Don’t Smash That Thermostat!

Sometimes Mr. Green gets a rant worth quoting at length, especially if it reinforces his own skepticism about substituting technology for common sense. Here goes:

Hey Mr. Green,

You recently mentioned various energy–conservation projects, one being to install a programmable thermostat. Well, yes, they may work for some people, but the one we had was without a doubt the sorriest piece of electrical equipment ever to deface an innocent wall.

Our coldest and most miserable winter in more than 50 years was caused by that savage little monstrosity in the downsized house we moved into. Being retired, we aren't robots on a rigid schedule, and didn't need any fool computer telling us when to turn on the furnace. However, instructions in hand, we humored that idiotic device, trying to move it down from 72º to a more reasonable, lower figure in winter, but it popped right back up. Nothing we did to this instrument of the devil, this Rasputin, or maybe Cheney, would help. We ended up turning it on when the house got cold and shutting it off when it warmed up. A pair of bare wires and a clothespin would have accomplished the same thing.

Finally we bought a real thermostat like the one we had in our other house for 40 years. All we have to do is rotate it one way to warm up the place, and turn it the other way to cool it down—the very epitome of simplicity and efficiency. No goofy buttons, no failed attempts to coordinate time and temperature, and no waste of natural gas.

So, after our experience, whenever someone comes around with "programmable thermostat" I start thinking of getting out my heaviest hammer and gleefully smashing that electronic monstrosity to bits.

–Tom (location undisclosed)

Tom, I share your antagonism toward gadgetry, but millions of folks are so “distracted from distraction by distraction,” as T.S. Eliot put it long ago, that they simply can’t focus on mundane tasks like adjusting the thermostat. It was mainly for these unfortunate victims of the economic system and the false gods of digital technology that I prescribed the programmable thermostat. Personally, I consider these and many other energy gadgets to be the moral equivalent of overmedication. If you live sensibly, you won’t need most of those remedies advertised on TV to keep your bladder happy and your legs from involuntary twitching.

But don’t go gleefully hammering your old thermostat—or any used thermostat. Recycling well is your best revenge. Find out where to do so by contacting your local waste-management authorities or locate nearest thermostat recycler at earth911.com.

And if you know anybody who has one of those older thermostats that might contain mercury, implore them not to smash or discard the device, but recycle it. Last year 1,300 pound of toxic mercury were contained by the recycling of 100,000 old thermostats.

People who still get their knickers in a knot about the minute amount of mercury in fluorescent lightbulbs should note: Those 100,000 thermostats contain as much of the toxic metal as 118 million fluorescent bulbs, or a roughly a bulb for every U.S. household.

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 I buy a Prius?

Hey Mr. Green,

I keep hearing hype about how hybrid cars are so much better for the environment, yet I also hear that the process to make the batteries for them is very toxic. If so, the Toyota Prius isn't a very green car, so I won't be wasting the extra cash to damage the planet. Is this a wise choice?

--Jacque in Missoula, Montana

The fuss about Prius batteries is because they're made of nickel. Thirty years ago, Canada's nickel-mining industry was particularly toxic, but our northerly neighbors have since cleaned up their mining mess. Only a fraction of the world's nickel is used for batteries, and those made for Priuses (Prii?) are recyclable. For a fuller refutation of this and other myths about the Prius, go to tinyurl.com/mrgreenprius.

However, don't rush out to buy a $22,000 Prius unless you have unlimited funds. You might net greater energy savings by purchasing a cheaper but still-efficient car--like a Toyota Yaris--and investing the money you save in less-sexy energy-conservation measures like replacing your furnace, upgrading your insulation, and installing fluorescent lights, programmable thermostats, an Energy Star fridge, and so on. Sure, the furnace and insulation won't sit in your driveway and flaunt your environmental rectitude. But they could reduce more emissions and save more money in the long run. Consider your energy habits and where you live, and do a basic energy inventory using some simple math.

