Editorial

Steve Stevens figures that if Thomas Edison could see the need for energy conservation in the future, it would be wise for all of us to become practitioners today.

Stevens, a resident of Golden, Colo., has made sustainability studies his life’s pursuit after retiring from a long career at AT&T Bell Laboratories in 2000. His home in Colorado also serves as a bicycling history museum (his other passion), but one that is considered a “net power plant,” meaning it generates more energy than it uses.

In briefing a group recently at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Wheaton, Ill., Stevens reminded attendees of what Edison saw in the future.

In 1931, Edison said, “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy, and I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”

Stevens also points to George W. Bush, who as president was considered an ally of big oil companies and “a great oil salesman.”

“But it was George Bush who said ‘we are addicted to oil,’” Stevens noted. “And after two wars over Mideast oil, he has changed his tune and now has a ‘green’ ranch in Texas and is a huge proponent of conservation.”

Stevens said that “retrofitting” homes to be more energy efficient is an up-and-coming industry that is going to create jobs.

“The key components are sun, sealing and super insulation,” Stevens said, pointing to examples of homes in Taos, N.M., that are so energy efficient that they are called “earth ships” or “energy-free homes.”

“The easiest way to look at this is by considering your house as a bucket with leaks in it, and you have to plug those leaks,” Stevens explained. “Energy slips out of every seam in your house.”

Stevens goes further than most in his pursuit of energy conservation. He kept Excel spreadsheets of his bill payments, monitoring his electricity and natural gas payments, and coming to conclusions on where he needed to concentrate his efforts.

“I took out the incandescent lights and replaced them with CFLs, but then I noticed my gas bill went up, because I didn’t have the incandescent lights generating heat,” Stevens said. “I went to LED lights and an energy-saving furnace, in addition to plugging leaks, and then my bills went down.”

Stevens has charted the “source energy factor,” or what it costs to deliver electricity to a home, and concluded that a single-family home in the Midwest uses 65,000 BTUs per square foot for an entire year of energy use. By comparison, a new EPA home, or LEED Gold home, would use 40,000 BTUs, while a “net zero home” would generate as many BTUs as it consumes.

“How do you make heat and how do you contain it?” Stevens asks.  “By making your heating its most efficient, you are saving money right away. A condensing furnace, and then sealing up the house so no outside air comes in during cold weather, is the key.”

Stevens recommends using a product called Mastic on the gaps on heat duct joints, while also making use of solar panels to capture solar heat. While wood burning stoves are effective, Stevens recommends getting rid of fireplaces, which don’t heat the house and are generally the biggest draw of warm air out of the house.

“Simple stuff, the low-technology applications, can have the highest returns,” Stevens said in encouraging that every crack in the house should be calked or foamed, starting with doors and windows.

An energy audit of the home is also helpful, along with a temperature gauge that indicates the temperature level at each wall or area in a home.

“The doors to a garage are usually a big culprit for bringing in cold air,” Stevens said. “And you should seal electrical outlets on the inside of the outlet box. The rim joists in the basement need to be caulked along the edges to stop air leaks.”

Stevens is also a big proponent of blowing insulation into attics, and also using fiberglass to fill up wall cavities in a basement.

“It’s also important to insulate any overhangs in your homes,” Stevens said. “Most of the time, with those overhangs, you have an inch of plywood and two inches of air between the air duct inside your home and the outside cold air. When it gets to be below zero outside, how much cold air do you think can make it through an inch of plywood and two inches of air?”

In ever-increasing numbers, American consumers are deciding that it’s important to be clean and green. A recent survey from the Soap and Detergent Association shows that Americans are taking numerous steps to make their laundry habits more environmentally friendly.

The National Cleaning Survey reveals that more U.S. households are laundering in cold water and switching to multi-purpose cleaning products. Echo Research questioned 1,000 American adults, including 500 men and 500 women, asking what changes, if any, they have made to their cleaning routines in the past year.

According to the survey:

• 58 percent are washing laundry in cold water more frequently.

• 41 percent have switched to multi-purpose cleaning products.

• 38 percent use refillable cleaning products.

• 36 percent bought high-efficiency or energy-efficient washers or dryers.

• 29 percent do laundry less frequently.

 

• 12 percent make their own cleaning products.

