Save $ With A Chimney Balloon

As we get into the new year, we are going to start seeing some colder weather and thus some higher heating bills.  Luckily, we've had a pretty mild winter so far and here in Georgia, we've really only had one strong cold snap.  Something tells me more is on the way so I have once again started to look for ways to keep the heat in and the cold out.

One of the major culprits for heat loss in the home is the chimney.  A quick and easy fix to a leaky chimney is a Chimney Balloon.  They run anywhere from $35-$50 and can sometimes pay for themselves on the first month's heating bill.  There aren't too many energy efficiency fixes that will return the intial investment as quickly as a chimney balloon.   It is estimated that a slight leak in a chimney can result in around $200 in lost heat over the course of a winter.  A large or severe leak can result in much more. 

 The balloon is extremely simple.  Basically, it is inflated inside the chimney and acts as a plug to keep the cold air from sneaking in.  Most of the chimney plugs have a failsafe built in to automatically melt when and if an owner forgets to take it out before lighting up a fire. 

This efficiency fix is highly recommended and can be purchased here. 

Take the Slate/TreeHugger Energy Challenge

We may have missed the boat on this green contest/challenge but we still feel that it is worth talking about.  Two months ago, Slate and TreeHugger teamed up to create a voluntary challenge that would spur average people to cut their CO2 emmissions by making commitments and taking steps that would lead to a reduction of energy use and thus cut emissions.  The challenge ended last week but is still open to anyone who wants to take it. 

More than 30,000 people signed up for the challenge and together pleged to reduce emissions by 60 million pounds of CO2.  Unfortunately only 1,373 people took the wrap up quiz but out of that group, they claim to have cut their emissions by 9 million pounds already.  I'd call that a substantial success.

So, if you would like to test your carbon reducing skills and have the fortitude to stick with it, sign up and take the challenge yourself.  You won't get the free t-shirt but you will make your small contribution to what is quite possibly the worlds most pressing problem.

Link to Challenge 

Go Down Under for Right Side Up Ideas

This article came out earlier this month from New Zealand.  The government has proposed a new home energy rating scheme that they hope to have in place by the end of 2007.  This would take home energy efficiency to a whole new level and make it visible to everyone who buys a home.  The program would be voluntary at first then move to a more mandatory nature in the years to come.  The goal would be to have a scaled level of home efficiency 'fitness' that would account for insulation, lighting, water heating, and windows.  Eventually, home owners would be required to disclose their rating to potential home buyers.  It would be great if this home efficiency rating somehow became a common measurement of the value of a home similar to mileage ratings in automobiles.

link 

The Low Hanging Fruit

One of the ideas that really gets us going here at Efficiency Solutions is the Low Hanging Fruit hypothesis.  Most leading personalities and scholars in the energy efficiency field hold that the "Low Hanging Fruit" that which is the easiest to grab represents a significant chunk of the cost/fuel/energy/environmental savings that are available.  It is truly the simplest things that make big differences.  Turning off lights, televisions, air conditioners, etc. 

 Today, we ran across a quick article in Business 2.0 magazane about a new product by Blue Line Innovations that does just that. The objective of Blue Line's most recent innovation was to "create a device that any customer could install without the help of an electricitan" says Danny Tufff of Blue Line.  They are now marketing their innovation to power companies (mostly Canadian) with great success.  The stat that caught our eye was that customers who adopted this technology saved 6.5% of their normal energy consumption after installing the device. 

 For more info you can visit their website. www.bluelineinnovations.com

MDH 

The Hazards of Dog Poop

Okay, I have done the research and I can offically say that dog poop is a problem. What's even worse is that there does not seem to be a reasonable solution. So, watch your step as we explore the hazards of dog poo. These days, there are many potential hazards of dog foul including but not limited to fines, disease, mucked up shoes, social chastising, and environmental issues.

To begin, dog poop comes in many sizes, shapes, and colors. It is similar to human poop and poop of most other mammals. Smells can vary depending upon diet of the canine. Ol Roy will create a foul, putrid, paper mill-ish smell that is unbearable while eukanuba waste will be more bearable and smell more like a mild fart. Dogs that maintain a diet of people food and wet canned dog food have a wide variety of stool samples and a very inconsistent odor. We at the GreenGaggle do not recommend varying a dog's diet mainly because of the inconsistency.

