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Green Matters Blog
written by Crissy Trask

Welcome to my blog where I share almost anything I think will help make greener living undeniable and simple. News, tips, insight and resources served up monthly (weekly soon!).

I also share my perpectives on others' perspectives and actions. Agree or disagree, I hope you will find them thought-provoking and a starting point for conversation.

July 2, 2008 "One Cold Summer"

I haven't worked in an office for ten years, but when I saw a story on the TODAY show about over air conditioned office buidlings, it brought back unfond memories of being forced to spend hours in a climate controlled building where the climate the controllers were shooting for was more like subactric than a cool summer day.

According to the TODAY piece, some office buildings are kept so cold in the summer that worker productivity suffers as a result, and women in particular rely on outerwear and space heaters to get through the day without freezing.

It's not just office building workers that deal with this problem, though. I've learned to take a coat along with me to the bank, grocery store, restaurants--anyplace I know will be air conditioned. Generally if a business is using air conditioning, they are probably misusing it.

It's a tad cruel and woefully energy inefficient to cool buildings to the point where occupants need winter attire or heating equipment or both to be comfortable. The Earth and all who've transitioned into their summer wardrobe beg that thermostats in buildings everywhere hover around the mid 70s and not the mid 60s.

Thermostats set at 78 degrees will conserve energy and this is a comfortable temperature for most people if dressed for the season and not exerting themselves. For each degree you adjust the thermostat up, you'll save 3-4% in cooling costs.

June 2008 "Did I Feel Raindrops?"

Here in the Pacific Northwest, one week until the official start of summer, we're just seeing the arrival of spring. May and June, for the most part, have been cool and rainy. Just this week we reached consistent afternoon highs in the low 70's. But some residents--paying more attention to the calendar than the weather--have been watering their lawns for several weeks despite cool and satisfactorily wet conditons.

The first rule to water-wise lawn care is pay attention to the weather. Nothing says your not paying attention or just don't care, like permitting a sprinkler system to come on and stay on right before, during or directly after a rainstorm.

Weather is something all of us pay attention to, now we just have to get more people with sprinkler systems to connect the dots between the weather and watering needs. Watering when none is needed is not only wasteful, it's bad for the grass. Too much water weakens a lawn's root system and its abilty to out-compete weeds, fight off disease or ever adapt to less water.

As a general rule, lawns need only one inch of rain per week. This amount can double in very hot conditions, but then again, lawns aren't really meant to thrive in hot conditions. For this application, xeriscaping would be a wiser choice.

I'm for taking out any personal lawn that exceeds what a child or dog needs to chase a ball. Short of this, practice water-wise lawn care to avoid water shortages this summer and the myriad problems they bring for farmers and wildlife.

May 2008 "Golf and Greenwashing"

Last month I read an article in United Airline's Hemispheres magazine titled "The Greening of Golf." The article raved about a hot-weather grass called paspalum that can be irrigated with recycled water and requires less mowing and fertilizing than other turf grass. This is indeed good news for those who build golf courses in hot climates using traditional grasses that require massive amounts of clear water, fertilizer and fossil fuels to maintain. But there's more to the golf industry's excitement over this grass.

Another benefit of paspalum is that it can can survive harsh coastal conditions. This grass can withstand salty sea spray and even survive being buried by sand in the event of a tropical storm, so paspalum will make it more possible to hack out courses alongside beaches and coral outcroppings. Hmmm...nothing green about that. For developers wanting to replace seaside vegetation and habitat with groomed golf courses, paspalum has given them a new reason to plow ahead. Paspalum cannot be heralded as the grass species that will green golf if it is replacing coastal wildlands.

April 2008 "Mercury Rising?"

As energy efficient compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) become more popular, the concern over their mercury content is growing as well. But a typical CFL contains only a trace amount--about five milligrams--of mercury sealed inside its glass tube, and new CFLs are being developed that will contain even less. Nonetheless, the presence of mercury in CFLs has some consumers nervous. Here's what anyone using or considering using CFLs needs to know.

