Do the children in Guiyu cry dioxin tears?

Just in case you haven't seen this elsewhere (or on TV), check out the 60 Minutes episode about E-waste in Guiyu... and then consider where your e-waste is going to go when you decide to "upgrade". Maybe that phone/tv/computer/gadget can last a little longer? Maybe you could try to *gasp*, FIX it? Now try and find someone to repair it... that's the first hurdle and trust me, it's a HUGE one! Probably the "greenest" job you could make for yourself would be repairing things that would otherwise end up in the trash.



Which reminds me, The Green Festival is coming to San Francisco this Fri, Sat and Sun and I plan to attend. I'll let you know how it goes and what I find out. I PRAY I don't see any single use water bottles there for sale.

Open letter to 3M

I was doing dishes tonight and I needed a sponge. So I dug around in the kitchen and found a pack of 3M sponges I'd bought a few months back. Sponges are one of those things that's ubiquitous in every modern kitchen. Most people don't spend more than a few minutes a year thinking about sponges. Normally, I don't either, but I hadn't opened a new sponge since before my February 6 entry (and for those of you who are wondering, YES we've replaced our sponges since February, but my wife has done it the last few times) about reducing plastic. I was dismayed to see that each sponge was individually wrapped inside the larger package. For one, I was annoyed to have to open yet another layer with wet hands, and second: what the hell is the point? The outer packaging contains all the pertinent info but it's certainly not full and could take the additional info that the individual wrappers have.

I thought about where the wrapper would go once I threw it in the trash. In an ideal world, I could compost it and use it to feed my garden, but we are living in a far-from-ideal world. More than likely, it will go to the Marin Sanitary (who thought THAT would be a good word to add to a DUMP?) Landfill, but if I'm very unlucky, it'll end up in the "Eastern Garbage Patch" out in the north pacific gyre. At that point, it'll likely be ingested by a fish or other animal and cause death and mayhem for that creature. Lovely. Either way, plastic wrap that can't be reused / recycled is just plain stupid. SO.. I decided to start taking a stand, one product at a time. Many folks might argue against buying this kind of packaging in the first place, and that's ok too, but it's far more pro-active to ask for changes from companies that are going to continue on with the status quo unless the market demands that they change. I started by writing to 3M: here's the text of my email.

Several months ago I purchased a 15 pack of Scotch-Brite Multi Purpose NO SCRATCH Scrub Sponges (Item 15550). I believe I purchased them from Costco in Novato, CA. I am writing to implore the marketing and management branches of 3M to reconsider their packaging for this item, and other items like it. The amount of packaging in this product is excessive, as each sponge is individually wrapped INSIDE the larger wrapper. That extra plastic goes immediately into the trash and is a waste of precious global resources and landfill space. It is also NOT biodegradeable (there are NO petroleum based plastics that are) and it increases the cost of the product AND it's impact on the planet. Please consider reducing your packaging to minimalist levels and ALSO using a corn/soy based biodegradable plastic or better yet, recycled paper for your packaging needs. The global biosphere and your customers will thank you for being caring about their pocketbooks AND the future of the planet. Please let me know how and if 3M has any plans to implement greener packaging policies: it greatly affects the probability of me buying your products in the future. It's imperative for me to use sustainable products ,and companies that can't "get with the program" will lose my business to companies that can.

I look forward to your reply.

A copy of this email will be posted to my blog (http://nollij.blogspot.com) as well as any reply you choose to send.

I think it's a good thing to ask for a reply and some sort of accountability when you write a letter like this. I hope they follow through in replying and I REALLY hope they make some changes.

A couple of excerpts from the article I linked to in my Feb 6th entry:

This news is depressing enough to make a person reach for the bottle. Glass, at least, is easily recyclable. You can take one tequila bottle, melt it down, and make another tequila bottle. With plastic, recycling is more complicated. Unfortunately, that promising-looking triangle of arrows that appears on products doesn’t always signify endless reuse; it merely identifies which type of plastic the item is made from. And of the seven different plastics in common use, only two of them—PET (labeled with #1 inside the triangle and used in soda bottles) and HDPE (labeled with #2 inside the triangle and used in milk jugs)—have much of an aftermarket. So no matter how virtuously you toss your chip bags and shampoo bottles into your blue bin, few of them will escape the landfill—only 3 to 5 percent of plastics are recycled in any way.