Now, lets explore the US dog population. Just like poop, dogs come in many sizes, shapes, and colors. Some are crapply little shits like the tzi zhus and pomeranians of the world and others are majestic beasts of beauty like the golden retriever and lab families. Because the government does not record numbers for this, don't give the taxocrats any ideas, we cannot give an exact number of dogs in the US. However, estimates weigh in at nearly 60 million pet dogs in the country. The US has more dogs than people than only about 20 countries in the world. The UK weighs in at a healthy 60 million citizens which is about the same. That's a lot of dogs. The US has a lot more dogs per capita as well.. If we have 60M dogs and about 290M people, our ratio is .21 dogs per person. The UK which also fancies dogs and invented a considerable number of the breeds currently roaming the planet today weighs in at about .1 dogs per person. America loves its dogs.

America does not love its dog shit however. Those 60M dogs produce about 5000 tons of foul every day. I know... I know.. You're probably like.. HOLY FUCKING SHIT.. THAT's A LOT OF SHIT!! Well, you're right. To better illustrate this, we can compare this to the USS Ronald Reagan which is currently the largest carrier in the US Navy fleet. The ship weighs about 97000 tons whereas the shit weighs about 5000 tons. So, in 20 days, the dogs could amass a shit pile heavier than our largest air craft carrier.

So, what happens to all of that poo you may ask. The overwhelming majority of it is left on the ground where the dog so nicely chose to put it. Have you ever noticed the intense concentration a dog has when deciding where to unload? My dog could walk around crouched over for 5 minutes before deciding between a bed of grass or stack of pine straw as a suitable resting place for his turd. I for one am glad that we have the toilet. The next most popular method of disposal is the pick up and throw out. There are many methods of this. Some people use baggies and others use scoopers. I prefer the baggie (bio-degradeable of course) because it is easy to use and you don't have to wash anything off. The scooper comes in an infinitely dazzling array of different varieties all advertising that they will pick up poop better than the competitors. Well, IMO, you can't beat the baggie. You can get bio-degradeable baggies at any pet store. They are usually comparable in price. The baggie provides a dexterity that is unmatched by the rival pooper scooper contraptions on the market.

Once the poop has been picked up, it will generally be disposed of in one of three ways. It will be thrown in a trash can or dumpster, placed in a home trash can to go to the dumpster or landfill later, or flushed down the toilet. I for one utilize the dumpster as I do not want to have this poop around me very long.

We will now examine the impact of each.

1. Dumpster disposal - The poop will be sent to a landfill to be buried with other trash. It will take years for poop to degrade even if it is in a bio-degradeable baggie. We will now have untold amounts of shit piles the size of aircraft carriers sitting in our landfills. Here's more reason to hate cats. Each year, over 2 million tons of cat litter ends up in municipal solid waste landfills. Most of that litter, an estimated 100,000 truckloads per year, is made from non-biodegradable clay that never decomposes. At least dogs don't have to use kitty litter.

2. Trash disposal - see number 1.

3. Flush disposal - Well, I'm not really sure where that goes. I presume the municipality harvests this poo with that of other poo that has been flushed and regenerates this into some kind fertilizer that is put back on the ground to feed crops to make more food to feed us to make more poo and continue the amazing cycle. So far, I like this one best.

4. Just leaving it - When you leave your dog's waste, it looks innocent enough. Aside from the annoyance of stepping in a pile every once in a while, what's really wrong with it? Well, let me tell you. For one, One gram of dog waste can contain 23M fecal coliform bacteria. When it rains, some of the shit washes off with the rain water and into the ground and runoff drains. The pathogens, bacteria, and viruses that were in the crap are now in this untreated water which in turn runs off into streams and rivers where we swim and fish. Now, we have polluted runoff which can close a beach or contaminate fish stocks. Recent studies have shown pet waste from cats and dogs as a major culprit for contamination at beaches.

To finish up, I’d have to conclude that dog poop is a pretty big problem. I didn’t get into the types of disease that can be spread from dog poop but rest assured that you don’t want to get some of them. So, until we can invent a product such as vaPOOrize, pick up your dog’s shit and put it in the dumpster or flush it down the toilet.

