Energy Usage

One thing we all can do is reduce the amount of energy we use around our house on a daily basis. This basically means curbing electricity and natural gas usage. Here are some helpful tips. I quoted all the usage facts from the Portland Metro website, and there are quite a few I didn't include, so check it out if you would like to see more.

Appliance Usage - See previous blog for money saving details

• Home appliances are the world’s fastest-growing energy consumers after automobiles, accounting for 30 percent of industrial countries’ electricity consumption and 12 percent of their greenhouse gas emissions. –Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2004 Special Focus: The Consumer Society, January 2004,I SBN: 0-393-32539-3
• About 80 percent of the energy used by a clothes washer is used to heat water. –Rocky Mountain Institute, Home Energy Brief #5 Water Heating,” 2004
  http://www.rmi.org/images/other/Energy/E04-15_HEB5WaterHeat.pdf

- With modern detergents, using cold water to wash your clothes should meet your needs most of the time. Not only will it keep your hot water heater from running as often, it will also keep your clothes from fading.

- Consider using a drying rack or even a clothes line, dryers consume high amounts of energy. It also helps your clothes last longer. I started putting all my shirts on hangers to dry about 10 years ago, not to save energy, but to save the shirts. And I inadvertently saved energy in the process!

- Use a toaster oven or microwave to cook or heat up smaller portions rather than using a conventional oven.

Light Bulbs

• The incandescent light bulb is so inefficient that about 90 percent of the energy it consumes is given off as heat, while only 10 percent is converted to light. –U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, “Energy Information Administration, 2001 Residential Energy Consumption Survey,” 2001
• An incandescent light bulb costs 75 cents or less at the store, but it will typically cost six to 10 times that for electricity over its relatively short (750-hour) life. –Rocky Mountain Institute, 2002
  www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid352.ph
• The average American household has 2.5 incandescent light bulbs on for 4 or more hours each day. If every household replaced those bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs, the nation would save nearly 32 billion kilowatt hours every year, or about 35 percent of all electricity used for lighting homes. –U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, “Residential Energy Consumption Survey,” 1993

- Consider using CFL (Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs), the payback is considerable over the life of the bulb. This one does come with a catch, though! Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs do contain mercury. This is a hazardous material and should be treated as such, so you shouldn't just throw them in the trash when they burn out. In Portland, you can take them to hazardous waste collection events or permanent Metro stations. See this website for details. If you live elsewhere, check with your local authorities on how to properly dispose of them. Also, be aware of proper clean up if one should break. Here are the cleanup instructions from the EPA if you do break one. The procedure is quite extensive.

- LED bulbs are also new options, but to date pretty expensive.

Heating and Cooling

- It doesn't matter how efficient your furnace is if your ducts are leaking. It's a good idea to have a professional come make sure everything is sealed up.

- Set your thermostat as low as is comfortable in the winter and as high as is comfortable in the summer.

- Clean or replace filters on furnaces once a month or as needed.

- Clean warm-air registers, baseboard heaters, and radiators as needed; make sure they're not blocked by furniture, carpeting, or drapes.

- Bleed trapped air from hot-water radiators once or twice a season; if in doubt about how to perform this task, call a professional.

- Place heat-resistant radiator reflectors between exterior walls and the radiators.

- Turn off kitchen, bath, and other exhaust fans within 20 minutes after you are done cooking or bathing; when replacing exhaust fans, consider installing high-efficiency, low-noise models.

- During the heating season, keep the draperies and shades on your south-facing windows open during the day to allow the sunlight to enter your home and closed at night to reduce the chill you may feel from cold windows.

- During the cooling season, keep the window coverings closed during the day to prevent solar gain.

There are also lots of other great energy saving tips on this website.

Jason

Panda Express

Since I had such good luck with Five Guys, I thought I'd try a few others. I went to Panda Express to get some take-out after our recent trip to Iowa, and I found that the to-go containers are made of styrofoam. So, I wrote to them. Below is their reply. Not quite as encouraging as the Five Guys reply, but not terrible. We'll see what actually happens.

Jason
==============================================================

Dear Mr. Hosch,


I would like to thank you for sharing your feedback regarding the food containers at our Panda Express locations. Please feel confident our Marketing department was made aware of this matter and can have this feedback for their information and review.


