Brave New Leaf

A handy guide for recycling Christmas materials

You'd really like to play with all of your new toys, but your entire house is neck deep in the discarded holiday wrapping remnants. Need a quick guide to get rid of your waste quickly, but in the most eco-friendly way? Brave New Leaf is here to help you out.

1.  Recycling Wrapping Paper
Wrapping paper is what recycling providers call "marginally recyclable".  Check it. If it's foil based, don't put it in the recycling bin. All other shiny paper can go in your standard paper recycling bin. Don't worry about peeling off the tape or anything, it should be okay.

2.  Recycling Tissue Paper
Tissue paper is not recyclable most of the time. Luckily, it is super easy to restore crinkled tissue paper to its former pristine state to be reused in future gifts. Simply iron it on a standard ironing board with your iron on its lowest setting. You'll save money and some landfill space!

3.  Recycling cardboard
All of the cardboard boxes you have are fully recyclable. Keep the ones you might want to reuse over the course of the year, and flatten and recycle the remainder of your boxes.

4.  Bows
As you may suspect, most bows and ribbons are not recyclable. But bows are also the easiest thing to reuse year over year. Just store them in a box or tupperware container and save yourself some money and bother next year.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Four simple ways to keep your water hot, and reduce your carbon footprint

In a recent look at my hot water heater, I discovered that the gas burned to heat my water is responsible for 8.1% of my CO2 emissions, or 1.5 tons of carbon a year.

It took me some time, but I tracked down the manuals for my hot water heater and was able to learn a number of things about the system that sends hot water through my home.

My natural gas hot water heater is pretty much a super-sized version of heating water on a gas stove. Cold water comes in a pipe and falls to the bottom, while the hot water rises and gets sucked out a pipe in the top.

Unlike a pot on the oven, though, hot water heaters are a little bit smart. If the water temperature inside the hot water heater is a high enough temperature, it will shut down the heat source for a while. Aha! Breakthrough!

This means that to keep the hot water heater efficient, the end goal is to keep the already-heated water hot for as long as possible. The less that burner operates, the better. Armed with this knowledge, I decided on four minor projects for the hot water heater:

1.  Turn down the temperature on the hot water heater
I can't tell how high the heat is set on my hot water heater, because it is labeled with red triangles and letters. I've turned it down some, and will experiment at what is the lowest tolerable level. The recommended temperature for efficient hot water heaters is 120 degrees F.

This took about five seconds to do, and should reduce my carbon emissions by 5-10%. Not only does the water take less time to heat, but the temperature can fall further before it needs to reheat. This is saving energy and preventing carbon from entering the atmosphere.

2.  Adjust the timer on my hot water pumps
When I examined my heater closely, I noticed there was a timer in there that wasn't set to do anything. I was hoping this might be for the heater itself, so I could avoid heating my water at all during nighttime hours.

What it actually ended up being was an Aquastat that controls my hot water pumping system. Turns out many apartment complexes have systems that continuously circulate hot water through the pipes so that it arrives more quickly at its destination. You've experienced places that don't have these devices: you have to turn the shower on fifteen minutes before you hop in.

Having the hot water run through all of the pipes continuously cools the water down, especially if the pipes aren't insulated, which mine aren't. Then the hot water heater has to heat that water back up.

I've adjusted my timer to turn off hot water cycling during the hours of 8pm-5:30am. We'll see how this impacts hot water delivery to my bathtub. If it seems to be okay, I might get more aggressive with it.

Implementing this quick change should buy me another 5% energy improvement and CO2 reduction.

3.  Outfit my hot water heater with a jacket
It's pretty cold in my apartment! Our heating/cooling system broke a few months ago, and I've vowed not to get it repaired until I can do so in a more eco-friendly way. It's been a winter heavy with sweatshirts and hot cocoa.

Unfortunately, our hot water heater also lives in our house. This means heating water is more of a struggle for him because he's constantly surrounded by cold. And what do you do to keep in heat? Buy him a jacket, of course.

