign by our friends at Friends of the Earth.

Finally, to the hybrid-cars battery controversy. There’s been some substantial clouds of blog-fog from chronic hybrid dissers, in which the claim is that it takes more energy to get the nickel for a hybrid’s batteries than a Hummer would burn in its entire supersize life. As I’ve noted, if this were the case, hybrid manufacturers couldn’t even afford the batteries, let alone the whole bleepin’ car, since the Hummer would burn more than $15,000 worth of gas at today’s prices before it hit 100,000 miles. The nickel used to make the batteries is mostly recycled, which requires far less energy than would be needed if it had to be mined and smelted anew.

Dead Wood: Better to Burn, Chip, or Let it Rot?

Hey Mr. Green,

I just bought a farm that had been severely neglected. There are large piles of wood on the property, where fallen trees were cut up and left. What remains are large chunks that would need to be split before they could be burned. Is it better for the environment for me to burn the wood (after getting a burn permit), or to hire a tree service to come and chip it? Obviously, burning is much better for my wallet.

–Carolyn in Hopewell, New Jersey

From a strictly environmental standpoint, if your farm still has some woods, it might be best just to move the dead wood under the trees and let it rot. Dead wood has, um, gained a new lease on life, and is now celebrated as a vital engine of forest ecology. As former U.S. Forest Service chief Jack Ward Thomas said in his Dead Wood: From Forester’s Bane to Environmental Boon, “dying and dead wood provides one of the two or three greatest resources for animal species in a natural forest.”

Dead-wood aficionados seem to revere the dazzling complexity of decay as much they do live trees, and their studies of the intricate relationships of organisms in this long-neglected universe demonstrate just how crucial it is. One treatise, for example, identifies 456 species of animal life in wood and bark where decay has begun. Others delve into details like, “Germination of spores of Glomus macrocarpus (Endogonaceae) after passage through a rodent digestive tract.” Or, “Fungal-small mammal interrelationships with emphasis on Oregon coniferous forests.”

The U.S. Forest Service itself now considers, for example, a northern temperate forest with less than 5 percent woody debris to be in trouble, while a volume of 15 percent debris means it is healthy.

Now if there is no longer any forested space on the property, then I’d default to the chipper, unless that bizarre man-chipping episode in the film classic Fargo has stamped you with uncontrollable Chipper Angst. (Will the fifth edition of the psychiatrists’ Diagnostic and Statistics Manual adds this diagnosis?) The reason to grind up the wood is that at least chipped wood can be useful, whereas simply burning it releases global-warming carbon dioxide and a lot of air pollutants. Of course your tiny little burn would be totally negligible compared to the obscene excess combustion of all the coal-fired power plants and cars in our benighted world, not to mention the collateral damage of streams polluted by mines and the Gulf Coast ruined by oil slicks. But if you aspire to be a complete eco-purist, don’t torch the wood.