Nontoxic Roach Control

Hey Mr. Green,
I live in a row house in the Capitol Hill Historic (read: very old) District in Washington, D.C. My next-door neighbor just found her residence swarming with cockroaches. She called an exterminator, who advised her to warn her neighbors that spraying her roaches will send them scurrying to the houses on either side, suggesting maybe we should also hire him. I do not want a toxic house. Neither do I want cockroaches. If her bugs migrate, is there a green way to deal with them? -–Patricia in Washington, D.C.

Hey Patricia,

Don’t panic. Stay on the line. We’re here, on full cockroach alert, ready to talk you through this crisis.

I know cockroaches well, having coexisted with them for some years in roach-friendly climes and structures. One of the more terrifying critters I have ever seen was an albino cockroach peering up with beady red eyes from a crevice in my kitchen table—surrounded by a streaming, squirming swarm of its brown brethren.

I survived, and so will you.

Pesticides should only be used as a last resort. Your first line of defense is scrupulous cleanliness. Scrub everything well. Don't leave food out, not even a crumb; rinse the bottles and cans you plan to recycle (roaches love to wade in reeking beery backwash) and place them outside as quickly as possible. Eliminate surface moisture, especially around all pipes, vents, conduits, etc. Roaches thrive in damp, dark places, and openings around pipes are one of their favorite routes. The cabinet under a kitchen sink is a roach’s Buckingham Palace.

After every surface has been scrupulously cleaned and dried, get rid of all clutter, in which roaches love to retreat to plot their next foray.

Washing Up

Hey Mr. Green

I’m trying to convince my husband that using the dishwasher is more efficient than washing each dish separately. I intuit that this is the case, but I haven't figured out how to articulate it to him. –Gabrielle in Oakland, California

Hey Gabrielle,

Although it shatters the code of macho solidarity, Mr. Green is duty bound to report that you are right and he is wrong.

A typical manual dish-washing stint averages about twice the water and energy of a modern dishwasher. This has been verified by German research, which, as we all know, is impeccable. And, according to the EPA, a dishwasher will typically save 5,000 gallons of water, $40 in utility costs, and 230 hours of your time in a year.

Of course, we're talking about a full load in the machine. If you put only a few dishes in and run it through a cycle, hand-washing could win. Or, if the hand-washer is atypically efficient, he or she might outdo the machine. Also, we’re assuming that water isn’t wasted by unnecessary rinsing of dishes before placing them in a dishwasher. Scraping crud off with a spatula or lightly rinsing is all you need to do, provided you don’t delay and let stuff dry out and glue itself to the utensils.

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 Straight Poop

Hey Mr. Green, 
I use clear plastic produce bags from the store to pick up my dog's doo. At least I'm reusing them, but is there a better approach? –Ted in San Francisco

First of all, I commend you for cleaning up after your dog. Every year, dogs and cats in this country produce 10 million tons of globs, nodes, nuggets, rods, dollops, twists, and coils of their vile excrement. Wherever that stuff anoints our sidewalks, desecrates our lawns, or washes away unsanitized into our watersheds, it can cause all sorts of human-health and environmental problems. (This amount doesn't include the incalculable excreta of feral cats, environmental menaces to native songbirds and other creatures, but don’t get me started on that subject.)

Plastic bags aren’t our largest environmental problem, but you could certainly save and reuse them for further produce packing instead of one-time doggie sewage service. To liberate the bags for this higher purpose, you could devise a pooper- scooper by cutting out the bottom of a plastic milk jug or similar container and using this clever device to skim the feces off whatever unfortunate surface it lands on. If such a crude improvised gadget seems out of touch with local fashion trends, you can find pooper-scoopers in pet shops or on the Internet. Most of them feature long handles, which eliminate the need to bend over. Instead of dropping the turds into your own or somebody else's garbage, empty the scooper into the toilet and flush away. (Municipal sewage systems can handle pet waste, but don’t flush it into septic tanks.) If you're scrupulous about water use, you could save the material in the scooper to be flushed only when there is already sufficient material in the toilet for a righteous co-flush.

Leaf Suckers

Hey Mr. Green,

Our condominium association hires a landscaper who uses leaf blowers to clean up leaves and grass clippings. This seems like a waste of fuel to me, and besides that, they're noisy. All the professional landscapers around here seem to use them. Is this a big deal, and, if so, is there any alternative? --Geoffrey in Northbrook, Illinois

Hallelujah! I've been waiting for so very long for this provocative question. Few sights are more ludicrous than a large, healthy guy blasting away at a handful of dead leaves with one of these noisy, air-polluting monsters when a broom would accomplish the same thing with less effort and energy. But maybe brooms are too girlie man, whereas the big, bazooka-size business end of a blower makes a resounding macho statement. (See “How ’Bout Honda?” for more theories on gender and mechanical devices.) Blowers with two-cycle engines are particularly obnoxious. InCalifornia alone, the gas-powered models were found to emit 7.1 tons of hydrocarbons and 16.6 tons of carbon monoxide per day, according to a California Air Resources Board report.

OK, if these arguments don't convince your landscaper, dare to suggest a, um, leaf sucker. It vacuums debris into a bag, at least enabling safe deposition onto a compost heap. Black & Decker, for example, has one called the Leaf Hog, giving it enough of a macho ring to counteract any sissy stigma.

Podcast: Building a Deck or Fence

"Hey Mr. Green: What's the most eco-friendly material to use in building a deck or fence?"

Click here to listen to the answer!

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!

Podcast: Renewables and Conservation

"Hey Mr. Green: I've contacted my power company and switched to 100% renewables. Is it still important to keep up with other energy-saving practices in my home?"

Click here to listen to the answer!

Why Turn Out the Lights?

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 February 2007.

Hey Mr. Green,
I would like to encourage my son-in-law to turn off the lights when he leaves a room. To do that, I would have to show the cost benefit. Can you help? — Ruth in Watertown, Massachusetts

In olden times, a household authority figure would say, "Turn the lights out," and that would be that. But today's contentious whippersnappers apparently need a detailed financial analysis before flipping the switch. Fortunately, the math is on your side. Electricity rates are based on the number of kilowatts used per hour, or kilowatt-hours (1 kilowatt equals 1,000 watts). All you have to do to find the daily cost of operating a lightbulb is multiply its wattage by the number of hours it burns, then multiply that by the kilowatt-hour (kWh) rate printed on your utility bill and divide the result by 1,000.

So if a 100-watt bulb burns for ten hours, and the power company charges ten cents a kilowatt-hour, it costs a dime a day to keep lit. That's about $3 per month, or $36 per year. Leaving a half dozen bulbs burning would waste more than $200 per year. If your son-in-law turns off the lights and puts the annual savings into an account that draws 5 percent interest, in ten years he will have about $2,650, a nice little sum he could invest in some booming alternative energy company.

Make No Bones

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 April 2007.

Hey Mr. Green,
In talking about various ways of dealing with food waste, don't forget the pressure cooker. It turns bones into mush that can be mixed with animal food, and the crows and seagulls will eat anything ... nothing is wasted at my house --K. J. in Anacortes, Washington

Hey K. J.,
If I had a pressure cooker (should I?), I'd give this interesting idea a try. Do other readers have comments on this practice? Environmentally,
Under Pressure in Berkeley, California (a.k.a. Mr. Green)