Panda Restaurant Group continually looks for ways to be green and more environmentally friendly. In the corporate offices, all polystyrene and Styrofoam have been removed. Associates are encouraged to use reusable cups, plates and flatware. Recycle and energy saving programs have been adopted. In Panda restaurants, new and innovative packaging is regularly tested in the search to find materials that perform for the Guest while being better for the environment. Menus are recyclable and printed with vegetable based inks. Equipment, like a waterless wok range, is engineered to reduce the use of natural resources. There are challenges but Panda is committed to diligently finding solutions because we value the preservation of the earth and its resources


Please accept our sincerest apology for any inconveniences that may have resulted from this visit. Thank you again for contacting us about the take away containers. Your feedback is crucial to our success, and you can be sure we will use it to improve.


Natalie Matsumoto


Guest Relations Coordinator

Energy Efficient Appliances

There's big money to be saved here.  The obvious incentive is that appliances that are more energy efficient will use less energy and cost less to run.  However, there are some great opportunities out there.  Between now and the end of 2010 is the time to do any appliance or windows upgrades.  If you need to replace an appliance or have home improvement, pay attention to energy star ratings.  Often any additional cost will payoff with less energy cost and there are typically tax rebates (washers, windows, furnace).  In fact, for 2009 & 2010 there is one time federal $1500 tax credit for items like windows and furnaces.  In Oregon , we are very lucky to also have state and energy trust that also provide incentives. Below are links for the services they provide.  Actually, a friend of mine just had a net expense for a 95% efficiency furnace a month ago for what it cost me to install an 80% efficiency furnace in 2008 after all the tax incentives and rebates he got.

 Note: Most are tax credits, not deductions which have a much bigger impact.

o       Federal: http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=products.pr_tax_credits

o       Oregon State : http://www.oregon.gov/ENERGY/CONS/RES/RETC.shtml

o       Oregon Energy Trust: http://www.energytrust.org/residential/index.html

Portland General Electric is also offering $150 off of a new electric water heater for those of you living in their district.

NW Natural is offering incentives to install a new air conditioner along with a new energy efficient furnace.  Total incentives when combined with the Federal and Oregon Energy Trust money is up to $2100.

I also discussed some incentives from local water companies for improvements that will help you reduce water usage in a previous blog.

If you have installed any new appliances or windows in 2009 or plan to you should definitely check out these websites.

Good luck!

Jason

Water Use

Let's move off of garbage for awhile and talk about water use.  Clean potable water coming out of a faucet in our house is something we all take for granted.  We all treat it like an infinite resource, but I personally feel that we need to rethink how we use our water or we may someday find ourselves without the clean drinking water we enjoy today.  It drives me crazy when I go to places like Phoenix and Las Vegas and see all the putting green lawns while the Colorado River is drying up.  So what can we do about it?  Here are some tips that we call can do.

• Consider low flow toilets, or if you have a normal to larger size tank or can't afford to replace the toilets in your house, use a two liter bottle filled with water to consume some of the space in the tank.
• Don't just let the water run down the drain when you're washing dishes or brushing your teeth.  It isn't difficult to turn it off when it isn't actively pouring onto a dirty plate or a toothbrush.  From my personal observations, I estimate that many people can cut their usage by about 70% while washing dishes simply by not letting the water run.
• If you’re going to water your lawn, aerate it first b/c it allows the water to soak into the roots.  Either water in the early morning or late evening to reduce the amount of water that evaporates before soaking in to the ground.  Or better, yet.  Don't water it at all.  If you're in a climate where you get rain like Oregon, it will come back.  
• If you're in a desert, plant something that grows native.  Actually, you should probably plant native vegetation wherever you live.  It has adapted to the local climate.
• Use drip lines when watering specific locations such as shrubs or gardens.
• Rain barrels can be used to capture the run off from you roof.  That water can be used for watering flowers or a garden.  You save on your water bill, and in addition, if you have the set up inspected the water company may give you a discount on your water bill.
• You can let your hands air dry after washing them in a public restroom instead of using paper towels (or using your hair is one of Charles’s beauty secrets) .
• Reducing or eliminating pesticides and herbicides reduces the chemicals and toxins that are eventually absorbed into our water system.