“Consumers are making conscious decisions about cleaning products and practices that support their beliefs,” says Nancy Bock, SDA Vice President of Education. “They are not choosing products as they did in the past.”

Additionally, Americans seem to be reading their detergent label directions a lot more than in the past. The 2010 SDA survey shows 62 percent of respondents say they have read the directions on a package of laundry detergent, vs. 38 percent who say they never have read the package. When SDA last asked that question in 2003, 49 percent said they had not read the detergent directions.

“Cleaning products are changing. Reading the label takes the guesswork out of dosage,” says Bock. “With newer detergent products introduced in recent years, it’s more important than ever to read the label and use the proper amount of detergent in the washer.”

Visit SDA’s website for information on laundry and fabric care products at:

http://www.cleaning101.com/laundry

One of the most common kitchen appliances is becoming more affordable for those who are green conscious, especially in the area of energy savings, and will soon be available in the United States with models that cut down on chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) or hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerant emissions.

Known more commonly as Freon, the CFC emissions were common in refrigerators that Americans purchased prior to 1966 and considered a threat to the ozone layer. More recently, refrigerators have used the HFC refrigerant that has been tied to global warming. Since the 1990s, environmentalists have been pushing to stop emissions of CFCs or HFCs into the atmosphere by encouraging the use of a hydrocarbon refrigerant, which is a more natural combination of hydrogens and carbons that do not degrade the ozone and are easily broken down by the sun.

Refrigerator manufacturers have responded in recent years by making it more affordable to purchase a “green” refrigerator, one using high-efficiency motors and vacuum insulated panels that consume less power. Within the next year, the use of hydrocarbons will become more commonplace as well. Germany is credited by environmentalists with starting this trend toward hydrocarbon refrigerants in 1993, which was about the same time that the U.S. began embracing HFCs as a replacement for CFCs.

Although refrigerators account for far less global consumption of HFCs than air-conditioners in automobiles, it is believed that an HFC refrigerator’s impact on the climate is nearly 4,000 times more potent over a 20-year period than the far more common greenhouse gas of carbon dioxide.

Since the first Greenfreeze refrigerator was sold in Germany early in 1993, it is estimated that more than 400 million hydrocarbon household units have been sold by major manufacturers such as Whirlpool, Haier and Sanyo.

While Americans wait for that option, they can still obtain energy-efficient models and do their own maintenance to keep the appliance from draining unnecessary power. Vacuuming the refrigerator coils at least once a year helps maintain energy-efficient operation. The seal around the refrigerator door can be checked by closing the door on a dollar bill. Replace the gasket if the bill falls out or can be easily removed without opening the door. Keep door gaskets clean of mold and mildew with mild detergent and water, not bleach, say the experts.

The Obama administration has proposed a FY 2012 budget of $8.973 billion for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency—a 13 percent decrease—as part of its effort to cut federal spending.

“As millions of families are cutting back and spending less, they expect the same good fiscal sense out of their government. That is why this budget reflects the tough choices needed for our nation’s short- and long-term fiscal health—and allows EPA to maintain its fundamental mission of protecting human health and the environment,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson.

Some key 2012 budget initiatives include:
• $350 million for projects strategically chosen to target the most significant threats to people’s health in the Great Lakes ecosystem.

• $2.5 billion—a decrease of $947 million—combined for the Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Funds (SRFs). EPA will continue to work with states and communities to enhance their capacity to provide clean water and safe drinking water to Americans. Federal dollars provided through SRFs will help spur efficient system-wide planning and ongoing management of sustainable water infrastructure.

• $1.2 billion for the Superfund program to support cleanup at hazardous waste sites. While EPA will be exploring efficiencies in the program, the $70 million reduction to Superfund programs will slow the pace of new projects and completion of projects.

• A $27.5 million increase in enforcement and compliance, to be used for the latest e-reporting and monitoring tools. EPA will increase oversight and inspections at high risk chemical and oil facilities in order to protect Americans’ health.

• $16.1 million more to reduce chemical risks, increase the pace of chemical hazard assessments and provide the public with greater access to chemical information so they can make better informed decisions about their health.

• $1.2 billion for state and tribal grants—an overall increase of $84.9 million. This funding will help communities take steps to meet the pollution standards EPA has developed under the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.

• An additional $46 million for regulatory efforts to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and implement GHG reporting requirements under the Clean Air Act.