Hot water heater jackets are relatively cheap, easy to install, and save about 4-9% of your heating energy. Insulating your pipes gives you more bang-for-the-buck in terms of energy savings, but my pipes are all hidden in the walls, so this is a tough project to take on. Taping a jacket around my hot water heater is much more straightforward.

I've ordered a hot water heater jacket from Amazon. It works on natural gas heaters (watch out - some are fire hazards with gas heaters), and costs $36.

4.  Stop using hot water for laundry
If we can keep hot water in the heater, it will stay relatively hot. Using hot water requires that we start the heating process from scratch. There's no way I am giving up my hot baths and showers. But do my clothes and dishes really need the same treatment?

Several sources online state that there is little advantage in this day and age to washing your clothes in hot water. With the exception of grease stains, or things you need to sanitize (baby diapers, sheets infected with dust mites, etc.), everything should get just as clean with cold water. Not only that, but your dyes will bleed less, and your clothes will last longer.

I've been washing our clothes for the last month in exclusively cold water, and have noticed no change. I'm hooked.

What about dishwashing? Because hot water is superior at sanitizing and cutting grease, I plan on continuing to use hot water for washing our dishes.

The end result of the improvements:
All told, these four fixes should improve my hot water heater's efficiency by 25% which is saving around a quarter ton of CO2 a year. Not bad for a few minutes work...

Buying Green Power

At this point in my eco-makeover, I've been able to reduce my energy consumption significantly through a few simple projects. This has reduced my monthly energy bill enough that it is time for me to purchase some green power.

What is green power?
Green power is renewable power. But renewable power is not necessarily green.

Consider green power a subset of renewable power. It comes from power sources that leaves the smallest ecological footprint. Wind, solar, tidal, biomass and geothermal power all qualify as green power under most conditions. Hydro-electric power is renewable, but usually not green, because of the dramatic environmental impact it has on the surrounding area. There are companies like green-e that certify green power sources based on their emissions footprints and other environmental metrics.

As we identified when we audited the source of our power, less than 3% of Puget Sound Energy's power can be considered green power, and only 2.6% of the nation's power comes from renewable sources. There is clearly a long way to go before we can relieve our dependency on fossil fuels.

Why purchase green power?
Nationwide, the generation of electricity produces more carbon emissions than any other source. Let me say that again. The fossil fuels burned to generate our electricity produce more carbon than driving our cars, flying in our airplanes, and all of the other polluting activities we engage in.

If we want to slow down climate change we have a few options. We can adopt strict conservation policies and live like cavemen, without any of the conveniences we've come to enjoy today. Or we can quickly rework the nation's electricity generation infrastructure to heavily leverage green sources of power. I'm strongly in favor of the latter option.

Changing where our energy comes from is a hard problem, especially since the existing way we produce it is cheap and easy. Creating change will require two things: lots of demand and lots of money.

By signing up to purchase green power, you are providing both. Not only are you helping to fund new green facilities, but you are also making your support explicit. Your voice is counted and known.

How much does it cost?
The cost depends on your power company and their available programs. The Puget Sound Energy program I signed up for charges either a flat fee of $4/month for 320 kWh, or $0.0125 per kWh on top of your existing energy bill.

Though I need one more bill to arrive to be certain, it appears that I've been able to entirely offset the costs of purchasing green power by implementing a few easy energy projects in my home: enabling my computers to sleep when not in use, switching my lightbulbs to CFLs, and killing some of my vampire power sources. Any household should be able to do the same.

How do I know that the power arriving at my house is green?
Unfortunately, you don't. And it's probably not. The power company doesn't have a magic way of routing the 'green' power to specific homes in the grid. But what it can guarantee is that someone on the grid is getting the green power that you are paying for. Which is really all that matters, right?

Remember, that ultimately you're helping to fund the power company's investments into green power infrastructure.