Say you drive 10,000 miles per year, mostly on the highway. The Prius is rated at 45 miles per gallon (highway), so it'll burn 222 gallons a year. If gas is $2 per gallon, you'll pay $444 per year for fuel. The efficient little Yaris gets 35 mpg, so it'll burn 286 gallons annually, costing you $572. The Prius, then, will save 64 gallons and $128 per year and emit 1,250 fewer pounds of carbon dioxide. But its base price is almost ten grand more than the Yaris.

By choosing the Yaris over the Prius, you'll have an extra $10,000 to spend on planet-preserving home upgrades that will save more energy than the Prius. Of course, if your home energy use is far less than average but you drive far more--or if gas prices climb back to the $5-per-gallon range--the equation changes.

Child's Play

Hey Mr. Green,

Is it better to drive my minivan to a playground or to buy a swing set?

–Purvika in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey

This is hardly the most urgent environmental question of our times, but such questions are fun to answer, and give Mr. Green a pretext for pontificating about larger issues.

Obviously, there is a mind-boggling set of variables involved here: how far you have to drive to the park, what mileage the minivan gets, the size and material of the swing set, the distance it is shipped, and every other conceivable impact. Pursuing this down to the last kilowatt and drop of water and microparticle of grime can lead to madness. As one agricultural wit asked, "When we assess the environmental impact of growing soybeans, do we have to include the soap and water used in the farmer's shower?"

But since energy use seems to be your main concern, let's focus on comparing how much is needed to make the swing as compared to the energy required to drive your darling(s) to the park. Assuming that you'll survive the current economic collapse and have a yard in which to plant a swing, you could spring for a steel three-seater that weighs 190 pounds or so. According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, it takes 16,366,000 British thermal units (Btus) to make a ton of steel. So making almost all of the swing would require 1,554,770 Btus. The typical minivan gets 17 miles per gallon in the city, according to the EPA. Gasoline can contain up to 125,000 Btus per gallon. Therefore, the minimum energy needed to drive the minivan about 220 miles would equal the energy it took to make the swing. If you live only a mile from the park, in just 110 visits—twice a week for a year—you'd burn as much energy as it took to make the steel in the swing set. Of course, if you drive farther and settle for a lighter, smaller swing, the energy disadvantage of the minivan increases proportionately.

But if you're only a mile away from the park, why drive there anyhow? Make ‘em walk or bike. It builds character and helps shed the kid blubber that's getting so much attention nowadays. "But it takes too much time to walk or bike!" I already hear the howls of protest. Well, does it really, when you consider how much time it takes to strap in a kid or two, wend your way through gridlock, find parking, unload, reload, and unload again, not to mention the hours you'll have to work to pay the 54-cent-a-mile cost of owning and operating the average vehicle? Hidden behind the automobile's smiling grill of comfort and convenience are some troubling hassles and expenses.

A Corny Question

Hey Mr. Green,

In an attempt to be greener, the company I work for switched the fleet vehicle to the Chevy Impala which has the FleFuel E85 capability.  However, I know that corn-based ethanol is not the ideal alternative, since it dumps carbon dioxide into the air during productions, and gets fewer miles to the gallon. Is E85 for the fleet vehicle any greener? Or should I still fill up with regular unleaded?

–Roy in Sisters, Oregon

I remain quite skeptical about corn ethanol, which some environmentalists still consider a superior biofuel alternative. In our rush for energy sources that’ll reduce global warming, we seem to be forgetting about other environmental issues, like wildlife habitat, water pollution, depletion by irrigation, soil erosion, and so forth. Depending on where it’s being grown, corn can cause all these problems. Aside from the moral dilemma of using corn as fuel, I'm not convinced that there’s any net benefit to the environment in ethanol.

Corn is one of the most magnificent and productive plants. But raising too much of it in the wrong places can turn it into one of the most destructive. Having grown up on a hybrid corn farm right next to a corn-processing company, and having worked every summer of my youth in test plots with dedicated corn breeders, my awe of the species is so intense that its misuse seems like downright sacrilege. It's perfectly easy for anybody who has experienced the power and glory of maize to understand why its Aztec cultivators worshiped a goddess of corn.

