Wildfires and Flaming Butt-Heads

Hey Mr. Green,

Car manufacturers omit ashtrays from new vehicles, perhaps as a way to discourage smoking. This can have a negative effect on the environment. Thousands of smokers who once snuffed out their butts in ashtrays now toss them out windows, littering streets and highways. In drought-impacted areas of the West it's a risk for forest fires. Auto makers should start installing ash trays again to spare us the littered butts and save the forests from being torched. –-Debra, in Tempe, Arizona

I have not found a sociological study indicating that more butts are being flipped out of car windows since auto makers stopped installing ash trays, nor does there appear to be a correlation between the staggering total of 650,000 human-caused wildfires in the past decade and the gradual disappearance of onboard butt-disposal systems. So I suspect that the idiots who flipped their butts out their windows when their cars had ashtrays are still seeding highways and biways with toxic sparks, while the more mild-mannered tobacco addicts improvise ash trays, or buy those butt boxes that slip into cup holders, or simply refrain from smoking while driving.

Since 2001 anthropogenic wildfires have hit 23 million acres, an area almost the size of Indiana, according the National Interagency Fire Center, which tracks these conflagrations. (“Anthropogenic conflagrations”—oh what fun it is to deploy such euphonious Greek-and-Latin derivatives! "A gush of euphony voluminously swells," as Edgar Alan Poe wrote, possibly under the influence of carbon monoxide from burning gaslights.)

I hasten to add that not all wildfires are bad. In fact, some habitats have adapted to fire,and benefit from a healthy burn. Some plants even need fires for their seeds to germinate, and excessive suppression of fire is not good for the woods, and some ecosystems co-evolved with lighting, which was ripping away zillions of years before we humans even figured out how to start a fire, let alone suck smoldering tobacco into our lungs. In fact, there are more wildfires caused by lightning—about 4 million acres a year--than by feckless humans. But ssshhh! I’m not sure I want some people to know this, because they'd use it as a excuse to keep flipping  cigarettes from their car, or engaging in other high-risk flame-throwing activities. After all, you’ve got your closet pyromaniacs who claim that global warming is no big deal because the world was warmer back in the Cretaceous Period 70 million years ago, and therefore wanton fossil fuel combustion is nothing to worry about. 

 

 

Hunting for Protein? Deer May Be Fair Game

Hey Mr. Green,

Since you mentioned the high deer population in a recent column, it seems to me see that commercial harvesting of deer would be a green alternative to feedlot beef and pork production, resulting in lower or zero methane release. At the same time it would help regenerate hardwoods in over-browsed forests. --Ron Blackmore,  in Madison, New York

As noted in my environmental classic, Hey Mr. Green, deer are an excellent (and tasty) low-impact source of protein, and hunting does keep their excess population from damaging forests by over-browsing. One interesting example: A few years ago when I was visiting one big wildlife refuge in the deer-rich Midwest, a manager told me they had to take out 8,000 deer to protect the vegetation on its 44,000-acres.  Of course commercial hunting is probably not an option, because ordinary deer hunters are already harvesting enough deer to control the population. (Well, yes, this is sometimes a hotly contested point, but if sport hunters were legally allowed to take more, trust me, they would, so there would still not be much room for commercial hunting.)

To illustrate the role of deer as food, let’s consider the deer situation in just one major hunting state, Wisconsin. Hunters take about 350,000 deer in a good year. Figuring that your average deer dresses out at 50 pounds,  the hunt would yield about 17.5 million pounds of meat, or around 3 pounds per person per year in the state. Since we eat around 60 pounds of beef per capita per year in the USA,  deer in that state alone could supply your typical carnivore roughly 5 percent as much meat as beef does. (And this doesn’t count road kill, which some people actually drag off the road and carve up for consumption. In Wisconsin alone almost 40,000 deer get whacked by vehicles each year.  And that’s just the carnage officially recorded by the Department of Natural Resources. Some states have an even higher road kill total.)

But I digress. Deer could provide a much, much higher percent of protein if meat-engorged Americans would cut down on beef, pork, poultry, and fish. We now eat around 200 pounds per person per year, for an average of more than 8.5 ounces per capita per day.  Rather excessive when you consider that just 7 ounces of lean hamburger has more than enough protein  to meet the recommended daily protein amount of  56 grams for the average adult male,  46 for the average woman, and almost enough for a pregnant woman.  We exceed our protein requirements just with the meat and fish we scarf, let alone all that other protein in eggs, dairy, beans, grains, nuts, etc. So if people look like they’re pregnant, it could be because they eat like they’re pregnant. Us carnivores and our environment would be better off if we would cut meat consumption while insisting on environmentally sound, non-polluting production and being willing to pay extra for it. This could greatly reduce the putrid waste from industrialized livestock operations and the toxic runoff of fertilizers and pesticides from crops grown to feed them.

