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: Windows

"Hey Mr. Green: I need to replace my single-glazed wooden windows with double-glazed ones. Which frame material -- aluminum, vinyl, or wood -- is least harmful to the environment?"

Click here to listen to the answer!

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 March 2007.

Hey Mr. Green,
Should I turn off my computer at night or put it to "sleep"? —Dave in Bozeman, Montana

Unless you have software or network hookups that require your PC to be on constantly, turn that sucker off. The sleep mode cuts energy use by 70 percent, but using the off switch reduces it even more--and turning off the power strip stanches the flow entirely. (Please don't confuse power saving with screen savers; though the latter may feature a heartwarming picture, they do not save energy.) Since computers in the business sector alone waste more than $1 billion worth of electricity a year, it's surprising that more fuss isn't made about these simple steps.

It's also rumored that turning a computer on and off repeatedly will cause it to die prematurely. This is simply not true. Even if it were, planned obsolescence would likely kill off your machine first. And when your desktop PC is put to sleep--permanently--consider replacing it with a laptop, which uses only about a fifth as much power.

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 March 2007.

Hey Mr. Green,
What should I do with recycled paper? I was told it can't be recycled again. —Patricia in Dallas

One of the amazing things I've discovered in this gig is the power of urban legends. Among the most persistent are: (1) that recyclers are unscrupulous tricksters who never actually ship cans back to manufacturers; (2) that it takes as much power to fire up a fluorescent light as it does to keep it on for a day; (3) that gas taxes pay for all highway construction and maintenance costs; and, the most enduring fable of all, (4) that automakers invented--and have been hiding for half a century--a device that can boost mileage to 100 miles a gallon. All 100 percent wrong, just like whoever told you this tall tale. Recycled paper is generally indistinguishable from the virgin product and, though the fibers eventually get too short to reuse, it can be recycled again.

To BP or Not to BP?

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 May 2007.

Hey Mr. Green,
If BP is your "best" choice for gasoline brands, you must have your head in the oil sands. Its high-risk industrial operations in Texas City killed 15 workers and injured 180 in 2005. Does BP contribute to Sierra? --Konrad in Park Ridge, Illinois

Hey Konrad,
I'm well aware of this inexcusable slaughter of petroleum workers, which was mentioned--along with plenty of other black marks on the company's record--in the Sierra report ("Pick Your Poison") that put BP in the "top of the barrel" category. That's why I said picking a better oil company was about as dicey as dancing with Vice President Dick Cheney on an oil slick.

These are huge and complex companies, and a large number of factors informed our analysis. Yes, more than a dozen BP employees died in that Texas City incident, but many people have been--or will be--killed because of global warming, as it causes the spread of tropical diseases and increases the intensity of storms. In contrast to BP, which has long acknowledged that something has to be done about global warming, ExxonMobil refused to even admit that climate change was happening until this February. Before that, Exxon had been very active--and successful--in debunking global warming, thereby forcing a delay in doing anything about it.

It's downright grisly and depressing to try and weigh the fatalities, pollution, and other ills caused by one petroleum provider against another's. Which is why we need to greatly step up the development of less homicidal and less ecocidal forms of energy.

Environmentally,
Mr. Green

Get on the Bus

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 biggest peeves with our school district are its irresponsibility with money and its poor priorities. Within the last bunch of years, the district rebuilt and renovated all its schools--the high school, the junior high, and eight elementary schools--built a new administration building, Astroturfed the football field and rubberized the track, and put a totally new HVAC system in the high school. Yet nothing was done regarding traffic flow.

Although busing is mandatory for kids in the third grade and below, students at the junior high and senior high must live two or three miles, respectively, from the school to get bus transportation. No city bus passes are provided. Hence, many parents transport their kids by car. The traffic is horrendous, and the amount of gas being wasted on a daily basis is even worse. Think there's a little hole in the ozone layer over our district? --Sue in Rochester, New York

Hey Sue,
I don't blame you for being upset. Of course, if I were running the district with my green iron fist, I'd require all those lazy, pampered kids to walk or bike to school, like in the old days.

They'd probably shed more of their junk-food-and-soda blubber with that routine than they would shuffling around the freshly rubberized track, and they'd be having creative conversations and flirtations on the way home instead of getting to the couch quicker and snacking away while stunting their little brains with TV, video games, or the institutionalized narcissism of MySpace.

However, since such a healthy reform would be considered child abuse in today's overmonitored world, I recommend that you estimate how many total miles parents have to drive to haul the kids to school. Then multiply the mileage by 52 cents, which is the average cost of car operation according to the American Automobile Association. Next, compute the total time parents spend on these daily trips during the school year, and multiply it by the average hourly wage in your town. Then add these two amounts and compare them to the cost of extra school buses, drivers, and fuel.

I don't know what result you'll come up with, but I have a strong suspicion that the price of individual car transportation--including both operating costs and time--will greatly exceed that of buses for these kids. People are often amazed when presented with the hidden costs of automobiles--and that's not even considering the health and environmental toll of the emissions from all those traffic-clogged cars.

If you aren't inclined to dig up the data and make these calculations yourself, then you should demand that the school district's bean counters do so. Given the amount of money they've been allocating, they must know something about number crunching, even if they're doing it as recklessly as you say. If the numbers work out like I think they will, the next step is to use this data to lobby the district to make buses more widely available.

Environmentally,
Mr. Green

Beating a Dead Bulb

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,
I've been told that although compact fluorescent lightbulbs require much less electricity than incandescents to stay lit--making them generally more energy efficient--the surge of electric current they draw to light up can make incandescents the thriftier choice where lights are left on only briefly (such as in a stairway). True? And if so, roughly how long does a light need to stay on for a fluorescent bulb to be the better option? --Richard in Trumansburg, New York

Hey Richard,
I've addressed this question before, but will do so again and again until the entire world understands that the power surge needed to ignite a compact fluorescent lightbulb is very brief and uses only as much electricity as that bulb would require in five seconds of regular operation. Since a fluorescent uses only one-fourth to one-third as much energy as an incandescent, this means that it takes less than two seconds for the fluorescent to surpass the incandescent in efficiency.

One technicality, however (darn these exceptions): If you leave a room and are going to return in less than 15 minutes, it's probably best to leave the fluorescent on. This is because turning fluorescents off and on at short intervals can decrease the life of the bulb. So, for brief intervals, as in your stairwell example, an incandescent could possibly be the better choice, not because of the energy savings, but because you'd want your more expensive fluorescents to live long enough to make them cost-effective and give you the maximum possible return on your investment.

Speaking of fluorescents' life spans, when they do burn out, make sure you recycle them properly (again, try Earth 911 or 800-CLEAN-UP), because, as detailed above, fluorescents contain tiny amounts of mercury, which is very toxic. Just don't make a special trip in a car to recycle a bulb, or you might offset its energy savings!

Environmentally,
Mr. Green