Theology aside, increasing use of ethanol is bound to raise demand for corn, the hyper-cultivation of which already poses environmental problems exposed by many scientific observers. In the past 20 years, U.S. corn acreage increased from less than 70 million acres, and spiked at almost 94 million in 2007, though it’s dropped down to about 85 million, partly because of lower market prices. If demand or other factors such as weather drive up prices, that acreage could expand.

Mr. Green Exorcises His Vampires

The cleanest, quickest, and cheapest way to fight global warming and save energy is simply to use less. I've harped about this constantly, noting, for example, that folks like the Germans and Italians consume roughly half the electricity we Americans do. I'd managed to cut electricity use in my house in California down to 3,200 kilowatt hours a year, half the annual California average of 6,960 kWh, and way less than a third of the national average of 11,232. Mr. Green, of all people, dare not be caught with a stupendous utility bill like Al Gore was a few years ago.

Among the many suggestions I've given for painlessly cutting energy use is to shut off or disconnect computers, chargers, and other electronic devices, including those in standby mode. Yet, let it be noted that not until this April did I began to systematically turn off power strips that were feeding standby devices and chargers in our house. The results proved instructive, yielding a 25 percent reduction from last year's April consumption. Happily, our standard of living didn’t drop by 25 percent because we had to wait five seconds for the idiot box to glow and vibrate with the sounds of reruns or somber reports about global warming. All we had plugged in were a DVD, a CD, a TV, a phone charger, two computer chargers, and a printer. Yet these alone were wasting 2 kWh per day.

The reduction in our house tallied with one study that found that the average Northern California home has 67 watts of standby capacity, with the highest at 169 watts. This means that if you're at the high end of standby use, you could waste 4 kilowatts in just a day. That would cost anywhere from $90 to $370 per year or even more, depending on electricity prices where you live. So make sure your house isn't lurking with vampire-like gadgets.

Flourescent Lightbulbs: A Bright Idea?

Hey Mr. Green,

In the past few years we've been encouraged to replace incandescent lamps with fluorescents. It makes sense, because the fluorescent takes only 25 percent as much as energy to operate.  But an incandescent bulb is relatively simple in that a thin tungsten wire is its light source, whereas a fluorescent lamp is far more complex requiring a very high voltage starter and a complex, coated tube. The extra materials needed (including mercury) never seem to be mentioned in bulb comparisons that discuss only fluorescent wattage. So I wonder whether fluorescent bulbs are really as energy-efficient as they seem.

–Bob in Tustin, California

Inquisitive folks like you have begun wondering about the total environmental impact of a given product, including the hidden costs. These questions can be very complicated and difficult to answer. In the bulb world, the answers are harder to find than usual because of manufacturers' reluctance to share information with us media dimwits.

But some life-cycle-analysis researchers have managed get a good look at the energy impacts of making bulbs. Fluorescents do require more energy to make, but still come out way ahead in net energy savings; only about 7 percent of the total energy used by a fluorescent over its life is consumed in manufacturing and other processes. Less than 1 percent of this is needed to make incandescents. But since, as you point out, fluorescents use only 25 percent as much energy to operate, so they still come out much more efficient even when you add in that extra 7 percent.

Regarding mercury, it's the source of a lot of confusion and controversy about fluorescent lights. You do need to recycle your fluorescent lamps when they perish because they do contain a small amount of mercury. Granted, even if all household bulbs were fluorescent and all of them ended up getting smashed, the net emissions would still amount to only about 6 percent of the mercury emitted by coal-burning power plants. That said, however, no amount of mercury is safe. For a comprehensive look at how to recycle fluorescent lightbulbs, go to lamprecycle.org.

The Right-to-Dry Movement

Sometimes a bit of back-and-forth with you, beloved readers, can bring up useful and even thrilling ideas. Consider the following, wherein you'll read of a revolt against uptight homeowners’ associations that forbid clotheslines. The exchange starts with an idea for improving dryer efficiency and ends with a bold pro-clothesline stance. 
 
