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.

Bed Bugs Keeping You Awake?

Hey Mr. Green,

How can I effectively cope with bed bugs in as green a way possible – if that’s even possible, given how difficult they are to treat in the first place. What is most frustrating is that many of my low-impact strategies aren't working because I live in a small studio apartment and my bed is near, well, everything, including all of my reuseable cloth bags, napkins, and towels.

Anyhow, all of these wonderful items which made a low impact are out the window right now due to these critters. Now my life is being lived out of plastic tubs and countless plastic bags until I am declared bug-free and can revert back to my low-impact ways again. Help?

–Victoria in Brooklyn, New York

If anybody still doubts the bed-bug resurgence, they missed the big news about the EPA's Bed Bug Summit, where public-health people and entomologists gathered to strategize about curbing the latest arthropodic vampire menace.

As far as I can tell, no single low-impact method exists to cope with these tormentors. You have to rely on an ensemble of measures to combat the bloodsuckers, whose American renaissance has resulted from their sneaking in on international travelers and luggage, our reluctance to use toxic pesticides, and their growing resistance to any pesticide.

It seems that you’ve already taken some measures to contain them by sealing up objects in which they can hide. They live in any clutter or tiny crack, so the first line of defense is a very thorough cleaning, not just of beds and bedding, but of anything that might be infested. Seal all crevices where they might lurk, down to cracks in the wall. The creatures can't fly, but they do crawl out for their gruesome meals. (University of Kentucky bed-bug authority Michael Potter says they "feed by piercing the skin with an elongated beak through which they withdraw blood. Engorgement takes about three to 10 minutes." And they don't merely pierce and suck, but inject an anticoagulant to facilitate the process.

Go over box springs, beds, and couches, inside and out. They also live inside and under furniture, at the edges of wall-to-wall carpeting, behind headboards, picture frames, mirrors, and switch plates and outlets. They can even take up residence inside electronic equipment.

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.

Advice About Wrinkled Clothes

Hey Mr. Green,
I recently got an Energy Star washing machine. To make the switch complete, I also put up a solar dryer (i.e., a clothesline). But now my work shirts look all wrinkled, and I feel compelled to iron them--which I never did after pulling them out of the electric dryer. What is the greenest solution: ironing or using the dryer just for that load of shirts? --Ramona in Crownsville, Maryland

Before addressing your pressing needs, let me congratulate you on having an Energy Star washing machine. Those babies save lots of money, energy, and water. You'll net up to $550 in operating costs over its life at today's utility rates. They're at least 40 percent more energy efficient than other washers. And while conventional machines use up to 40 gallons of water per load, Energy Stars cut it down to 25; smaller models whittle it to a measly 10. The EPA's Energy Star program, by the way, represents your tax dollars working to save energy sources instead of fighting wars over them.
Two other tips about being green while getting your clothes clean: (1) Use the warm or hot setting only for heavily soiled items--most people don't know that up to 90 percent of a typical washer's energy consumption is dedicated to heating water. (2) Front-loading washers don't use as much water.
Now as for those wrinkles, unless you are very slow or inept, the iron takes less energy than the dryer. A dryer's typical 45-minute cycle takes 3.3 kilowatt-hours. An iron that's been on for 60 minutes uses about 1.2 kilowatt- hours. So even if you squandered a whole hour ironing, you'd still consume less energy than if you ran the dryer.
Some readers claim to achieve Botox-level erasure of clothesline-induced wrinkles by letting clothes get almost dry on the line, then flipping them in the dryer for just a few minutes. As a hypercasual (some would say slovenly) creature who rarely dons anything unrumpled, I can't personally vouch for this technique, so I'll leave the env-iron-mental R&D to you.

An Oily Situation

Hey Mr. Green,
What’s the best way to dispose of expired vegetable and olive oils?  I have a couple of bottles that are more than two years old and it doesn't seem like a good idea to pour them down the drain, but they are full so I don't want to put them in the garbage either. –Terri in Glenview, Illinois

From a plumbing perspective (as a side note, I think plumbing is one of the greatest accomplishments in human history), it's always a bad idea to pour oil down the drain. From a composting perspective, I'd hate to see even a drop your old oil added to the staggering 29 million tons of food waste that ends up in the landfill each year. 

"Reduce, reuse, recycle" is the old eco-adage, and “reuse” would apply in your situation. Vegetable oils make good protectants and lubricants, so you can deploy them to polish furniture or silverware, oil squeaky hinges, protect and preserve metal and wood on garden and other tools, oil shoes and kids' baseball gloves and wooden bats, and lube some mechanical devices, though bicycle purists don't recommend it and I'm not sure these oils have the right properties for maintaining guns.

You can even use some vegetable oils to make soap and beauty products. Olive oil in particular has been used for skin and hair protection since ancient times. When those biblical prophets say, “thou annointest me," they're talking olive, not soy, canola, or corn. However, I wouldn't go rubbing on old, rancid oil, or using it for any of the numerous personal-lubricant purposes that you may have heard of. Even if all of these uses were safe--and I'm not sure they are--the odor might well preclude the desired results.