Puget Sound Energy sends out a quarterly green power newsletter letting its green customers know what is being done with their money. From it, I've been able to figure out that ~1.8% of PSE's customers are involved in the green power program. Not nearly enough.

The top 3 greenest cities in PSE's area are Olympia, Bellingham, and my hometown Bellevue with 6% of its residents signed up. With the number of concerned citizens in the area, I know we can do better.

How do I sign up?
You can find a comprehensive list of green power programs here. Most power companies have online information and sign-up enabled on their website. For others, you may have to call or fill out the form they put in your monthly power bill.

What if my power company doesn't offer this type of program?
First, call up your power company and ask why they aren't offering it. The more demand they hear about, the better the chances are that they will introduce the program.

There are other options available if you would like to invest in green energy. Renewable Energy Certificates can be purchased from various facilities that are investing in green power, and help those companies offset their costs and continue to grow. These can be purchased independent of your local utility. There is some debate on whether these certificates actually make concrete headway in providing more green power or reducing its cost, so research your programs carefully.

Waste Project: Reduce your Junk Snail Mail

Junk snail mail stinks. Most respectable websites practice disclosure policies when subscribing and unsubscribing you to an email list, but those same companies won't provide you the same courtesy when it comes to shoving an enormous wasteful catalog in your mailbox.

Unwanted mail is a huge problem in our country. Some 5-6 million tons are generated a year, and less than a quarter of it gets recycled. Our household averages about 35 glossy catalogs a week. I don't look at any of them. It's needless waste.

While I have started to recycle our unwanted mail, I am also trying out some new online services that promise to stop it from arriving in my mailbox in the first place.

1.  Catalog Choice (http://www.catalogchoice.org)

Catalog Choice is a free service that lets you opt out of unwanted catalogs. Using their site is a very peaceful process in itself, as the site is ad-free and has a wonderful user interface.

To opt out of a catalog, you need to have the offending catalog in hand. I sat down at the end of a week with my stack and went through methodically. First, look up the catalog in question. Then, select which of the many names the catalog calls you by (it's always amazing to me how screwed up these can be!).  Next, attempt to find the user ID that uniquely identifies you printed somewhere on the catalog. Enter all of this information, and Catalog Choice will do the heavy lifting to get you off their list.

The selection of catalogs isn't comprehensive, but it is fairly extensive. So far, I've opted out of 56 different catalog instances. To be fully removed takes up to 10 weeks, and the site has tools for re-escalating removals that don't seem to be working.

While it's a shame that we have to put in this level of work to send the retailers a message, it's wonderful that this service exists, and I look forward to seeing how well it works.

2.  ProQuo (http://www.proquo.com)

Proquo is a similar service to Catalog Choice except it focuses on different categories of junk mail: coupons, circulars, credit card offers, publisher's clearing house, and other marketing and telemarketing lists can be found here.

The process is a bit more labor intensive than Catalog Choice. ProQuo is more of an aggregator of resources to unsubscribe yourself than a standalone service. They are able to take direct action against a few lists, but for others you will need to fill forms on websites or mail something in. 

Still, it's a great resource to have access to, and I've begun using it extensively. I look forward to seeing if this reduces the inexplicable number of Spanish credit card offers that we receive.

3.  Register with the Direct Marketing Association

The DMA is an association that lobbies for SPAM, telemarketing, and junk mail. Many many retailers and direct mailers are members of their organization, and as such, are required to run their mailing list against DMA's "do not mail" list. To get on this list, register with the DMA here. Doing so online costs $1, but is sure to be worth it.

4. Lazy? Let GreenDimes do it all for you.

GreenDimes.com is a service that pretty much handles all of the above: catalogs, the DMA, and other forms of junk mail. You'll pay a price for that convenience though: $15 to be precise.

