What Do Composting and Identity Theft Have in Common?

Hey Mr. Green,

We shred a lot of typical white paper at work because of confidentiality concerns. Is this paper safe to use in garden compost? I'd love to be able to use it but don't know about the chemicals in the paper or the printer ink.

--Katy in La Canada Flintridge, California

As any inmate of a cubicle can tell you, the paperless office has not arrived: we're using 4 million tons of copy paper a year.  The good news is that only a third of the material to make paper comes directly from trees. A third of it is from recycling and another third from sawmill waste, according to the EPA. 

It is indeed safe use this office paper in compost, according to the U.S. Composting Council and other sources. I have even come across studies that show that paper actually has lower levels of contaminants than typical yard waste—not that your typical yard waste is unsafe.  Paper helps absorb water, which can help prevent your compost from stalling into the saturated, odorous gunk that tends to trouble the fastidious composter. It also provides carbon, an essential ingredient in compost,  since a 30-to-1 ratio of carbon to nitrogen is ideal for happy production.

If mulching works in your garden (i.e., doesn't shelter slugs and snails), you could also use the frizzy paper for this purpose.

In general, however, the soundest use of this paper is simply to recycle it to make more paper. After all, paper can be recycled five to seven times before the fibers become too short to be resurrected into new paper.

Numbers to Get Others on the Bandwagon

Hey Mr. Green,

If you carpool to work, recycle and compost, ride a bike often instead of taking a car, turn off lights and electronic devices, don’t leave the water running when brushing your teeth, use reusable cups and plates instead of disposable ones, buy local organic products, and buy energy-efficient appliances, how do you tally that in trees saved or wildlife saved? I need to show the employees at my organization how much a few small actions can change the world for the better. I would like to use figures or stats to do so. Can you help?

–Ellen in Denver, Colorado

That’s a mighty tall and comprehensive order, but here goes: Regarding trees and paper, each person in the United States uses around 660 pounds of paper a year. Assuming the oft-cited 17 trees per ton of paper, this translates into about 1.2 billion trees that could be saved if everybody recycled. Of course, a lot of trees are already being saved because 57 percent of paper is already being recycled.
To be fair, I should point out that there are contrarians who claim recycling actually reduces the total number of trees because it increases paper supply, thereby reducing the economic incentive to plant more trees for pulp.

Regarding energy reduction, the average per-capita carbon dioxide emission in the United States is more than 20 tons per year. If your colleagues cut their energy use in half, which is easily doable by following your advice, they would make a huge reduction in this dreary exhalation, this sigh of a tired and clueless economy. Take the example of cars alone. We now burn about 140 billion gallons of gasoline in our cars per year. If everybody cut their automobile use in half by carpooling and biking, that’s at least 70 billion gallons saved, or 700 million carbon tons kept out of the air.

They’d also save a lot of money. The average car goes about 12,000 miles per year. If it gets 25 miles per gallon, that’s $1,440 at $3 per gallon. If people can get by without a car, they save much, much more, from $5,500 to $9,100 per year, since the cost of owning and operating a vehicle is 55 cents per mile for a small sedan driven 10,000 miles, and 91 cents a mile for an four-wheel-drive SUV.

The number of trees and creatures saved from this reduction is hard to determine, since we don’t yet know what effect global warming will have on populations of flora and fauna. But it sure would cut roadkill rates in half, which by some estimates nails about 1 million deer, 1 million small mammals, and probably many more birds than that (I can’t comment on reptile-and-amphibian mashing, as these are underrepresented in our mammal-centric studies.) Maybe the animal-rights guys should lay off the hunters and focus their efforts on Bambi-slamming cars instead.

As for buying organic, that will obviously reduce pollution because organic products don’t use chemical poisons or fertilizers. This is a very welcome development for wildlife, though it’s hard to get an estimate on how much of it would be saved by detoxifying our agriculture. But when you consider that hundreds of millions of pounds of pesticides are dumped on corn and soybeans alone, and that organic farming reduces this to zero, the benefits are obvious.

Generally speaking, buying local reduces the energy involved in shipping food long distances, but this is very difficult to quantify because of differences in the efficiency of local farmers’ vehicles and the amount they haul per trip. But in many cases, it probably takes less energy to move a tomato 20 miles instead of 2,000.

Should the Sierra Club Be Befriending Unions?

Hey Mr. Green,

Since when did the Sierra Club start taking up union issues? My yearly dues say, “Stick to the environment," but I recently got a message from the Club urging me to support the Employee Free Choice Act.