• $67.4 million to support EPA’s efforts to clean up America’s great water bodies, specifically the Chesapeake Bay. This water body serves as an economic engine for an entire region of the country, and millions of Americans rely on it for access to clean, safe water.

• $584 million to support research and innovation into new and emerging environmental science. This includes a $24.7 million increase to Science to Achieve Results (STAR) grants to ensure that EPA is using the best science to protect our air, water and land.

For more information on EPA’s proposed FY2012 budget, visit:

http://www.epa.gov/planandbudget/annualplan/fy2012.html

When an international food service makes a change in its process that is “green friendly,” it can equate to saving money as well as the environment. This is of particular importance for school districts, and the Geneva School District in Illinois is about to benefit from a new policy by Sodexo, Inc., a leading provider of integrated food services and facilities management.

The district recently announced that Sodexo will begin using reusable plastic baskets instead of the disposable Styrofoam trays that were used to serve lunch in all of the district’s six elementary schools.

Sodexo estimates that it feeds more than 1,000 elementary students and goes through approximately 195,000 Styrofoam trays in a school year. In addition to keeping all of those trays from ending up in landfills, the school district stands to save about $8,000 a year in food service costs.

A press release from the school district cited the benefits from a Sodexo official at the district.

“Using the plastic basket will reduce the amount of waste we produce, reduce garbage collection, and save time in the lunch room at clean-up,” said Sodexo General Manager Becky Selcke.  “This is a positive direction for us to be moving in and a positive step for the environment.”

A plastic food basket is common at fast-food and family restaurants, or bars and pubs that offer food, and the baskets used in the elementary schools will have some of the same features.

The baskets will be lined with wax paper and will be washed and sanitized daily.  Students’ hot lunch items will be placed on the wax paper, and sides like salads can either be put in the basket or into a paper “boat,” which is poly coated to prevent food from leaking out. The school district reported that its middle schools already use plastic baskets for lunch service, and its high school has also replaced the use of Styrofoam plates with paper “boats” to serve pizza, deli sandwiches, and other meal choices.

Sodexo policies can have significant impact on environmental initiatives as it carries out green-friendly measures with many of its clients. The company employs 355,000 people worldwide and is present on 30,600 sites (private corporations, hotels, hospitals, schools, military bases, correctional facilities, etc.) in 80 countries. In North America, the company employs 120,000 people.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates as much as 30 percent of the energy used in a typical office is wasted. Imagine if you could put 30 percent of your energy bill in your bottom line instead of the utility’s pocket! If you pay $2500 a month for power now, you would save $750 per month if you could cut out the waste.

One of the first energy draining culprits to consider is your office hardware. Your PCs and peripherals, printers, and copiers need only be turned on during office hours. In addition, even when these units are off, they still can be drawing energy. This is called the “vampire effect,” because your equipment sucks energy and savings. Plug your equipment into Eco-surges to truly turn them off and kill the vampire effect.

As with homes, ensure that your office space is properly insulated. Consider turning down the thermostat a few more degrees in winter–everyone looks good in a sweater, after all–and up a degree or two in summer. There are more intricate ways to save. Energy audits are a quick and long-lasting means of obtaining verifiable savings. Try contacting your local utility for an audit.

If you rent, talk to your landlord about saving energy. It’s in his best interest to keep costs to a minimum and retain you as a tenant.

Do you provide bottled water for your employees? Time to get back to the tap. Invest in a 4-stage or higher reverse osmosis system. Bottled water is expensive, and there is no proof that it is any safer than tap. Transporting it via dirty diesel and unsterilized plastic is not a cost-effective nor environmentally friendly solution. Within a few months, the new water filtration system will pay for itself.

Don’t overlook the energy saving potential in your company fleet or vehicles. With the average price of gasoline now over $3.00 per gallon and heading ever higher, it’s time to outwit and outmaneuver that oligarchy called OPEC. Experiment by using a trial version of fleet software to help manage, maintain, and cut your fuel costs. We’ve all heard of carpooling, but what about delivery- pooling? How many times have you sent just a single box/pallet or two on a delivery?  Consider halving your delivery schedule and pass the costs savings on to your customers. At a time when everyone else is being surcharged for fuel, your customers can receive rebates.

For 2011, let’s implement conservation solutions and benefit from the savings.