I have heard rave reviews about their service, while the jury is still out on the three above. While experimenting with the free services is my path, feel free to check out Green Dimes if you'd like a quicker route to eliminating your junk mail.

Cutting through the "green car" confusion

According to our carbon footprint audit, and an evaluation of our three current vehicles, our cars contribute significantly to our carbon emissions. Though we don't drive very long distances, none of them get over 18 MPG.

Throughout our debates on the subject, my husband continues to espouse undying devotion to his 18 year old Jeep Cherokee, so we are going to keep that car. The Ford Mustang and newer Jeep Liberty will be sold to fund the purchase of a new "greener" car.

Now the question is: which car do we get?

We went to the Seattle Auto Show a few weeks ago to begin scoping out vehicles. The number of cars proclaiming themselves as "green" was astounding. So much so, that as I stood in front of a display that contained both a Toyota Highlander Hybrid and a small electric car from the Green Car Company, I heard a man behind me say loudly to his wife: "This green stuff is absolute bullshit."

I cringed a bit, but I couldn't blame him. Though there were a dazzling number of vehicles and technologies claiming to be "green", the message in totality made absolutely no sense. Diesel, biodiesel, ethanol, hydrogen, hybrids, natural gas, and electrics all posed as eco-friendly alternatives to gasoline. There was one car there that simultaneously worked on half of those technologies. For me, it created more questions than answers.

For example, is something green just because its fuel comes from something grown? Is an SUV green because it has improved mileage over its non-green sibling, even if it doesn't meet the minimum mileage standards for a car? How should we feel about "green" technologies that aren't even on production lines yet?

Overall, the baffling array of messages led me to do some research of my own to help make sense of it all. Let me split the cars into two buckets: cars of today and cars of tomorrow.

Green Cars of Today

1. Ethanol (e85) Powered Vehicles

What is it? Ethanol is an alcohol product made from biomass. Think of the rubbing alcohol in your medicine cabinet and you have the general idea. Ethanol is usually mixed with gasoline, and is totally different than biodiesel (see below).

Pros: Ethanol can be used by 6 million cars already on the road in the US, called "flex-fuel" vehicles. Using ethanol gets you off of foreign-imported oil, and onto using a more renewable source of fuel. Actual costs are about the same as gasoline. Can leverage similar distribution infrastructure as gasoline.

Cons: Despite what you may hear, it is not clean burning! Emissions per gallon are less than gas, yes, but ethanol is a less efficient fuel, and you need to burn more to go the same distance as gasoline. Estimates of the carbon emissions from the entire lifecycle of ethanol range from a little better to about the same as gasoline.

Also, there are concerns regarding whether powering cars from ethanol will result in more worldwide deforestation, since additional crops will be needed.

Brave New Leaf says: Running out and buying a flex-fuel car just to use ethanol isn't getting you much in cost or in carbon. Use it if your current car can handle it. Given that there is only one public e85 filling station in all of Washington, this is not an option for me.

2. Diesel / Biodiesel Powered Vehicles

What is it? You remember diesel fuel. Trucks use it still today. It makes engines noisy, and it produces lots of smog, but it gets better mileage, and thus makes less greenhouse gases than gasoline. Biodiesel is like normal diesel, but made from plants.

Just like with ethanol and gasoline, biodiesel can be mixed with normal diesel to use in diesel engines. As opposed to the rubbing alcohol consistency of ethanol, think of biodiesel as vegetable oil: thick and yellow.

Pros: Any diesel engine can use biodiesel without modification. Diesel gets better gas mileage than gasoline, and produces less carbon emissions. When mixed with biodiesel, emissions go down even further. Biodiesel makes your exhaust smell like french fries, which is fun and delicious.

Cons: Diesel engines are noisier. Not all gas stations have diesel fuel. Availability of vehicles in the US with diesel engines is limited largely to huge trucks and SUVs. Though cleaner diesel engines are coming, still creates a lot of smog. Biodiesel fuel is hard to find. Diesel engines are banned in 5 states (including California and New York).