Finally, you could find out whether you can recycle cooking oils as biodiesel by checking that great recycling resource, Earth911.com. Actually, I just checked it for you. The nearest place that takes cooking oil is about 40 miles from your town, in Crest Hill. But it's obviously not worth a special trip.

Are the Big Guys Better at Planting?

Hey Mr. Green,
I’ve seen several recent articles urging people to grow their own vegetables. As a home gardener, I know how much better tasting this produce can be. I also know that many gardeners spend too much on fancy soil and overfeed their plants, wiping out the economic and ecological savings. Being from California, my main concern is water, so I wonder: Do 1,000 home gardeners growing one vegetable plant each use more or less water than one professional farmer growing 1,000 of that same vegetable plant? --Richard in Palo Alto, California

It depends. Varying factors include soil type, local weather, and cultivation and irrigation practices. If the commercial producer uses earth ditches, the amount of water available to the plant can range from 25 to 80 percent of the total water pumped to the field. Other methods, such as drip irrigation, can be up to 100 percent efficient.

If home gardeners apply only as much water as necessary, or use a drip-irrigation system properly, they can be just as water-wise as the most conscientious commercial grower. Or even more so: Garden guru John Jeavons, who did a good bit of garden research right in your town, reports that his “biointensive” gardening methods require less than half the water than conventional production. If, however, home gardeners mindlessly dump excess water—bad for most plants anyhow—they might squander more water than the most reckless commercial grower.

As for fancy fertilizers, and pesticides, in general, you don't need ‘em. I get tomato yields comparable to those of California's commercial growers just by using home-brewed compost and drip irrigation.
Regardless of irrigation needs, I recommend putting in enough vegetable plants to last until next growing season. Rip up some lawn and produce enough to dry, can, freeze, and enjoy through winter. Nothing traps solar energy quite so ingeniously as plants, and a packet of seeds is the most recession-proof investment you can make. It will yield at least a 1,000 percent return.

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.

The Scoop on Cat Litter

Hey Mr. Green,
What is the greenest kitty litter for my indoor cat? --Carol (submitted via e-mail)

Cats themselves are a much bigger environmental menace than kitty litter. They're an invasive species that kills hundreds of millions of birds and mammals each year, robbing food from native predators like hawks and owls. So I salute you for keeping your feline where it belongs: inside.

The greenest cat litter is made of recycled paper, followed by sawdust, wheat chaff, oat hulls, or other biological materials. But more than half the litter in the United States is made of bentonite--a stripmined clay that leads right to Dick Cheney, which may explain why he raked around in Iraq like it was his personal litter box. Halliburton, where Cheney was CEO, produces about one-sixth of the 3 million tons of bentonite sold each year, of which 1.7 million tons go into cat litter. Quite a waste of a substance that can be used in iron smelting, environmental cleanup, and wine clarifying.

Neither bentonite nor silica gel litter should be flushed en masse, as they can gum up plumbing, but flushing a few particles probably won't cause trouble. Most municipal sewage systems can handle pet waste, but it should not be flushed where sea otters live, since studies have found some of these animals to be infected with toxoplasmosis, a parasitic disease carried in cat feces. Because this parasite can severely harm human embryos, pregnant women should avoid handling cat waste.

Saving Money with Solar Power?

Hey Mr. Green,
If I were to put solar panels on my home, would it be cost-effective? I see most solar panels in hot climates, and Ohio can be very cold. I live on a five-acre tract and have the option of wind turbines also. --Sherry in Dayton, Ohio

It may get cold in Dayton, but that doesn't mean you don't get sun. In fact, you get 80 percent as much sunlight in a year as Sacramento, California, whose municipal utility is a leader in solar development.
First, consider the low-tech route: efficiency. The average U.S. household consumes 11,000 kilowatt-hours per year, when many could get by on half as much. Eliminate waste by turning off lights and appliances when not in use, for example, and you could slash your energy costs with no investment.

Wherever you live, take a look at returns over the long haul. At $9 a watt, which is the typical cost in your region, a solar energy system large enough to generate power for an average household would cost roughly $80,000 after rebates and tax credits (or less in areas with stronger incentive programs). In Ohio, as in most states, if you generate more than you use, your excess power feeds into the electricity grid and you earn credit for it, allowing you to draw out as much as you put in--for free.

Still, it would take about 30 years for you to break even, assuming the utility rate goes up 4 percent a year and you put money saved from your energy bills into tax-deferred investments. But you'd keep more than 260 tons of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere over the life of the system.

Once you nail down the cost per watt for solar, contact wind power dealers and see how their costs compare. It's hard to be more specific about wind power because there's so much variation, depending on windmill height and local topography. You might also consider systems that combine wind and solar if wind blows much harder in the winter than in the summer. These hybrid systems take advantage of seasonal variation. Meanwhile, be thankful that Big Oil hasn't privatized the sun and forced us to pay for it right down to the last photon.