1. Not using CFLs can actually lead to more mercury pollution. The majority of this country's power comes from coal-generated power plants--the largest remaining source of human-generated mercury emissions in the United States. Due to CFLs' lower energy requirements, the average coal-fired power plant will emit 3.3 milligrams of mercury to power a CFL, compared to 13.6 milligrams of mercury to power a typical incandescent bulb. A difference of 10.3 milligrams or a 75% reduction in mercury emissions.

2. CFLs last for up to 10,000 hours or about as long as 10 incandescent blulbs. This means there will be much less waste created by using CFLs. The downside is, CFLs, due to their mercury content, are considered hazardous waste and should not be tossed in the garbage. You can look up disposal regulations and recycling options by state at www.epa.gov/bulbrecycling/.

3. If no local facility exists to recycle your lamps, consider mailing them to a qualified lamp recycler. Locate one through the website www.lampreycling.org and carefully follow instructions for packing and mailing. Broken lamps will not be accepted.

4. While some states permit households to throw mercury-containing lamps in the trash, it's not a good idea. Lamps that are thrown in the trash will break, releasing mercury into the environment. If you will be disposing of lamps in the trash, take precautions. The Environmental Protection Agency recommends placing the fluorescent lamp inside two well sealed plastic bags before putting it into the outside trash. They also caution that fluorescent lamps should never go to an incinerator. If your trash is sent to an incinerator, search outside your area for an alternative disposal method.

March 2008 "Grab a Glass"

Water that is bottled in plastic has become a major environmental problem. Manufacturing plastic bottles produced 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide, the chief global warming gas, in 2006. I takes 3 litres of water to make one litre of bottled water, and after recycling, 25 billion single-serving plastic water bottles are thrown out annually.

How did we become so addicted to drinking a beverage, that flows freely from taps across the country, out of a bottle--and paying to do so? Part of the problem is that the bottled water companies convinced the mass market that tap water was potentially bad for us. If the industry's fear campaign didn't convince us to pay an average $1.29 per gallon for water, the availability and portability of those one litre bottles quickly did. What a convenient way to quench our thirst on the treadmill, in the car, at our desk--anywhere! But the reality is that bottled water is a luxury that is contributing to unnecessary fossil fuel use, greenhouse gas emissions, pollution and waste.

First, let me bust the myth that tap water is less safe than bottled water. Bottled waters are subject to less rigorous testing and purity standards than city tap water, so consumers who choose bottle water over tap water may be more, not less vulnerable to bad water. If you're concerned about your tap water, there is no shortage of solutions for filtering tap water--all of them more economical than paying for water in a bottle year in and year out. The average consumer spends $400 a year on bottled water. I countertop filter will cost about $85, and pitcher-style purifiers cost around $25. Even when you factor in the cost of replacement filter cartridges, home filtering saves money.

When it comes to portability, again there are many solutions. Reusable water bottles are being produced for and marketed to the consumer who wants to take their water anywhere. Bottles made of lightweight stainless steel, produced by Klean Kanteen, and aluminum, produced by SIGG, are excellent choices. They won't leach toxic chemicals into your water, as plastic can, and they'll last several years. If weight isn't an issue, grab a glass beverage bottle and reuse it--just don't drop it!

The reasons to avoid bottled water are numerous and range from protecting the environment to saving money. The reasons to buy bottled water are almost non-existent in the face of solutions that make purifying and toting water economical and easy.

February 2008 "I'm Not Listening" (hands over ears)

Things are starting to change. There is new interest in all things green and information on everything from alternative energy to using less plastic is reaching a wider audience than ever before. Publishers, teachers, network producers and bloggers by the thousands are sharing information and solutions on going green--trying to wake us up to our situation and our role in the solutions.

Many people are paying attention and taking action in both simple and grand ways. But for all the people that have committed themsleves to correcting lifestyle habits that are short-changing the earth and us all, there are still too many dragging their heels. And then there are those with heels defiantly dug in! I give the heel-draggers the benefit of the doubt. Getting around to making changes is a factor of so many things we can't always control. My real complaint is with the stuck-in-my-ways-and happy-to-be group. I call them "resistors."