Brave New Leaf says: If you went to buy a diesel vehicle today, you'd have the choice of a big truck or a 50k Mercedes. So much for getting access to that better mileage. But because diesels are super popular in Europe, the smaller diesel vehicles are coming in the next 1-2 years. The jury is out on how much better their mileage will be than their gas siblings, or how noisy their engines will be, but we'll start to find out in the next few months.

Today's bottom line: if you need a big truck, diesel is the available greener option. If you need a small car, you're likely better off with a hybrid.

3. Natural Gas Powered Vehicles

What is it? The same gas that powers your cooktop and hot water heater can now be used to run your car. There is one major production car in the US that uses natural gas: the Honda Civic GX NGV. It is also a hybrid.

Pros: Natural gas produces less emissions than gasoline. So combine NG with hybrid technology, and you get an extremely clean burning car. To fill your car up, many Americans could use the existing gas lines in their homes (a Phill).

Cons: Natural gas is still a finite fossil fuel. Natural gas filling stations are rare, and Phills cost $4000 retail. The car itself is also more expensive.

Brave New Leaf says: The Honda Civic GX NGV is theoretically the greenest car on the market. You pay for that green though: the car and the private filling station are expensive. Still, with a $4k federal tax credit and further local incentives for Phills, this might be an interesting option for an adventurous homeowner. Living in a high-rise condo building, this option is not for me.

4. Hybrid Vehicle

What is it? You should know by now. It's your current, gas, natural gas, or diesel-powered car with some batteries to capture the kinetic energy your car produces to be used to further power the car. Sometimes your car runs from battery (usually 0-30mph), sometimes from the combustion engine. Hybrids give you higher gas mileage.

Pros: Get better mileage and lower emissions (mostly for city driving). There are lots of hybrid options on the market now, many of which have federal tax credits to offset the additional expense. Many states also have cool local incentives too (like you can skip your emissions checks, driving in HOV lanes, or free parking).

Cons: You pay more for your vehicle. The vehicle still uses gasoline. Potential loss in acceleration power. If you're a highway driver, might not be worth it. Repair costs and battery replacement costs could be significant. Reeks of smugness.

Careful of myths: There was a 'study' done about a year ago citing that a Hummer is more environmentally friendly than a Prius, thanks to manufacturing costs. This study was a load of crap, and built on all kinds of incorrect data, including the assumption that a Hummer's roadlife is 300k miles, and a Prius only gets 100k. It's critical to question the full carbon lifecycle of our vehicles, but in this case: it's bad data, and it's simply untrue.

Brave New Leaf says: At the end of the day, the hybrid story is all about gas mileage. Yes, carbon used in manufacturing is also important, but the manufacturing footprint is only 10-15% of the car's full lifecycle footprint. The rest is fuel.

When it comes to fuel, there are cars like the Toyota Yaris that get good mileage without the hybrid engine. And there are hybrid SUVs, like the Lexus Rx Hybrid, that get mediocre mileage with the hybrid engine. Consider the class of vehicle that you really need and the type of driving that you do, and max out the mileage you can get in that class: hybrid or not.

To sum up, here is a list of the greenest vehicles commercially available today.

Green Cars of the Future

5. Electric Cars /  Plug-In Hybrids

What is it? Wouldn't it be cool if your hybrid could get a charge from out of your garage wall that could let it drive without any gas for 100 miles a charge? And wouldn't it be cooler if when you ran out of electrical energy, your normal gas/ethanol/biodiesel engine could kick in? This is where the electric car is going.

Pros: We have an existing distribution infrastructure in our electrical grid. When running on electrical, the car itself creates zero emissions. Even factoring in grid emissions, the carbon footprint of an electric car is smaller. Next logical step for owners of hybrids.

