Podcast: Driving to the farmer's market

"Hey Mr. Green: There's a farmer's market 12 miles from our house, and a supermarket just 1.5 miles away. Does the 24-mile round-trip drive to buy local produce make more environmental sense than a 3 mile drive for produce that's not nearly as local?"

Click here to listen to the answer! You can also subscribe to Mr. Green's podcast.

Thinking Outside (and Inside) the Car

Many environmentally minded folks prefer to buy meat and produce from local farmers, for a number of good reasons. Dealing directly with the grower makes it easier to encourage and support farming practices that conserve the soil, require fewer chemical fertilizers and pesticides, or are completely organic. Also, probably less energy is consumed overall than when food is shipped several thousand miles.

Unfortunately, for many shoppers “local” isn’t all that local. Quite often the nearest farmers market is 25 or 30 miles away. So, readers have been asking if a weekly trip is justified, or if they’re undoing the benefits of local food by driving so far. Not to mention that $4- or $5-a-gallon gas might make virtuous food unaffordable for some consumers. 

To deal with this, the more Spartan among you have pledged to make the trip by bicycle instead of car to conserve energy. I wholeheartedly support this combination of a triathlon training program and a shopping trip, but there are two less strenuous solutions:

1. Take fewer trips--and buy a large volume of whatever is in season. Then can, dry, freeze, or preserve what you can’t eat fresh.
2. Carpool. Well, duh. A no-brainer I never even thought of; it was a reader’s idea. Yep, even those of us who don’t own cars are still locked into the idea of solo driving to the store and to work.

So if you bring several people with you (who would otherwise drive separate cars), the fuel problem becomes much less significant. Have a festive trip. Catch up on gossip, argue politics, discuss methodologies of produce preservation, and take a break from e-mail and text messaging to experience the joys and sorrows of personal communication! And while you expound on the advantages of Slow Food, be sure to drive slow to save more gas.

Podcast: Recycling plastic bags

"Hey Mr. Green: Should I remove the zipper portion of plastic bags before tossing them in the recycling bin, and can black plastic bags be recycled with others?"

Click here to listen to the answer! You can also subscribe to Mr. Green's podcast.

Real Fridge and Freezer Energy Savings

Hey Mr. Green,
What is the correct temperature for my refrigerator and freezer? --Phil in University Place, Washington

Set the fridge between 35 and 38 degrees Fahrenheit and the freezer at 0*F. Keep both filled--if necessary, with jugs of water or ice. It's an urban myth that cleaning the fridge's coils periodically with a brush or a vacuum cleaner will save energy, but standing there with the door open pondering what to eat is an indisputable juice drain. For bigger savings, visit energystar.gov to find Energy Star models.

Affordable Electric Cars

Hey Mr. Green,
Is there a practical electric car a person of moderate means can buy and operate? --Kent in Sherman Oaks, California

If by practical you mean an ordinary family car, I can't recommend anything except stealing one of those electric models--like Toyota's RAV4 EV--from the handful of lucky souls who acquired one before the auto industry quit making them. (That sad story was best told in the 2006 documentary by Chris Paine, Who Killed the Electric Car?)

Otherwise, you could order a Tesla Roadster for $100,000, but that might be a bit beyond your price range. You can explore a number of small, get-around-town models at the Electric Auto Association's Web site (eaaev.org/eaaevsforsale.html). The other option, if you are mechanically inclined and have a lot of time on your hands, is to retrofit a standard car with an electric motor at a cost of around $10,000, plus 200 to 300 hours of toil rigging it up. The EAA site can lead you to suppliers.

DIY Seltzer Water

Hey Mr. Green,
I know that bottled water is bad and rarely buy it. However, I really enjoy seltzer water. Is there a way to make my own at home and save on bottles and shipping? --Melinda in Lakeland, Florida

You're right about bottled water. It's been so thoroughly and convincingly ripped for so many reasons by so many critics that it's amazing anybody still buys the stuff. The U.S. wholesale cost alone is $10 billion annually, and worldwide sales exceed $50 billion. That $50 billion, if invested in water systems, could provide safe drinking water for the billion of our thirsty fellow humans who don't have it and save the lives of the 2.2 million who die from waterborne diseases every year.