Regarding your concern with methane and greenhouse gas emissions from livestock, I do think this hazard has been somewhat exaggerated. Based on figures from a UN Food and Agriculture study, we keep hearing how livestock generates as much as 18% of the world’s total greenhouse gas. But the problem is that this study lumps together the entire world, including foreign gas sources such as deforestation from clearing land to create pasture and cropland for animal fodder. However, in the United States much less-- 3.4%--of the total the global-warming emissions results from livestock, according to a recent study from Cornell University.

So obviously a lot depends on how and where livestock is raised. After all, in some ecosystems, properly managed grazing can be a far more environmentally sound use of land than other agricultural uses. But I hope dig into these intriguing variables in vastly greater detail in future columns and blogs.

 

 

Plastic Food and Drink Containers: Too Toxic to Reuse?

Hey Mr. Green,

There has been a lot of discussion about hazards of using plastic, especially related to bisphenol A, or BPA. We try to avoid buying anything in plastic, but over the years we have acquired plastic containers, like one-quart yogurt containers, which we use to store food in the refrigerator.  Is this a bad idea? We wash and reuse them many times and wonder if chemicals are leaching into the food that is stored?  We also wash and reuse plastic bags to buy bulk foods. Could this also be hazardous?  We have not seen this issue addressed and hope you have an answer. –-Rick in Berkeley, California

Now that we are deep into the Plastic Age, questions about material safety and environmental impact have become a bit more complicated than in previous technological epochs like the Bronze or Iron Ages.

Your yogurt containers are probably made of polypropylene (PP), or #5 plastic, which does not contain BPA, an estrogenic chemical that we know to be harmful. The #7 plastic is the one that may contain BPA. So the yogurt containers may safe to reuse, although a recent study in Environmental Health Perspectives http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info%3Adoi%2F10.1289%2Fehp.1003220 indicates all types of plastics used in food containers, beverage cans, plastic bottles, and wrappers can release estrogenic activators if reused repeatedly, and we know that such chemicals can be harmful. It may well be that the amounts released are too small to cause problems, but if you want absolutely certain safety, store food in glass containers only. If you do reuse plastic containers, follow the Environmental Working Group’s advice, and only use #1, 2, 4, or 5, although one study shows that higher temperatures can cause the release of the heavy metal antimony from #1, PET. And since heat intensifies the release chemicals, never microwave with any type of plastic container and don’t put hot food in it. Regarding the plastic bags, I doubt that they pose a problem, since there is no liquid in bulk items to leach anything out like there is with most leftovers. But to play it super safe, you could avoid storing grains, beans, nuts, or flour in the bags. 

As noted, many #7 plastic containers contain BPA, and although the BPA is being phased out, you should not use any #7 container unless you are sure it is BPA-free. The most frightening thing is that some baby bottles, toys, and sippy cups contain BPA, to which to fetuses and children are more vulnerable than adults.

Also, BPA lurks in other places, including the lining of some metal water bottles and in food and beverage cans at possibly harmful levels, according to a study by EWG http://www.ewg.org/reports/bisphenola. I hate to break this news, because canned foods are an excellent way to preserve the solar energy and vitamins from a summer's harvest. (For more on this, see my October 7 column, “Are Plastic Cups Poisonous? http://sierraclub.typepad.com/mrgreen/2010/10/are-plastic-cups-poisonous.html) 

While the food industry denies that BPA can reach hazardous levels in food, the jury is still out. Evidence of the dangers have prompted the EPA and the National Institutes of Health to conduct further research on the substance. Households that consume a lot of canned food and beverages, especially of they have children, may want to consider cutting back until we get the results of that study.

So, although reuse is usually preferable to recycling, in the case of plastic food and beverage containers, recycling is a better choice. Besides, the plastic industry is desperate for more of the stuff. While U.S. capacity for PET (plastic bottles) recycling alone is estimated at almost 1.9 billion pounds, only  20 percent of the PET even gets collected here, and of that, only about 642 million pounds make it to U.S. companies. The other 800 million pounds is, like so many of our jobs, outsourced to foreign factories. 

 

Where should old clothes go?