Cons: If power is drawn from the grid, it's still taken from greenhouse gas producing sources (coal, natural gas, etc.). Some complain of loss of acceleration, though car manufacturers are getting better at producing 'zippy' electric cars. Range of electric car may be smaller than today, but if they are hybrids, this may not be a problem. Production models cost more than $100k.

Brave New Leaf says: This is a sensible next step in the evolution of hybrids. Particularly in Western Washington, where much of our electrical energy comes from hydroelectric power, this is a very sensible way to further green your car. As renewable energy becomes a larger and larger percentage of the nation's electrical grid, this could aid our country in producing less emissions.

Today you can't buy a plug-in model, but some conversion kits are available if you have mad cash. Keep your eyes open and wait it out.

6. Hydrogen Fuel Cells

What is it? Mix hydrogen, the most plentiful element in the universe, with oxygen, an abundant element of our atmosphere and make car go!

Pros: Car itself can be considered zero emissions; smashing hydrogen and oxygen together only produces clean, drinkable water!

Cons: Unless you're ready to take a trip to the sun, hydrogen isn't just lying around. Today, making hydrogen takes lots of fossil fuels, either burned directly or taken from the electrical grid (which also burns fossil fuels).

Also, there is no current distribution infrastructure for this fuel. And you can't buy a fuel cell car yet (maybe around 2010). Manufacturing the fuel cell requires expensive and difficult to mine materials. Despite the enthusiasm surrounding their potential, hydrogen cars can still be considered an unsolved problem.

Brave New Leaf says: Don't even worry about these right now. Maybe they'll figure it out, maybe they won't, but it won't be a realistic alternative for a while.

Other ways of getting around:

With all of the focus on automobiles, it's important to remember there are completely different alternatives for getting around:

• Buy a motorcycle or scooter. Even Vespa go 74 mphs and get 64 mpg. Plus, you'll look cool.
• Take the bus. Taking public transportation reduces your footprint more than driving a Prius. Even more if your transportation fleet uses energy-efficient buses or trains.
• Buy a commuter car. On second thought, scratch that. I still can't look at these things without cracking up.
• Look into electric bikes. If you're like me, you'd love to ride your bike to work in the summer, but are too out of shape to do so and have lots of hills in your way. An electric bike might give you the pick up that you need to make biking convenient so you don't arrive a sweaty mess every morning.  New models are looking sleeker and sleeker. 

The System: Tracking our Carbon Footprint

Read other articles in the Carbon Audit Series: an ongoing investigation into our carbon footprint.

At this point, I've completed enough individual audits to have a good sense for my overall carbon footprint. Here's what it looks like yearly:

Nearly 20 tons. That's a lot of trees. And there's a significant amount of oil being wasted in this mix.

For the most part, our household averages are way below the US Average. Except for air travel, where we are doing way more than our part. There are plenty of great, easy ways to reduce this significantly.

It's time to start improving these statistics in earnest. As I implement projects, I'll start tracking their overall impact to my footprint in the Results section of the blog.

I'm definitely looking for great project ideas. If you have one, please leave a comment.

More help with calculating a carbon footprint

I found a couple of more useful carbon emissions calculators, that I thought I would share.

1.  TerraPass Flight Carbon Calculator (http://www.terrapass.com/flight/flightcalc.php)

This groovy calculator lets you type in the specific arrival and destination points of your journeys, and gives you a per passenger output of the specific emissions for that journey. It also remembers the journeys you've made and will give you a total CO2 emissions number for all of your flights.

With the trips my husband and I have made in the past year, we've travelled 28,153 miles, which is 22,984 lbs CO2 for the both of us. As I've noted before, this is our most significant emissions statistic.

2.  Green Tags Carbon Calculator (https://www.greentagsusa.org/GreenTags/calculator_intro.cfm)

This is the simplest overall carbon footprint calculator that I have found to date, and it's recommended by King County for having good Washington-specific data built into it.