“There’s no legal way to recycle a milk container into another milk container without adding a new virgin layer of plastic,” Moore says, pointing out that, because plastic melts at low temperatures, it retains pollutants and the tainted residue of its former contents. Turn up the heat to sear these off, and some plastics release deadly vapors. So the reclaimed stuff is mostly used to make entirely different products, things that don’t go anywhere near our mouths, such as fleece jackets and carpeting. Therefore, unlike recycling glass, metal, or paper, recycling plastic doesn’t always result in less use of virgin material. It also doesn’t help that fresh-made plastic is far cheaper.

and

Except for the small amount that’s been incinerated—and it’s a very small amount—every bit of plastic ever made still exists,” Moore says, describing how the material’s molecular structure resists biodegradation. Instead, plastic crumbles into ever-tinier fragments as it’s exposed to sunlight and the elements. And none of these untold gazillions of fragments is disappearing anytime soon: Even when plastic is broken down to a single molecule, it remains too tough for biodegradation.
Truth is, no one knows how long it will take for plastic to biodegrade, or return to its carbon and hydrogen elements. We only invented the stuff 144 years ago, and science’s best guess is that its natural disappearance will take several more centuries. Meanwhile, every year, we churn out about 60 billion tons of it, much of which becomes disposable products meant only for a single use. Set aside the question of why we’re creating ketchup bottles and six-pack rings that last for half a millennium, and consider the implications of it: Plastic never really goes away.

"Our Oceans are turning into plastic... are we?" by Susan Casey

----------UPDATE: 5.19.2008----------

So I got an email back from 3M. I was not surprised to see that is says NOTHING of significance and generally implies that it wasn't read by a human. I will continue to post any feedback I receive from 3M, but I'm not getting my hopes up. Here's the text of the email:

Dear Ian,

Thank you for taking the time to share your comments/concerns with 3M. Feedback from our customers is an integral part of our business and we encourage it. Please know that we have forwarded your message to our marketing and lab departments.

We appreciate your input!

Cordially,

3M Home Care Division
800-846-8887
www.ocelo.com
www.scotchbrite.com
www.scotchlint.com

CFL: A Mercury Time Bomb?

Many people are touting CFL's (Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs) as being a small but good way to start "going green". What they usually DON'T tell you is that CFL's usually have significant amounts (5 mg on average) of MERCURY in them. In case you've been living under a rock, Mercury (Hg) is toxic to the human body. So, how is this helping us "go green"? CFL's use less electricity than standard bulbs, and that's good. The average lightbulb buyer won't keep the ubiquitous non-recyclable blister-pac PLASTIC packaging after they install the bulb, and therefore they'll miss the TINY print on it that says "Do not throw this product in the trash, take it to a Hazardous Waste Recycling Facility for disposal". I REPEAT, THE HAZARDOUS WASTE RECYCLING CENTER. Plastic = petroleum by the way, which of course greatly diminishes the "greeness" of the bulb. When the consumer tosses the bulb in the trash instead of recycling it, the mercury often ends up in the groundwater or in the ocean, which in turn ends up in our bodies. SO, Every time you buy a CFL, you are bringing Mercury (Hg), a hazardous and potential lethal chemical into your home or business. You wouldn't bring a rabid snarling dog into your home would you? You wouldn't bring a pestilent dead rat into your home and rub it like a dishrag over the kitchen counters, would you? Though that might be fun, most of us are smart enough not to do it. Can you tell I'm not a fan of CFL's? I have one minor exception in my rant against the CFL manufacturers: The folks at EarthMate Lighting. They package in post consumer cardboard and their mini-CFL's(and only the mini-CFL's) have 75% less mercury than standard CFL's. Why couldn't ALL their bulbs be low Mercury? I'm guessing it has something to do with the dimming ability in some of the bulbs, and for the full spectrum bulbs, something to do with the extra phosphors needed to produce full spectrum light. Hey, they're far from perfect, but they're better than a lot of their competitors. EarthMate's biggest downside? They appear to only be distributing to the east coast of the U.S. DOH! Oh well...

"Ok smart guy, what's the alternative?" I'm glad you asked. There's NOT a lot of good alternatives. Currently, using lower wattage incandescents is an option, though they don't last as long as CFL's are "claimed" to last. Subjectively speaking, my CFL's seem to burn out (and I've been writing the date I install them on the bulb) at about the same frequency that the incandescents did. This could be because of faulty wiring or old fixtures, but I digress. CFL's cost more initially and they cost more to clean up (Mercury is expensive to deal with). They use less a lot less energy during their life, which should give them a slight overall environmental edge. Durability of CFL's may have a lot to do with how often they are cycled on & off. The inital "lighting" of a bulb (just like a car) is the part of the cycle that's the hardest on it. If you turn your lights on & off a lot (like I do: to save ENERGY!), then you cycle the light a lot. My impression is that if you turn a light on and leave it on for the duration of the time you would have used it, it will last longer. I have no evidence to back this up, though the data is surely out there. The ballast required for the CFL's is likely what wears out first, and since most (if not all) of the CFL bulbs being sold in the U.S today are made in China (who has notoriously poor environmental controls), there's no guarantee of bulb quality or diligence to environmentally cautious manufacturing.