–Paul in Richmond, California

The Sierra Club's position on the Employee Free Choice Act is based on the need to build green alliances and coalitions to promote a green economy. Many unions have been strong advocates for safety standards to protect their members from toxic substances and pollutants. In these industrial situations, the health of a union's workers coincides exactly with the goals of the environmental movement. Moreover, the growth of a green economy will be much stronger if it offers well-paid, safe jobs that union protection can provide.

The Employee Free Choice Act would allow employees to choose to unionize a workplace by simply by signing cards rather than going through an election process. It’s well-known that employers can intimidate or even fire pro-union workers during elections to decide on unionization, causing unions to lose. This is why Free Choice legislation is so important to labor. Seems to me that's not asking for much.

Alliance with unions is not something new for the Sierra Club. In the early 1990s, for example, the Club (and some other major environmental groups) allied with labor in opposing the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA). They rightly predicted that outsourcing jobs to countries with weak environmental laws would amount to outsourcing pollution.

More recently, the Club has been joining with unions like the steelworkers in the Apollo Alliance, which is pushing for major government support of clean energy. In advocating for green projects, the unions have common cause with environmentalists because it in the unions' interest to create jobs in this area. (The mere fact that installing alternative-energy equipment can't be outsourced is something both groups can take comfort in.)

Beyond these specific issues, because the unions generally support pro-environmental political candidates, stronger unions generally promote stronger environmental policies. The depressing rise of anti-environmental policies since the Reagan administration is, in my opinion, related to the decline in union membership. In the mid-1950s, 35 percent of the workforce was unionized. By 1983 it had dropped to 20 percent, and now stands at 12 percent. It's also likely that erosion of union membership is one of the causes the oft-bemoaned demise of the middle class. What this means for the green economy is simply that the typical homeowner has less to spend on green technologies.

Having said all this, I'm realistic enough to understand that tree-huggers and construction workers aren’t gonna be smooching inside the cabins of earth-moving machines any time soon. Environmental interests can crash head-on with union interests, as, for example, when construction unions push for development and road-building that environmentalists oppose, or when autoworkers were as gung-ho for producing gas-guzzling SUVs as their bosses were. Such differences are bound to occur because the unions' foremost concern is jobs and income for their members. But even where there is serious discord, if environmentalists move closer to unions, they will be in a much better position to enlist union backing for green projects. Despite inevitable clashes between environmentalists and unions, in the long run, stronger unions will beget stronger environmental policies.

When to Replace Lightbulbs

Hey Mr. Green,
I know fluorescent lightbulbs are more efficient than incandescents. In terms of overall resource use, however, is it better to replace a functioning incandescent bulb now or wait until it burns out? --Tom (submitted by e-mail)

I salute you for wondering about what goes into industrial processes. Some people chirp about a "postindustrial" era as if their toys were birthed by an invisible techno-god--rather than a polluting, energy-burning, all-too-earthly system.

Anyway, replace incandescents now. The resources used to produce either kind of lightbulb represent a fraction (as little as one percent, according to researchers at the Technical University of Denmark) of the bulb's overall toll on the environment. Powering the bulb in your home uses far more energy.

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 June 2007.

Hey Mr. Green,
I am urging my employer to participate in a paper-recycling program. Can you tell me how many trees would be saved by recycling a 30-gallon bin of paper? —Allan in Houston

As teenagers, my buddy Gordo and I whacked scads of innocent trees with our trusty McCullough chainsaw and shipped them to the mill in Dubuque. So toiling to answer this sort of question is a penance for such sins. Better to do it now than to stew in a vat of boiling pulp in the hereafter, taunted by environmental sermons blaring through raspy amplifiers. Anyway, a 30-gallon bin will generally hold around 80 pounds of computer paper, or up to 100 pounds if the paper is tightly packed.

A typical tree used for pulp yields about 83 pounds of office paper, meaning your bin would essentially hold the equivalent of one tree. Since 10 to 25 percent of the mass gets lost in the paper-recycling process, you might not rescue a whole tree each time you fill a bin, but it's safe to say at least three-fourths of a tree could be saved per container. Now if you throw in a lot of crumpled paper that takes up extra space, you'll obviously fall short of that noble goal.

Of course, trees come in various sizes, and some species yield more pulp than others, so these are ballpark figures. Remember too that all paper is not created equal: Virgin office paper requires twice as much pulp per pound as virgin newsprint. But any way you slice it, recycling paper saves a lot of trees.

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 June 2007.