Though it doesn't weigh the impact of things like recycling, the findings reinforce perfectly the estimates I've built for myself so far. The Natural Gas heating number exactly matches the number I came up with independently, and the total of 15 tons of emissions matches my carbon footprint averaging I took from some of the web's most popular tools.

 

Hot Water Heater Audit

Up until recently, my energy audits have pretty much ignored my appliances. Which is an enormous thing to handwave. Appliances are huge energy suckers. But my arm muscles are too measly to roll them out of their designated areas to leverage my Kill-A-Watt. And most of them are sufficiently old that there is no published energy information about them.

My hot water heater, however, has its energy information posted right on its side. I have a natural gas hot water heater, which is pretty common. Over 2/3 of American households heat their home or water with  natural gas. Generally, hot water heaters are the #2 energy users in the home, after the home heating system. Let's take a look at my water heater:

Here it is. I have to say that I have no complaints about it. My water is always nice and hot. But boy, does it look complicated. Tons of tubing and dials and boxes and meters.

Two things stick out: there seems to be some sort of timer in the upper right hand corner. Inspecting it further, it appears to be set to the "off" position from 1-2am and then "on" the rest of the time. I have no idea what this is for, but it excites me. Where there's an off switch or a timer, there's usually an opportunity to save some energy!

The other knob towards the bottom clearly controls the hot water temperature. It seems to be pushed a little past its recommended setting. Which could mean I'm overheating the water.

Trouble is, I have no idea how much natural gas I use. In our condominium complex, natural gas is split up and divided equally amongst all of the units. Now that I think about it, it's hardly fair. No matter how much I am able to reduce my natural gas consumption, I won't save any money.

I can however, endeavor to reduce my carbon emissions. Natural gas, while much better than its fossil fuel cousins, still releases CO2 and other gases when it burns.

Let's see if we can come up with an estimate of how much CO2 is released from this guy per year. Warning: math ahead!

The number on the Energy Star tag tells me that this hot water heater uses 272 therms/year. A wikipedia search reveals that a therm is a heat unit equal to 100,000 BTUs, another heat unit.

Searching on natural gas reveals that 1 cubic foot of natural gas can produce about 1030 BTUs, but most natural gas hot water heaters are only about 90% efficient in acheiving this metric. Okay, now we're getting somewhere. 1 cubic foot of natural gas yields about 927 BTUs in my hot water heater.

That means that there is over 29,000 cubic feet of natural gas pumping through my pipes to that water heater every year. Every twelve days I've burned through enough natural gas to fill up my entire apartment!

It's a lot, but it's nowhere near what I'm being billed for. The $7/month that I pay should get me 84,000 cubic feet a year.

Now we need some way to translate this into CO2 levels. Naturalgas.org states that 117,000 pounds of CO2 go into the air for every billion BTUs of natural gas burned. Big numbers, but it should work. That's 117 pounds for every million BTUs.

Crunching the numbers tells me that 272 therms is equal to 3182.4 pounds of carbon dioxide. Unbelievable. Just heating my water produces 1.5 tons of CO2 a year. I'd need to nurse 38 saplings from infancy to ten years old to soak up that much carbon.

There's a shortcut through this formula: X therms * 12.0593 = pounds of CO2 emitted. Try it yourself and see how much CO2 you're producing.

I'm off to investigate how to reduce this.

Brave New Leaf on KUOW 94.9

Today I did a radio interview on KUOW 94.9's Sound Focus program on the Brave New Leaf project. In doing so, I remembered why I write, and try not to speak...

Still, it was a fun experience for this new greenie.

If you'd like to listen to the podcast, click here. BNL segment starts at 44:30. (thanks Belmont!)

The "Dark" Side of CFLs

Recently, we swapped out most of our bulbs for Compact Fluorescents. On the whole, so far, we’ve been pleased with the results. But there has been one slight problem:

Cold start.