For far too long, skiers worldwide have generally accepted the fact that construction of a ski resort can have a significant impact on the environment.

Consider what happens when a ski resort is built: Trees are cleared to make way for the ski slopes, thus disrupting wildlife habits and vegetation and altering natural watersheds. Cars driving to the resort area create pollution, as does equipment used to make snow, maintain the slopes or mow grass during summer months, not to mention heating buildings during cold winters. In some cases, factories that make clothing and equipment for skiing could be located nearby, and they create even more pollution.

It comes as no surprise then that ski resorts are quickly becoming examples of how an industry can build green initiatives into its operations and make a significant difference in reducing its carbon footprint.

So much so, that a group called the Ski Area Citizens’ Coalition has been formed to rate and survey ski resorts based on criteria from local conservation groups and the U.S. Forest Service.

The emphasis for ski resorts has been to have general conservation and environment-friendly policies and procedures in place, specifically for habitat protection, watershed protection and addressing climate change.

The coalition looks at all aspects of a ski resort operation, from recycling to future plans – and sometimes those future plans don’t sit well. It is generally believed that smaller ski resorts grade better than those that are constantly expanding, because that expansion is sure to affect the environment.

Some ski resorts have been on board with energy savings for many years. Aspen Ski Country in Colorado has one of the largest solar-power systems in the industry, which has been in place since 1997. It also fuels its trail-grooming machines with biodiesel fuel.

Park City Mountain Resort in Utah has reported that it uses renewable energy to power chair lifts and has purchased more efficient snow-making equipment, while also cutting back on its snowmobile fleet.

In a gesture that proves no conservation policy is too small to make a difference, the resort also has been using recycled paper for its trail maps and began using regular dishes rather than disposable ones in all of its lodges.

Other examples for resorts come in the form of using biofuel from recycled cooking oil to power shuttles, and using non-petroleum-based cleaners for all housekeeping.

As more ski resorts take hold of these conservation methods, skiers across the world will be able to say they participate in a sport trying to make an environmental difference.

If the conservation and “green” movement is going to take hold as a routine aspect of American life, it stands to reason that our nation’s universities and college campuses are going to be the breeding ground for such knowledge.

The research and innovation taking place in labs and classrooms at institutions of higher learning is a key – but many universities are also becoming visible examples of what can be done by establishing their own green policies and campus sustainability projects.

This can be seen in obvious ways, whether by the construction of a green roof on a campus building, or the placement of recycled materials to create walkway tiles, or the strategic planting of trees and shrubs for landscaping that reduces water runoff. These types of small projects become visible examples as a classroom “lab” that stress the importance of environmental issues for students.

But a Campus Sustainability Project (CSP) takes everything a step further and is created to develop an online database of environmental management data, policies, and programs for an entire campus. It is a way to conduct research on sustainability in higher education and provide educators and students with resources to help achieve campus sustainability.

One such example is taking place at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, where the university has completed many retrofitting projects throughout its buildings. One campus building provides a perfect example, as it was constructed in the late 1960’s as a guesthouse for prestigious visitors. It currently houses campus offices. Building construction techniques from 50 years ago, coupled with a different use from the building’s original intent, ultimately results in a building design that wastes energy. A project to decrease electric costs at this building cut power usage in half.

A major energy consumer in buildings is the heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems, which result in older appliances needing to be retrofitted.

Through projects such as these, it has been learned that a key component to cope with inefficient equipment is to incorporate a geothermal heat pump in the building. The heat pump will deliver heated or cooled water year round for a fraction of the actual cost of heating and cooling. Zone dampers can also be implemented in a building to effectively divide it into different climate zones while reducing heating and cooling overlapping.

Lighting of a building can also be assessed, usually revealing that some light fixtures are still incandescent. Those incandescent light bulbs can be replaced with compact fluorescent lamps. This replacement not only is easy and inexpensive, but also pays for itself fairly quickly.

In older buildings on our nation’s campuses, it will also become common to retrofit archaic appliances, improve attic insulation and seal any leaks in ducts.

The end result will be our nation’s campuses being the prime example of conservation, while emphasizing to young minds what “going green” really means.

Taking those white shirts or suits, or delicate dresses, to the dry cleaners has been a standard routine of daily life for decades. How would we get that wine spill off of our sport coat without the neighborhood dry cleaners business?