With all the evidence of an earth out of balance that's been reported, and no shortage of solutions being offered, there are still those that turn a deaf ear. Well, actually many resistors are not that passive. The resistors have typically taken either a fight or flight stance on change, and increasingly, resistors are choosing to fight because it's getting harder for them to hide. With more and more people paying attention to our situation and changing behaviors to correct a dismal course, the resistors are frequently confronted on their lifestyle choices. Denying that there are problems in defense of careless choices is no longer good enough. Resistors are finding their voice, and it sounds a lot like Rush Limbaughs'.

It's maddening to hear people using over-simplified, incomplete, and inaccurate arguments to undermine environmental goals. What exactly is wrong with protecting the earth? It's not only basic, it happens to be--due to decades of less-than-sustainable choices--overdue.

January 2008 "Litterbug"

Of all the ways we can harm the earth, littering seems to be one of the most pointless, thoughtless and avoidable. Everyone knows littering is bad (I think). It's a child-like impulse we're taught to stifle when we're four years old. Even if a child's parent or guardian forgot to render this basic lesson, surely a relative, teacher, friend or stranger at some point would have set a young litterbug straight. People know not to litter the same way they know not to break people's windows, lie and steal, for example. But people do it anyway.

I can't go anywhere without seeing litter--lots of it. But one form of litter stands out among all others: cigarette butts. Not only are their more cigarette butts than any other kind of litter, but those littering them are remarkably unapologetic for the act.

What is it about cigarette smokers that makes so many of them litterbugs? If I had a dime for every cigarette butt I saw on the ground in parking lots, on nature trails, under the chair lift, on park pathways, on street corners, at bus stops, on beaches and really any place man can go, I'd be rich. And that's no exaggeration. I once picked up 48 cigarette butts from a campsite I was staying in. There were 100 campsites in that campground. If every site produced an average of 48 butts--each worth a dime, I could have made $480 that day. I'm just saying, if someone out there was paying me to collect butts, I'm confident I could make six figures a year--very confident.

Some smokers use the idle time spent sitting at a traffic light or parked at a curb to empty whole contents of their vehicle's ash tray right onto the pavement. Not only have I seen several cluster-piles of butts and ash to indicate this isn't a completely rare occurrence, but I saw a guy do it once. What are these people thinking? I'm outraged and confused. I'd really like a smoker who does this to explain to me why.

Sometimes a smoker's flick-and-crush way of disposing of a butt is downright scary. Last month a gal pulled up to a gas pump one row over from me, got out of her car and tossed her lit--lit!--cig on the ground. My heart stopped for a moment as I waited for the shockwave. Thankfully, I and seven other people pumping gas that day dodged a bullet when her cigarette failed to make contact with any combustible fumes or fuel puddles. What on earth was she thinking?! She wasn't, obviously. Tossing lit cigarettes may have become so habitual for smokers that they are not only litterbugs, but dangerous.

Smokers (not all of them, of course--please don't send me angry letters) also like to toss lit cigarettes out the car window, but I know for a fact that vehicles have been manufactured with ashtrays since at least the 1940s. And this is another way to either blow people up in their cars or start brush fires--or both!

I know what smokers who litter will say--cigarette butts are small. They are--and so are bottle caps, gum wrappers and juice-box straws. They're all litter, and still cigarette butts are the most littered item. It is estimated that several trillion cigarettes end up as litter every year.

Smokers may also be under the impression that their butts are biodegradable. They are not. Cigarette filters are made from synthetic cellulose acetate which does not breakdown (not the same thing as biodegrade) for several years. And butts and the remnant chemicals sucked through them will start to leach contaminants into the environment as soon as they get wet.

There are several campaigns lamenting cigarette litter specifically; littering fines are severe enough to make most people think twice; and as I mentioned before, everyone knows better than to litter, yet the butts keep landing on the ground. I don't know if there's a single thing I or anyone could do or say to someone who just wants to be unpleasant.

Blog Archives 2007 2006 2005

Some of my favorite blogs in cyberspace.

This is a personal and frank chronicle of a "typical" families quest for greener living. Day by day, week by week, they share what they are doing to live greener. This blog is refreshing, honest and real and I look forward to each new post!

From alternative energy to wine, you'll find entertaining reviews of the latest eco-products.

Paul Dorn is the authority on bike commuting, and this is his blog. Get tips and inspiration to make your bike commute possible.