We noticed it straight from the beginning. Our bulbs finally swapped out, my husband and I flipped the inaugural switch and looked at each other in concern. The room was dim. Had we bought the wrong bulbs? Two minutes later, however, the room was bright and lovely.

See, CFLs take a little bit of time to achieve full luminosity. And by a little bit of time, I mean about ninety solid seconds of juice. In order to shine their brightest, they need to heat up. Our house is pretty cold, so they have even farther to go. Don’t even think about using them outside in the winter.

We’ve spent some time trying to see if we could turn this into an advantage. One night I discovered that they were dim enough for me to sneak into our adjacent bathroom in the middle of the night without waking my husband. We stopped using our nightlight. It seemed like a victory.

But the very next evening, I got an eyelash in my eye, and dashed into the bathroom to try to sort it out, only to realize that I couldn’t see a thing in the mirror. I had to hang out in agony for ninety seconds waiting for the light to heat.

The problem doesn’t seem to be as exacerbated with our spiral fluorescents as with our floods. And after all, Popular Mechanics rated our brand of lights as “slow to warm”. Bathrooms may not be the right location for a “slow to warm” bulb. Some experimentation may be necessary to find the right mix of bulbs for optimum convenience in our home.

Other downsides of CFLs:
Some of my comment contributors have wisely pointed out that CFLs have a number of other downsides besides cold start.

Longevity Questions
I initially stated that CFLs have 10x the lifespan of incandescent lights. This is a bit of a misnomer. CFLs are only able to achieve their maximum lifespan under certain conditions; namely when the light stays on for three hours at a time. Turning a CFL on and off reduces its lifespan a bit. So again, in areas like bathrooms where the light may be subject to frequent short bursts of activity, you might want to consider another bulb. LEDs, perhaps?

Mercury
Most people know that CFLs contain a small amount of mercury, less than is contained within a mercury thermometer. Mercury is a neurotoxin, and breaking a bulb in your home could be a scary thing to deal with, particularly if you have young kids or dogs.

Then there are the landfill implications. If CFLs pile up in our landfills, mercury could build up in large quantities, releasing mercury emissions, or contaminating ground water. Some argue that this is negated by the mercury not released into the air by coal-fired power plants via the electrical conservation of the CFL bulb. But adding more mercury isn’t really helping the problem.

I would encourage my blog readers to not change their bulbs to CFLs unless they are committed to recycling them. Recycling CFLs is pretty easy in the Puget Sound. A large list of local retailers (including Ikea!) will accept them.

Temperature Limitations
Australia and Canada have both announced that they are banning incandescent lightbulbs entirely. The first question many people asked was “What’s going to happen to all of the ovens?”. As of yet, CFLs cannot handle temperature extremes like those found in ovens, microwaves, washer/dryers, and fridge/freezers. The bans may require manufacturers to use significantly more expensive alternatives like LED lighting, possibly driving the prices of appliances up.

Heat
Incandescents don’t just generate light, they generate heat. If you live in a well-insulated home in a cold climate, it’s possible that your incandescent lights help heat your home. Ditch them, and you’ll use the same amount of energy you saved in heating your house.

I’m a skeptic of this theory. Incandescent bulbs are not designed to heat a home, and are not efficient at doing so. Most of the bulbs live in the ceiling, keeping the heat in a small radius where it is least useful, and little of it is dispelled into the room. On top of this, if you combine CFLs with a more responsible way of heating your home than coal-fired electrical (even considering natural gas alternatives reduces your carbon footprint), then you’ve made a net environmental gain.

So what’s the verdict?
I started the CFL project because swapping out my bulbs was supposed to be the most no-brainer thing I could do to help reduce my footprint. It’s at the top of every environmental todo list. Like most green decisions, however, there are things to learn and trade-offs to make. Not every green option is right for every individual.

For me, CFLs still seem like a great choice. I will recycle them to minimize their negative environmental impact. They are helping to reduce my energy footprint by around 10%. But for the time being, I’m putting incandescents back in the bathroom.