But dry cleaners are also entering the era of heightened awareness of everything “green” and, as such, are getting closer scrutiny regarding claims of “green” or “organic” dry cleaning.

There is no regulation of the dry cleaning business in regards to what qualifies them as more “green” than others, or if the term “organic” is rightfully justified.

Still, alternatives to the use of perc (perchlorol-ethylene) as a major cleaning agent are being considered. Good Housekeeping magazine recently reported that about 85 percent of dry cleaners use perc, which, while safe for the customer wearing the clothes, is strictly regulated because if it is not handled properly it can become a toxic pollutant and dangerous to those who work at a dry cleaners business.

A federal law has called for the phasing out of perc being used at dry cleaners located in residential buildings by the year 2020. With this sort of reasoning becoming more widespread, it is likely we’ll see cleaning businesses moving toward safer alternatives.

Of those, a liquid CO2 cleaning process already deemed safe by the EPA, may come into more use. Because it reuses most of its CO2, it is not considered as a dangerous greenhouse gas contributor.

A new cleanser called Green Earth, which is a liquid silicone, makes claims to degrade to sand, CO2 and water, but the EPA has to give this product further study.

Wet cleaning is always a possible alternative, but it does have those age-old problems of discoloring or shrinking some fabrics. It is likely that those in the cleaning business will come up with ways for wet cleaning to avoid some of those pitfalls.

It also is likely that dry cleaners will begin to use hydrocarbon solvents because they can easily be used in current perc machines. Because they are petroleum-based, hydrocarbon solvents must also be handled with extreme care, but the EPA views them as products that are engineered to biodegrade much faster than perc.

Consumers will certainly continue to measure the progress of dry cleaners “going green” simply on the basis of how well the alternative processes clean their clothes.

In reviews by magazines and consumer watchdogs, Green Earth has been getting praise as a good cleaner for the usual culprits – coffee, lipstick and oil stains. CO2 cleaning is generally considered the least likely to shrink your clothes, while the wet cleaners continue to struggle with that ornery lipstick, oil and ink.

Perc is generally considered the best for oil and lipstick stains, but not always reliable on ink and wine, while the perc alternative hydrocarbon has been considered the best for stains on wool products. But with cotton clothing, the hydrocarbon cleaner doesn’t fare as well.

Recyclers and developers across the country are teaming up in an effort to recycle an item that has been piling up in our landfills for decades. Tons of asphalt shingles, a petroleum-based product, have been going into landfills during new home construction or after demolition or re-roofing of older homes and businesses.

A movement to keep roof shingles out of the waste stream has been catching on, and its effectiveness can be illustrated by a Grand Rapids, Mich., company, Crutchall Resource Recycling, which ground up 30,000 tons of shingles in only three months last summer.

In areas of the country in which building homes was robust before the economic downturn, it is estimated that 70,000 to 100,000 tons of shingles could end up in a single county’s landfills in just one year.

The Northeast Recycling Council estimates that approximately two-thirds of the roofing shingles in the United States are made of asphalt. With discarded asphalt shingles taking up landfill space and polluting the environment by releasing carcinogenic hydrocarbons into the ground, the recycling companies turned to a logical use for ground up shingles – repairing or paving roads as part of the asphalt hot mix.

Developers with a reputation for smooth roads in their subdivisions are starting to use recycled shingles to create “green” streets. A subdivision called Tall Oaks in Elgin, Ill., recently had eight miles of roads constructed with recycled shingles through developer Wyndham Deerpoint Homes.

In addition to using recycled shingles, the “green” roads also are designed to last longer while reducing the amount of asphalt, sand and oil normally needed for paving.

Consumers can help with this cause by making sure their roofing company has a recycling program, or letting it be known that they would like to donate used shingles to environmentally-conscious builders who are able to roof certain homes with used shingles.

Heritage Environmental Services has shingle recycling drop-off locations in seven cities, pushing the practice as a much less expensive alternative than paying the fees to dump them in landfills.

Because shingles are made up of concrete and bitumen — the black, oily material, or tar, that is a naturally-occurring byproduct of decomposed organic materials — environmentalists aren’t able to pinpoint exactly how long it would take for a shingle to decompose in a landfill.

The most common answer, it appears, is “forever.”