Interesting Links:

www.pooper-scooper.com/statelaws.htm
www.dogtoilet.com
http://thinkbluesd.org/brochures/petwaste.pdf
http://www.poopbutler.com/pooper-scooper-health.htm

Is Courtesy Flushing Out of Control?

For those of you who may not know, a courtesy flush is done to protect other bathroom occupants and sometimes one's self from the foul and unbearable odor of a public bowel movement. We have all experienced the odor of a BM that is arrestingly pungent. Some of us even pride ourselves on both the odor and magnitude of our BM. I would have to include myself in that category.

Today, I plan on evaluating the environmental consequences of the courtesy flush. As we all should know, water is in distressingly short supply in many parts of the world and is expected to get more difficult to obtain in industrialized nations over the next century. So, why would educated folk such as you and I decide to waste a gallon or two a day with a courtesy flush? Well, there are many possible reasons ranging from ignorance of the impending water shortage, unbearable nasal invasion of putrid odor, to simple embarrassment. None of these serve, IMHO, as an acceptable excuse for a courtesy flush.

Background:

The average household uses about 25-28 percent of its water to flush poo and pee. Now, let's all do some courtesy flushing and see if we can increase that percentage a little! Okay.. read on.

There are an estimated 326 million trillion gallons of water on our planet. That number is incomprehensibly large and looks like this... 326,000,000,000,000,000,000. However, less than three percent of that is fresh water and more than two thirds of that fresh water is locked up in ice caps and glaciers. So, roughly one percent of the earth's water is available for drinking water. This comes to roughly 3,260,000,000,000,000,000. I don't know how to say that but it is a lot.

Now, it is important to know that most of the potentially drinkable water that we use is not used for actual drinking. Imagine all the plant watering, car washing, pressure washing, shower taking, courtesy flushing, lawn watering, swimming pool filling, super soaking, water park visiting, Las Vegas water fountaning...... Then imagine this. The average American will use a little less than 10,000 gallons of fresh water in a given year. To put that number into perspective, the average backyard swimming pool has 20 to 30k gallons. So, allot yourself half of a pool per year (non-clorinated) and that is all you can use. The last time I checked, there were about 285 million americans, give or take a few illegal immigrants. This comes to about 2,850,000,000,000 gallons of water used for personal use by Americans each and every year (excluding swimming pools). That's a lot!

As far as the industrial usage of water in the US is concerned.. I found this on the EPA's website: "In the United States, 450 billion gallons of water are withdrawn per day from ground and surface waters for a variety of uses. Of that 450 billion gallons, only 100 billion gallons are actually consumed. The remaining 350 billion gallons are withdrawn for nonconsumptive industrial and agricultural uses. " They state that industry is the largest withdrawer of water but not the largest consumer as much of the water used is returned to its source by evaporation or other natural means. So, the annual consumption of water by industry in the us is about 100,000,000,000 x 365 = 36,500,000,000,000 gallons of water. Holy cow.

Where does all that water come from you may ask? Well, about 95% of the US' supply of fresh water is underground in the Ogallala aquifer. It stretches from Texas to North Dakota and provides roughly 1/3rd of the irrigation water used in the US. Estimates say that the Ogallala is being depleted by about 3 to 5 feet per year and will be completely depleted in about 60 to 250 years. Now, this is bad but remember that the US is not unique and that many of the world's countries have similar issues. I'd say that's really bad given that most of the popluation growth in the world is not in the US.

Remember this, there is a lot of farming, oil well tapping, showering, pointless fountaining, swimming pooling, golf course watering, baby having, etc. that goes on in the rest of the world. Now after carefully totaling up the annual usage of water in the US we find that Americans use a piddly 39,350,000,000,000 gallons of water per year. I can't really fathom that amount but it amounts to about 4 % of one of the Great Lakes. So, if you took lake Michigan and decided it would provide all the water for the states, all things being held constant, we'd drain that sucker in about 25 to 30 years. If you've ever been to Chicago, you'd know this would be quite an accomplishment.