But even if you must have your fizz fix, you can bypass bottle buying. Soda makers, which use refillable carbon dioxide cylinders, and soda siphons, which have single-use cartridges, are easy to use and cost about $50 to $300. If you need further guidance, go to consumerreports.org and search for "A Missed Pop-ortunity" (or click here).

Making Sense of Carbon and Climate

Hey Mr. Green,

I am getting conflicting data about greenhouse gas affecting global warming. According to Pete Jonker, writing in Waste News, temperatures on Earth rises before carbon dioxide levels do. The average period between the two effects is 800 – 1,300 year. If carbon dioxide levels drive temperatures, why is it we were experiencing reduced temperatures globally in the ’60s and ’70s –Leon in New Orleans, Louisiana

First, let me say it again: Even if global warming were a complete hoax, we should still be burning a helluva lot less fossil fuel. And we were complete idiots to wait for $5-a-gallon gas to remind us of this fact.

Fossil fuel is a precious resource that, despite its many drawbacks, has made life a lot better for billions of people--from ditch diggers to mathematicians--since fossil fuels power backhoes, computers, and so much else.

Yes, it nearly kills me to admit it, but I agree with ol’ Dick Cheney and his greedy pals on one point: We’re going to be dependent on fossil fuel for some time to come. We can’t stop burning it overnight, even if we get what is desperately needed: a massive New Deal-type construction program to develop a clean-energy infrastructure—something like the $300 billion effort proposed by the Apollo Alliance. (I wrote about the powerful effects of New Deal environmental and construction projects in California magazine this month.)

So if we need fossil fuels and we know there is a limited supply, we should be using the smallest amount possible without diminishing our basic quality of life. At the same time, we should recognize that burning more than we need has already produced tangible effects--and not just at the gas pump. Take the auto industry, for example: U.S. workers have lost their jobs in part because the industry chose to invest in SUVs instead of a new generation of fuel-efficient cars. Or the global food crisis: The amount of energy it takes to grow, harvest, and ship food has been a major factor in making basic staples too expensive for poor people around the world.

Now, as to your doubts about global warming. Jonker’s observations, while correct in general, simply don't refute the evidence of human-caused climate change. (I explain why after the jump, so read on.)

Podcast: Toilet Paper

"Hey Mr. Green: My supermarket carries only one brand of toilet tissue made with recycled materials, and it's made by a company known for bad forestry practices. Are there environmentally safe brands of TP?"

Click here to listen to the answer! You can also subscribe to Mr. Green's podcast.

Podcast: Noisy CFLs?

"Hey Mr. Green: Most of the compact fluorescent lightbulbs we've tried buzz noisily. Are there any that don't?"

Click here to listen to the answer! You can also subscribe to Mr. Green's podcast.

The Error of My Ways

We received a deluge of comments about my response to the false proposition that it takes more energy to make and ride a bike than to make and drive a car. Most heartily agreed that any idiot can see it takes less energy to move a 35-pound bike than a 1.5-ton car. Some pointed out the health benefits of cycling; others brought up shining examples of commuters who have logged thousands of miles biking to work. Some said it was idiotic to expect people to commute by bike, and some just said everybody involved in the discussion was an idiot.

The smartest readers caught a very embarrassing error. I said, wrongly, that it would take only the amount of energy in a half-pint of vodka to provide enough calories for a cyclist to pedal 48 miles. The fact is, it would take about a quart of vodka. I simply misread the USDA's nutrition data chart. The only and quite feeble excuse is that the misreading may have been caused by rigid enforcement of my paperless office policy--reading on-screen, no matter how big you blow up the text to combat presbyopia, does seem to propagate errors. (By the way, the USDA’s National Nutrient Database is a wonderful and sometimes surprise-filled source of information on food.)

Despite that mistake, the main point--that you're better off drinking ethanol and burning it by pedaling than by running an engine--is still valid. As noted, it would take about two gallons of pure ethanol to propel the average car the stated distance. This means the biker is 16 times more efficient than the driver (since a quart of vodka only contains a pint of pure ethanol).

Finally, while it's obviously crazy to expect people to commute 30 miles or more by bike, it's not impossible to get into a carpool. Carpooling may not provide the exercise celebrated by many readers, but it does go a long way to reducing commute costs and energy use. You can search for ride sharers at eRideShare.com or one of the many sites that offer carpool info. Let me know if it worked out for you.