Hey Mr. Green,
In Phoenix the outside air is very hot and dry in summer. If a hot-air dryer for clothes could use this air as the intake, then it wouldn't need as much energy to dry the clothes. Does this make sense? --Joseph in Chandler, Arizona

Your idea of using warm, dry air coming into the machine sounds interesting. I don't know how much energy it would save, and it will take some serious calculating to figure out. But surely if a dryer is drawing indoor air at, say, 68 degrees and quite likely higher in humidity than the 110-degree outside air, there has to be some sort of savings. The big question would be whether the energy savings would justify the cost of fitting the dryer (and the house) with a duct to bring in the outside air.

If I succeed in figuring this out, I'll let you know. Of course I remain a staunch advocate of the common-sense, old-fashioned, solar-drying clothesline!

Hey Mr. Green,
Thanks for the feedback. Our homeowners’ association has a specific provision against using clotheslines, but I think I should start using one anyhow. I grew up in cold, wet, windy Ireland where everyone used a clothesline, and moved to hot, dry Phoenix where hardly anyone uses one. --Joseph in Chandler, Arizona

Well, I've got just right ally for you: the Right-to-Dry Movement. Yep, some sensible folks are fed up with those silly anti-clothesline rules and they're fighting back with a refreshingly amusing campaign to liberate clotheslines and restore them to their once-glorious place in the American landscape.

I'm quite fond this cultural zinger from Helen Caldicott: "Where in Victorian times, clotheslines were ubiquitous, Mrs. Brown's brassiere blowing in the breeze has apparently become scandalizing to some modern Americans. A strange brand of prudery has made it impossible for some people to conserve energy and money by using a clothesline."

Let linen flap defiant!

How Bad IS the Drive-Through?

Hey Mr. Green,
What is the global-warming impact of the omnipresent drive-through? Surely this has to be one of our biggest wastes of energy. --Robert in Biglerville, Pennsylvania

In drive-throughs or anyplace, idling is, to summon the old saying, the devil's workshop. Every hour you idle, you waste up to 0.7 gallons of gas (depending on your engine type) going nowhere. So it pays to turn your engine off if you're going to be still for more than 30 seconds.

In a given year, U.S. cars burn some 1.4 billion gallons of fuel just idling. Not to mention idling trucks, which waste another 1.5 billion gallons. Collectively, we emit about 58 million tons of carbon dioxide while we're essentially doing nothing.

Taking the fast-food industry as an example, and taking into account that the average McDonald's drive-through wait is 159 seconds, we can calculate that the company's consumers burn some 7.25 million gallons of gas each year. The figure for the entire U.S. fast-food industry? Roughly 50 million gallons.

Though Wendy's boasts that it zips you through in a mere 131 seconds, that's about the amount of time it would take to slap together your own sandwich, or dump some leftovers in Tupperware, and bypass the lines (and perhaps a bypass) entirely.

The spread of American idle may be an exciting prospect for companies seeking to expand this lazy food-getting method to the rest of the world--but it's a devastating one for the environment. Consider that McDonald's plans to open 25 drive-throughs in China, following KFC's lead. KFC installed its first drive-through there in 2002 and is working on 100 more. If China and India, which is also jumping aboard the drive-through bandwagon, get up to speed, they can idle away a truly staggering figure: 30 billion gallons of gas. Every year.

Dryer Diversion: Hot Air or a Good Solution?

Hey Mr Green,

I was in the yard one evening while I had clothes in the dryer in the basement. While watching the warm air from the dryer vent pour outside, I thought, "What a waste." Is there any way to channel all that warm air back into the home during winter? –Kathleen in Weirton, West Virginia

You can install a device called a "dryer duct diverter." It costs only a few dollars and works much like registers in ordinary heating systems. If you want to vent the dryer's hot air into your house, you flip a damper that blocks the hot air from going outside, sending it into the house instead.

Sounds like a clever solution for saving energy, but it does violate the building code (which requires dryers to vent to the outside)? You're perfectly free to bend the code, like millions of people do all the time. But remember, the diverter might not be a perfect solution and can be dangerous if hooked to a gas dryer. Because a dryer's main chore is to extract water from the clothes, the device could vent excess moisture that could cause mold and other damage to your house -- and lungs. It can also blow lint into the room if its lint trap isn't properly maintained. So if you try a diverter, stop using it if it makes things damp or fuzzy instead of just warm.