We run into further issues though as the UN estimates that every day about 2 million tons of pollutants are dumped into rivers, lakes, and streams. This ranges from the polluting household cleaners that we use to make our world a better place to oil runoff and industrial pollution. I'd love to expound on this topic but we'll save that for another day.

Beyond this, the worlds population is expected to increase to about 9.3 billion over the next 40 to 50 years. Well, imagine if 9.3 billion people did a courtesy flush of 1 gallon every single day for the rest of their lives. Now do you see my problem with the courtesy flush? That would be an amazing sound though.

Actions and alternatives:

Install low flush toilets
Use efficient shower and tap heads
Replace traditional agitator washing machine with horizontal axis machine
Take shorter showers
Turn water off when brushing and shaving
Hand wash dishes
Wash full loads of dishes and laundryater Systems
Envirolet Composting Toilets
Rain Water Collection Systems

Additional Info:

www.waterconserve.info
http://www.unicef.org/wes/

Biking to Work

Well, I have finished my first week of biking to work. Luckily, I made it through the week dry and alive. There were no major rains that I had to combat and I was not run over. Although, there were probably some angry commuters who might have liked to run over this biker who was passing them while they were sitting still. It was actually surprising and refreshing to find that people wanted to strike up a conversation just to talk about biking and how I liked it.

One thing that I really noticed and bothered me like a bad itch was the number of drives who will go out of their way to impede a biker. On THREE separate occassions, mind you I have only been biking for a week, cars went out of their way to move further to the right in order to block me from passing and getting up to the front at a red light. I guess, they felt that I would be cutting in line and couldn't have a bicyclist doing that. These were not subtle moves out by a foot or so... These drivers actually pulled out 4 or 5 feet and covered up the bike lane to block me. It was laughable how childish it was but I have come to expect exactly this type of adolescent attitude from Atlanta drivers.

All in all, It was a great first week and I intend on continuing the bike rides until I get run over or I can work from home. I have tried to talk some of my co-workers into biking to work but I think this will be a tough sell. My bike is currently the only bike in the lot and I work in a building with at least 250 employees. So, it's not a small place. Biking has just become that unpopular.

Imagine if only 5 % of us started biking to work. We'd cut down on pollution, global warming, dependance on foreign oil, respriatory problems, road kill, and many other maladies. It may be altruistic, utopian, and dreamy but it would be nice.

Benefits of biking to work...

It's great exercise. You burn about 500 calories per hour (http://www.active.com/story.cfm?story_id=7783)
Stress is almost non-existent
Saves money on gas and car maintenance
No greenhouse gas emissions
Reduces our dependence on foreign oil
Piss off angry commuters

More info on biking to work

www.bike-to-work.com
www.aviodtherush.org
www.biketraffic.org
www.bicycleuniverse.com
www.bikemonth.com

Stairs vs. Elevators

I have been taking the stairs up to my 4th floor cube for quite some time now. It's not a major workout but it gets the blood pumping and that can't be bad. The health benefits are marginal but I have always been convinced that the environmental impacts were much larger. Elevator companies are very tight lipped with the energy usage statistics for their lifts. Some of their arguments for this are very valid. There are at least a dozen different variables that determine the energy usage for a specific elevator. Some of these are motor type, number of floors for the average trip, number of passengers, and the weight of the car. That being said, it is plainly obvious that lifting a ton or two up three or four floors 100 times a day uses some energy and pumps some GH gasses into the air.

I was surprised to learn that the average elevator system accounts for between 5 and 15 percent of a building's energy usage. Imagine what companies could do with those cost savings. All they would need to do is encourage stair walking for health and the company's bottom line. It's a thought but I doubt it will ever happen.

Here's a PDF with some good info... http://www.energydesignresources.com/docs/end-30.pdf

The Lonely Beverage Cup

Just a few days ago, I was passing through a major intersection near my house and was making a turn from the right turn lane. Now, this is one of those intersections that is frequently passed and is basically 1 block away from the freeway. So, needless to say, there is a lot of traffic and there are lots of turn lanes and turn arrows etc. Not very pedestrian friendly. Well, I was making a right and had to wait for traffic before I could make my turn onto the main drag when I noticed this Poor lonesome drink cup from Taxi's Hamburgers (overpriced BTW) just sitting in the pedestrian standing area between the turn lane and the straight traffic lane. It occurred to me that someone had to actually be standing there sipping their drink. Say to themselves, "I don't really want this anymore." Notice there was not a waste basket within the three foot radius around them, bend down and carefully set this poor unwanted beverage cup down on the ground in the middle of this busy intersection.