If you live in the Tualatin Valley Water District in the Portland area, there are quite a few residential rebates you can get for various things.  

• $50 for purchasing a more energy efficient washing machine
• $10 for purchasing a more energy efficient dish washer
• $40-$100 per toilet up to two toilets for replacing older water wasting toilets
• A landscape rebate of up to $50 for using newer goods and services.
• $200 for installing a weather-based irrigation system

The state of Oregon also gives tax credits for certain appliances.  Check this website for details.

If you live somewhere else, check with your local water provider and state government.

Good luck!

Jason

Composting

Another great thing to do to reduce the amount of waste produced is to compost kitchen waste.  The double benefit is that you can make organic material for your garden at the same time.  Very large compost piles will do pretty much all food scraps, but for a normal household bin you would need to limit it to materials that decompose faster and don't attract unwanted critters.  For example, you wouldn't want to put meat scraps, dairy products, or sauces in your bin.  These will start to smell fairly quickly and attract all of your neighborhood raccoons.  I would recommend keeping it away from where you normally congregate in your yard, as it does attract fruit flies.

If you plan to use your compost for your garden or lawn, you want to make sure to keep out weeds that have gone to seed.  You'll just end up unintentionally planting weeds in your garden!

You can put in all kinds of surprising stuff, including napkins, paper towels, and newspapers.  One big trick is to keep leaves from the fall raking, as they are a very important ingredient in the composting process.  Put a handful in whenever you empty your kitchen bin into the larger bin.  It helps the process and helps keep bugs down.

Grass seems to compost fairly well, but I have found that it fills up the bin very quickly.  Also, it is actually better for your lawn to just leave it where it lies after you cut it.  Think of it as an easy way to fertilize the lawn later.

Reducing trash through composting and recycling (which we'll discuss later) may allow you to share a waste bin with a neighbor, reduce trash pickup frequency, or go to a smaller trash can.  Portland metro has compost bins that make composting very easy.   Unless you are trying to produce compost quickly, the mix of what goes into the bin does not need to be regulated.  See the May 20th post for information on where to get a bin.

Janell and I have been composting since February, and our normal waste is now less than one bag a week.  Sheila has also seen some fantastic results in her school's waste reduction project.  See her comments here.

Good luck!

Jason

Junk Mail

Now here's something we can all agree on.  We all get way more junk mail than seems even remotely necessary.   Here is, quite frankly, an appalling statistic.  100 million trees are cut down every year to satisfy junk mail.  Junk mail!  The stuff we all hate to get and throw away as soon as we see it come out of the mailbox.  There are a lot more impacts as well, but that should be staggering enough.

There is some hope, however.  Rather than duplicate all the methods in the following  website, I'll just direct you there.  http://www.obviously.com/junkmail/.  It has a lot of great tips.  My favorites are:

• Don't sign up for things like contests if you don't want to get junk mail.
  
• Don't fill out the warranty cards every time you purchase a product unless it's actually required to make your warranty void.  In most cases it's really a marketing technique for data gathering.
• Ask charities you deal with to not share your information.  One trick they share is to put in a fake middle initial and keep track of which organizations you give the fake initial to.  This may be very revealing.
• The three main credit bureaus actually sell your information to people wanting to extend you credit, such as all those annoying credit card mailings.  You can get them to stop doing this by calling 1-888-5 OPT OUT (or 1-888-567-8688).  We called this number a few yeas ago, and it cut our junk mail significantly.  Although the current economic crisis did its part to cut down on this type of junk mail, it's probably still worth it to do this.

Also, you can petition to stop mail with congress http://donotmail.org/ and reduce today at http://donotmail.org/form.php?id=50.

Although it is not explicitly junk mail, you can eliminate most of your paper utility bills and bank statements as well.  Most of these companies actually prefer to send you a monthly email to view your account rather than having to stuff an envelope and mail it to you.  Simply sign up for paperless statements.

Save some trees or there may not be any left to hug.