One of the few good alternatives to incandescents are LED Bulbs. Many people still assume that LED's are at best used in weak penlight flashlights or more commonly for indicator lights on stereos, computers, and power supplies. In the past 10 years, household LED's have increased exponentially in output while experiencing only modest increases in electricity required to power them. I recently bought a couple of PAR 30 LED bulbs from The Green Fusion center in San Anselmo, CA. Green Fusion gets them from C.Crane company. About 4-5 years ago, I got an early version of C.Crane's LED bulb. It's not NEARLY as bright as the new ones, but it's still going strong, and I expect it will be when my son turns 25 (he's nearly 4 now). LED's contain no mercury and they are solid state, so they only break if you hit them hard and direct with a big hammer or other similar object. Drop one and you'll find it unscathed as long as it's potted in place correctly. The bulbs I've bought from C.Crane are high quality and it's one of the few companies I have a lot of confidence in. If it's not right, they make it right.

With the advent of Luxeon Star emitters and just recently, the new CREE bulbs, LED Bulbs have gotten SIGNIFICANTLY brighter than they used to be. I recently purchased a flashlight for my bicycle that features the new CREE Q5 XR-E bulb, and I'm damn impressed with the power of this bulb. I got my Fenix L2D Premium Q5 Cree XR-E LED Flashlight from the guys at EliteLED. I'm using it as a helmet mounted light and much of the time I run it in it's low mode. In darker areas, I'll run it in medium or for high speed descents in the dark, I'll use the Turbo mode. It's a little like wearing a search light on your head, though it weighs a fraction of the weight. EliteLED offers the CREE LED's in household bulbs as well. I haven't tried any yet b/c of budgetary restrictions, but I look forward to trying some of THESE for lighting my entire living room. With a 20,000 hour life, I'm guessing... that's about 8 hours a day, 365 days a year for 6.85 years, or 5 hours a day, 365 days a year for 10.96 years or 5 hours a day, 200 days a year for 20 years. It's a lot of light (300 lumens) for only using 7W! By the way, most LED manufacturers are rating their bulbs to their HALF-LIFE (when driven to spec), which means the bulbs dim to half their original brightness. LED's can last functionally forever, though their brightness does diminish at some point to negligible levels.

I figure if I replaced the 13 PAR 38 bulbs in the ceiling canisters (10 of which are on dimmer circuits and all are 60 watt bulbs) with THESE ones from C.Crane, I'd spend $662.48 up front. If I had every single LED PAR 38 running full tilt, I'd be using just slightly more (48.75W) than just ONE of the ones I'm using now (at full blast)(45W). So.. the energy savings would be $326.44 / bulb over the course of 60,000 hours (listed life of the bulb). For 13 bulbs (the number of PAR 38's in my house), that adds up to a savings of $4243.72. Wow. It also amounts to 32,175 kWh of energy saved. WHOA. According to the math done by C.Crane,

"If every U.S. household replaced just one standard 60 watt bulb with a CC Vivid LED bulb, we could save 24,184,400,000 watts or 24,184.4 mega (million) watts per day.

National savings information based on 103,000,000 households with an average use of 4 hrs per day per house. Based on gross watts.

One of the largest power plants in the U.S. could be eliminated as a result of each U.S. household replacing just one standard 60 watt bulb with a CC Vivid LED Light bulb."

C.Crane is just one company selling LED Bulbs: here are 4 more (with varying prices for similar products):
EliteLED
SuperBrightLEDs
The LED Light
EternaLEDS

I guess I know where that cash rebate the government is talking about giving every american is going...

Finally, the way to properly recycle your CFL's when they break is to take them to a proper recycler. You can FIND ONE HERE.

Patagonian Paradise & the Dangers of Electronic Recycling

After watching "The Story of Stuff", I've been thinking a lot about it. Some synaptic bridge suddenly connected in my brain the other day, and I remembered reading about the former owner of Esprit moving to Chile, buying up 700,000 acres of rainforest land and turning it into a sanctuary. While I was trying to find the article on-line (please do read it, it's well written and will make you want to go there!), I stumbled on THIS article about the hidden dangers of electronic-recycling. As the Story of Stuff mentions, consumerism is creating the problem. If manufacturers designed their products to be upgraded (think about computers, cell phones, ipods to start) instead of being tossed out or recycled, it would start to attack the problem. Then make them responsible for properly dealing with the e-waste on the back end, and you can be sure they'd be designing products that were far more robust and durable (not to mention a lot "greener"). The "hidden cost" of our consumerist behavior is not being transmitted to us in those insanely cheap prices we're used to a the register, and it fosters an environment where the impulse buy is king. In the meantime, writing to the companies themselves and asking for the change is a good idea. Apple, IBM, Intel, Dell, HP would be good places to start. I have been guilty of wanting the "new thing", which is currently the iPhone. I've managed to retain my 3rd Gen iPod and I've already changed out the battery on it myself. It would be great to have the same software that the newest generation iPods have, but that's not an option that Apple made possible: poor thinking IMO. I'm kind of disgusted by the fact that I'm always confronted by the "new thing" and that I somehow unconsciously developed a predication towards viewing the "old thing" as inferior; according to the Story of Stuff, that's exactly the mindset that the consumer chain wants me to have. I have to actively fight that mindset, and I'm getting better at it, but it's still a daily struggle.