Hey Mr. Green,
I've read that the average American dumps about 70 pounds of textiles (clothing, old carpets, etc.) into landfills each year. How do I recycle the stained and hole-ridden jeans that thrift stores won't take?--Jesse in California

Americans dispose of more than 12 million tons of textiles annually, less than 25 percent of which is recycled or reused, dooming most secondhand clothing and carpets to a soggy afterlife crammed deep in a landfill.

Donating items is indeed the best way to ensure reuse. If major thrift stores get clothing that's too ratty to resell, the cloth gets converted into things like industrial rags or sound-dampening material. When donating to a used-goods store, make sure it recycles unwanted materials. If your old duds get rejected, there's not much you can do except deploy them as household rags or support the arts by giving them to quilt makers or other rag-intensive craftspeople.

Recycling carpets is a serious pain because it's so difficult to separate their materials. Some 3 million tons of carpets are dumped each year, with only about 5 percent recycled or reused. Outfits like the Carpet Recyclers (thecarpetrecyclers.com) can extract and recycle carpet components. Go to carpetrecovery.org for more information.

Hybrid cars--really?

Hey Mr. Green,
I think you are an idiot for recommending hybrid or electric cars. Have you ever seen the inside of car-battery factories? Have you seen the health problems that their workers face? Have you seen the impact of the waste?
--Dr. Pollution in Manasquan, New Jersey

Such heartfelt, warm reader reactions are welcome. Frankly, I'm grateful to have never entered a battery factory, especially one that's a hypertoxic sweatshop in a developing country.

Any type of battery can be treacherous if recklessly produced or poorly recycled. Lead is the major ingredient in batteries for ordinary cars, nickel for hybrids, and lithium for plug-ins. Lead is by far the most toxic, nickel less so, and lithium the least, but the nickel and lithium batteries do contain some toxic metals, including cobalt and manganese.

With nearly a 90 percent recycling rate, lead batteries ought to be a success story. But lead is still released by many facilities that handle it, though such operations must upgrade to comply with new EPA air standards. The insides of U.S. lead-battery factories, however, remain regulated by 33-year-old Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards, which allow workers to be exposed to lead levels that some consider unsafe.

Some used lead batteries aren't recycled domestically but exported to developing nations that have lax safety standards. Millions of batteries are now made in these countries, which puts their workers in grave danger. In China, for instance, battery-plant workers and children nearby have experienced episodes of lead poisoning. Typically, lead-battery processors in developing countries don't comply with the equivalent of U.S. standards.

Regardless of battery type, we should tighten regulations on lead batteries and stop exporting used ones to nations with weak safety rules. While a perfect vehicle-power solution eludes us, when you compare the damage done by hybrid and EV batteries with that done by burning fossil fuel, the trade-off seems worth it to me. And thus I'll continue to favor hybrids and EVs. I won't, however, debate the question of my idiocy. Only an idiot would do that.

How Green Can We Make Our Fence?

Hey Mr. Green,

Help! Our plans to replace our rapidly rotting fence have been delayed for 3 years, as we have been unable to decide on the greenest option. I listened to your podcast about this topic, but unfortunately a "living fence" is not feasible because we need to contain a dog. In particular, what materials are the best option for the posts, which will be in the ground and subject to rotting more quickly than the rest of the fence? Obviously, pressure treated wood is far too toxic and not an option for us. –-Kim, in Seattle

If you want absolutely, teetotaling, chemical-free fenceposts, then choose a highly rot-resistant wood such as redwood or cedar. But if you go this route, please, please, please obtain posts that are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council http://info.fsc.org/, an organization that helps to insure that timber companies follow environmentally sound forestry practices. After all, nefarious forestry can be every bit as devastating to the environment as toxic chemicals, if not more so.

Other reasonably green choices are posts made of metal, recycled plastic, or composite synthetic lumber made , although these options might not suit your tastes.

Regarding chemicals, the EPA has okayed wood that is pressure-treated with alkaline copper quat (ACQ types B and D) and copper azole (CBA-A, CA-B), so if you are willing to compromise your standards, you might consider these, though they are not 100 percent benign. For example, there is some concern that copper compounds can leach into water and harm aquatic creatures.

These preservatives replace a once widely used arsenic-laced preservative known as in copper chromated arsenic (CCA). The EPA deemed it too toxic, and banned its application to wood intended for consumer and residential use after 2003. By now, it is unlikely to remain in a dealer’s inventory, but you never know. So if you do decide to default to the less-toxic treated posts, look very closely at the tags on the ends of the lumber to make sure they were not treated with CCA. If the tags are missing, ask the dealer what the wood has been treated with.