Jason

Five Guys

Writing works!  As I mentioned, I wrote to Five Guys yesterday about getting rid of their styrofoam cups that they use for fries.  Well, I got a note back from them today.  Here it is.  Note the end of his signature line.  I find it a bit ironic.  Anyway, feel free to write and congratulate them for making the right choice.

Hi Jason,

 

Thank you for taking the time to let us know the you appreciate our product.  I also thank you for commenting on the cups that we use to serve our fries.  We have listened, and have taken steps to move to a different cup, and you should see them within the next couple of weeks. 

 

I hope you continue to patronize our locations in the Portland area, and if I can answer any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

 

Best regards,

 

Jeff Mannion
District Manager - West

FIVE GUYS Enterprises
10440 Furnace Road, Suite 205
Lorton, VA 22079
Cellular: 321.427.2649
Email: jmannion@fiveguys.com

Web: www.fiveguys.com 
P  Please consider the environment before printing this email

Packaging

Let's talk about packaging.  If you take a look in your trash can and recycling bin, I would bet that around 75% of the waste is related to packaging.  It's something we can't get away from, but we can make smarter choices about it.  There's a basic hierarchy of good and bad packaging.

The obvious best choice is no packaging.  This is kind of hard to do, but there are a few things.  First, as described in a previous post, you can buy things from the bulk bin at the store and reuse the baggies or other  reusable container.  Also from the previous post, reusable shopping bags will eliminate "plastic or paper" question as you'll need neither.  Eating fresh food vs. processed food will reduce overall packaging, and it's better for you, too.

Next, something biodegradable is good, although that may be hard to find or identify.

Recyclable packaging is next.  When buying things in plastic, try to avoid things without the recycling numbers.  Cardboard is recyclable (and it actually isn't too bad on the biodegradable scale).

Very last on the list and the worst thing is styrofoam.  Styrofoam takes hundreds or even thousands of years to break down, and recycling it usually isn't an option.  Even though it often has recycling numbers on it, most recycling places don't take styrofoam.  Therefore, it should be avoided as much as possible.  For example, rather than buying meat on a styrofoam plate wrapped in plastic, go to the meat counter and get it in butcher paper.  Also, encourage your favorite restaurants to make better choices.  Encourage furniture manufacturers to use cardboard instead of styrofoam for protective packaging.  For me, we had a Five Guys Burgers and Fries open up close to my house.  Their burgers and fries are great, but for some reason they serve the fries in a styrofoam cup.  I just wrote to the corporate office and told them I won't be going back to their store until they stopped putting their fries in styrofoam.  

Also discussed in a previous post, buying in bulk will reduce the quantity of the waste due to packaging.  For example, instead of buying individual serving sizes of things like yogurt or pudding, but a larger container and send the kids off to school with their yogurt in a reusable container.  Also, consider reusing the larger containers.  My boys have a few nice tubs from Nancy's yogurt that they like to put cars and rocks in.  :)

Finally, try not to buy stuff that is ridiculously overpackaged.  Remember when CDs first came out and they came in the giant cardboard boxes?

So, what we've done is literally looked in the trash can and recycling bin to see what we can do differently to reduce the impact.

Any comments?

Jason

Reduce Waste - Drink keg beer

Keg Beer reduces waste? This topic may seem a little bit silly, but if you think about it it's quite true. Drinking keg beer is far more environmentally friendly than drinking beer from bottles or cans. This is really just another version of bulk packaging. And the super special bonus is that every part of the containers used (kegs and glasses) are reusable. Just wash them and you can easily use them again. Even the plastic top on the keg is reusable if you want to get really technical. You can simply bring it back to the brewer (assuming you got it directly from the brewer as is common in Portland), although recycling is probably a more likely option. Now, while cans and bottles are both recyclable, it does take quite a bit of energy to recycle them. It doesn't take as much energy as starting with raw materials, but I'll get to that one later in the month. Also, I noticed since my last keg ran out that I really don't like dealing with bottles.

Anyway, I digress. Let's for a moment assume we're talking about a keg fridge in your home. One argument is that many keg fridges are made from older, energy inefficient refrigerators. My counter argument to that is if you are the type of person to have a keg fridge in the first place, you would most likely have the exact same fridge in your garage full of bottles of beer anyway, so that is kind of a wash. Also, drinking your beer at home has environmental advantages in that you're not driving to the bar and social advantages in that you're not driving home.