Well, I couldn't resist. I had to use my camera phone to take a picture of the beverage cup for all you GreenGaggle readers. Photo Uploading Soon. Lets consider this person. We're in suburban Atlanta where everyone drives. I mean EVERYONE. So, this person had walked to Taxi's to get a hamburger and drink and was walking back. I can only assume that this person doesn't have a car because if you have a car, you have to take it to lunch in Atlanta. Now, if this person doesn't have a car in Atlanta, why don't they have a car in Atlanta. Only two reasons, either they can't afford it or their car is in the shop. We'll assume the former. Now, if they can't afford a car, what are they doing in an affluent area of Atlanta? Working of course. Now, the only people who would be sans car working in Alpharetta would likely be taking the bus.

Okay, this person can't afford a car, is taking the bus to work, and walking to lunch. Do you see where I'm going? Well.. If you've ever seen the menu at Taxi's hamburgers you should see exactly where I'm going. WTF is someone who is probably barely making minimum wage buying what would be almost a $10 lunch from a so called "premium" hamburger stand? They are paying $1.75 each way for MARTA fare and $10 for lunch. That comes to $13.50 for that day. Assume they are making $8.00/hr at Kinko's makin copies working 8 hours a day. That's $64 before tax. Lets assume they are getting about 15% taken out by FICO SS and all that crap. That leaves them with about $54. They are spending almost 20% on lunch! No wonder they can't afford a car!

Hold on, that wasn't my point. Back to the issue at hand. I wondered how many abandoned beverage cups are out there and how many are so lucky to be discarded by their former owners in such a humane way. There must be many more that are given the toss out the window, get kicked around in the street, get run over and smooshed by a gas guzzling SUV or just drift away to be lost forever in a suburban run-off pond. I assume the little cup will sit there in peril until a storm or wind event comes to either wash or blow it away. This was two days ago and I saw it still sitting there on my way back to the office from lunch. Just FYI, over 38 Billion, that's 38,000,000,000, recyclable beverage containers have been landfilled, littered, or incinerated thus far in 2005. Links http://www.cri.org/ Container Recycling Institute

Recycling Program... ¿qué programa de reciclaje?

This has been going on at my place of business for quite some time now. I have been working in my office for more than 5 years and when I first started we seemed to have a robust and vibrant recycling program. We had large containers in the breakrooms for drink containers placed conveniently next to the regular trash cans. We also had individual recycling cans at every employee's desk. At one point we even had a recycling fairy, somewhat similar to the tooth fairy but not quite as mystical, that came by late at night and gave everyone with paper in their recycling bin a crisp new one dollar bill. What a sham as I was an avid recycler and I failed to receive my $1 because I was out the day before. I'm still have a little chip on my shoulder from that sleight.Now, at some point, the program took a wrong turn. The large bins for beverage containers turned into smaller containers and were moved off to an obscure part of the breakroom where only the most vigilant recycler would notice. The small recycling bins at the individual desks were turned into just another waste basket. The kicker was the day I was in the office very late doing some work and the custodial staff was in cleaning up. The help spoke no English and really didn't understand when I asked him why he was putting the blue recycling bin contents into the same bag as the regular trash. Donde va el papel? No se senor... Lo pongo en la basura.Well, there goes the recycling program. I wonder if the guys who have hijacked our recycling program are here legally but that is a question for another day. The only way I can now be assured that my paper is recycled is to actually take it to the shredder bins that are collected by an outsourced paper shredding company. Well, I guess they end up recycling it but who knows if they don't just dump it into a landfill when they take it away from our building.We all need to work on decreasing our paper waste and paper usage. For more info, check out these sites.http://www.grrn.org/http://www.rethinkpaper.org/Interesting Fact:Making paper from recycled content rather than virgin fiber creates 74 percent less air pollution and 35 percent less water pollution. Yet the share of total paper fiber coming from recycled material has grown only modestly from 20 percent in 1921 to 38 percent today. Link