Hey Mr. Green,
Our 800-person office doesn't have a recycling program for beverage containers. We've been told that the empty containers would lure rats and other pests into the building. Do you know how other large companies have solved this problem? —Adam in Indianapolis

The recycling authorities I've contacted have a nice straightforward answer for you: Rinse out your darn bottles, cans, and jars. But even rinsing is not technically necessary. Since the recycling process burns off organic material, dirty containers are mainly a problem when they sit around in hot, humid areas. (If your colleagues are competent enough to keep a tight-fitting lid on the recycling bin, you can get by even in those places without rinsing.)

At the Sierra Club headquarters in cool, foggy San Francisco, that's not an issue, and despite imperfect rinsing habits, we haven't had any pest problems. Not, that is, unless you count the occasional crank caller who informs us we're a bunch of tree-hugging ninnies he'd like to squish under the treads of his ten-ton Hummer.

Of course, pests are not the only issue to consider. Food and beverage remnants can contaminate paper being sorted for recycling in the same facility. (Food waste should be composted anyway.) And think of the hard-working recyclers, sorting your castoffs by hand. As one recycler explains, "We will do our best to recycle a broken glass jar half full of mayonnaise on a hot day, but the spoiled food adds to the challenge."

Podcast: Recycling Paper

"Hey Mr. Green, I asked my employer to start a paper recycling program at work. How many trees would be saved by recycling a 30-gallon bin of paper?"

Click here to listen to the answer!

Hey Mr. Green,
How can I persuade the company I work for, a nationwide restaurant chain, to adopt a recycling program? —Trisha in Cincinnati

Mr Green answers:
Try to start a pilot program in your workplace that other outlets can emulate. The first step is to find out what recycling programs are offered by the city's commercial haulers and what types of waste they take. Then ask if they pick up recycling for free or at a discounted rate. If they do, that'll be a big plus.

Next, try to identify an environmentalist in management, if indeed such a creature exists, and explain how recycling can save money (the economic argument) and help reduce global warming (the moral argument). Also point out that recycling is mighty fine PR. If all else fails, ask permission to set up a program yourself and organize your coworkers to help collect waste and take it to the nearest recycling center.

For more ideas, go to earth911.org and click on "Business Resources" or contact the Green Chamber of Commerce. If your recycling venture succeeds, you can move on to promoting energy conservation with efficient lighting, water heating, and insulation. Then you can kick back and listen to your supervisors gloat about how they're saving money and the environment.

Hey Mr. Green,
I recently spent five months touring the country with the American Shakespeare Center and tried my best to be green on the road. I unplugged the clock, microwave, and fridge and kept my water usage to a minimum. What else can we travelers do? — Kevin in Detroit

Mr Green answers:
Turn the heat down to 68 degrees Fahrenheit or lower in winter (60 degrees when you're sleeping), and in summer, turn the air conditioner off or the thermostat up to 78 or higher. Use towels more than once, and take mass transit when possible for your side trips. If you want to go all-out, turn off the TV. (Having to entertain yourself will also build character and sharpen your acting talent.) Avoid wasting energy in your vacant home by unplugging or shutting off as much as is practical, turning the heat down as low as possible in winter (but not so low that your pipes would freeze), and turning the air conditioner off. If you have a conventional tank water heater, turn it off too. Finally, as Shakespeare himself said, albeit under tragic circumstances, "Put out the light, and then put out the light."

Hey Mr. Green,
My office has four cases of half-liter water bottles delivered each month. Would a water cooler be greener? — Ezra in New York City

Mr. Green answers:
Water coolers aren't just good spots for catching up on the latest office gossip. Those jugs generally get reused, while 80 percent of the 25 billion plastic water bottles manufactured every year (using 1.5 million barrels of oil) are thrown away.

Bottled water is an inspiring example of marketing genius; it might also be the craziest form of privatization yet imagined. We're buying plain old H₂O at hundreds, or even thousands, of times the price of tap water because advertising images of clear mountain springs have us convinced that what's inside plastic containers is purer or healthier than what comes out of the faucet.

In fact, it's generally not. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, more than 25 percent of bottled water sold in the United States is taken from the same public water systems as tap water. And federal standards for bottled water are pretty much the same as for tap; though lead content in bottled water is more strictly monitored, tap water is tested much more often for other contaminants. If you're concerned about the purity of your tap water, check out the EPA's local water-quality reports at epa.gov/safewater. A good certified filter (nsf.org) can take care of most problems at about ten cents per gallon. (If you have well water, however, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cautions to get it tested first.)

Filtering your water or refrigerating it overnight in a loosely capped glass or ceramic container will dissipate any chlorine taste or odor, though issues with the flavor may be primarily psychological. In a Good Morning America taste test, New York City tap water beat out bottled water, as it did in other tests I've looked at. So maybe all your office needs is a change of mind-set. For more information, go to sierraclub.org/committees/cac/water/bottled_water