There are 15.5 gallons in a keg, which translates to roughly 165 12-oz bottles or cans of beer. So in the same time period, you can either deal with one keg to bring back and a few occasional glasses to wash or you have 165 bottles that you'll need to store for awhile and either bring to a recycling center, recycle curbside, or bring back to the store for your nickel depending on what state you live in. Worst case, like when I lived in Texas in the mid-90's, the only option was to throw it in the trash. Coming from a state where we got a nickel back for the bottles (Iowa), that was a very painful thing to do.

Of course, not everybody wants to have a refrigerator full of beer in the garage (although I can't understand why not). Depending on where you live, a growler or jar of beer to bring home from a local brewpub may be an option. Also, I encourage you to drink draft beer instead of bottled beer when going out. It's good for the environment. I wish that was an option at the casinos in Vegas. Man, they go through a LOT of bottled beer.

Incidentally, does anybody know why bottles are now crushed and recycled rather than reused like they used to be? Remember the white groves around beer and pop bottles? That's from the bottling line when bottles are reused over and over. I haven't seen that for awhile.

Save the planet...one beer at a time.

Jason

June Challenge - Minimize Your Impact

OK people. This is the big one. For the last five months we've been doing good things for ourselves, and it's been great! Now we're going to make a concentrated effort on doing good things for our environment. Whether you get your environmental news from Al Gore or Rush Limbaugh, the things I'm going to discuss over the next month are indisputably beneficial things to do for our environment...and for our wallets. Obviously, I don't expect everybody to try everything, and I don't anticipate it all sticking. But, if by the end of the month you've made one or two of these things a new habit, then I feel we've succeeded.

I need to thank Charles Lockwood and Jen Miller for doing a lot of the research you'll see over the next month. General categories we'll cover will include:

• Reducing Garbage
• Around the House
• Appliances
• Utility and Water Consumption
• Transportation
• Advanced Topics

For the first week or so, let's talk about garbage. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Let's start with reduce. This is actually a pretty simple concept. Don't use as much stuff. However, putting it into practice takes a little bit of effort.

• Reusable shopping bags - This is a fairly simple thing to do, and most major grocery stores now sell them for about $1. I have, however, found it somewhat difficult to actually remember to bring it into the store. There are a few tricks, though. Once you've emptied your groceries into the refrigerator, hang the bag on the door knob so you remember to bring it into the car. Put it on the front seat on the way to the store so that the odds of remembering to bring it in the store go up. If you're only getting one or two items, skip the bag altogether. Also, you usually get a 5 cent refund for not taking a bag!
• Consider buying things in bulk with minimal packaging. Think of this as the evolution of taking your own reusable grocery bag. If you often buy the same things in bulk, you can reuse the packaging. In stores like New Seasons, you can buy cereal, spices, grains, nuts, dried fruit, coffee, and you can even buy soap and shampoo in bulk. Also drives to buying fresh fruits and vegetables which I hear are good for your health. :)
• Buying local reduces fuel required to supply the products and keeps money in your local economy.
• Reduce consumption of plastic bags and saran wrap by using washable storage containers.
• Be aware of purchasing individual serving size items.
• Some stats from a Mother Jones article on American waste created. I can't vouch for these statistics, but the point is that we "waste" a lot.
  o 106,000 Aluminum cans every 30 seconds
  o 1 Million plastic cups on airline flights every 6 hours
  o 2 million plastic beverage bottles ever 5 minutes
  o 426,000 cell phones every day
  o 1.14 million brown paper bags each hour
  o 60,000 plastic grocery bags every 5 minutes
  o 15 million sheets of office paper every 5 minutes
  o 170,000 energizer batteries every 15 minutes
• Yes, all these can be recycled, but please think about reduction first. The materials may be reused through recycling, but quite a bit of energy is used in the recycling process. Even the best city San Francisco only recycles 50% of waste…and national average is closer to 10%. Oklahoma City wins the worst crown at 3%. Boulder, Colorado is shooting for 100%...Good luck to them!

OK. Let's get started!

Jason