Archive for June, 2008
June 6th, 2008 -- Posted in Environment |
George Kunkel, Jr., writing in the March, 2008 edition of Water Efficiency, notes that 50,000 drinking water utilities in the United States withdraw about 40 billion gallons of water per day from their sources. This estimate does not take into account well water being used each day and it does not take into account all of the water being drawn from aquifers and various other sources for irrigation. It would probably be safe to say that well over 50 billion gallons of water are being drawn from available sources every day.
Just staying with 40 billion gallons per day, however, is enough to compare the scale of water usage to gasoline usage. Our nation uses ten million barrels of oil per day. If a barrel of oil could be converted into the maximum potential for gasoline that would be no more than 40 gallons per barrel refined. The actual ratio, for a variety of reasons having to do with refining procedures and requirements for special blends and different levels of octane, is closer to 27 gallons per barrel. Let’s round it to 30 gallons. Ten million barrels of oil per day is the equivalent of 300 million gallons of gasoline. 40 billion gallons of water, even allowing for the 6 billion gallons of water estimated to leak out of the delivery lines on the way to the end users, is more than one hundred times the gallons of gasoline we use every day.
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June 6th, 2008 -- Posted in Environment |
Earth has a special day. It’s sort of like a birthday. It’s called Earth Day. It began on April 21, 1970. Earth Day is celebrated all over the world, usually on the first day of spring but sometimes on April 22nd. It is a special day to remind us to take care of our Earth, our environment, and to learn what we can do to help keep the Earth healthy-not just on Earth Day but every day! Help your children honor the Earth by sharing with them these inspiring and educational activities.
Recyclables Game
Collect small cans, plastic bottles, and newspaper. Label 3 bins or trash cans: cans, bottles, and newspaper. Draw a line and place the containers about 3 to 5 feet away from the line. Have children stand behind the line and try to toss the recyclables into the appropriate container.
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June 5th, 2008 -- Posted in Environment |
Through our own doing, our environment is sadly dirtied, corrupted, abused, and destroyed. It inevitable, undeniable, but sad that we need to compromise nature just to keep pace with our ever-complex lives.
Fortunately, we, as citizens of this world, can do something about this by recycling to lessen the impact of environmental abuse. Recycling means the reprocessing of old, used, and ready-to-throw materials into new products. The benefits of recycling are immense; it saves space in landfills, reduces energy usage, decreases greenhouse emissions, and lessens air and water pollution.
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June 5th, 2008 -- Posted in Environment |
When we were building our “dream home,” we had the resources to use our lifelong collection of desires, and the knowledge garnered from years of experience; my wife, the architect of our luxurious home, and myself.
When the architect, insisted we install a hot water recirculating pump or “instant hot water” I thought this was one luxury we could do without, as the dollar signs danced in my dreams during construction. When he told me it was a “green” thing to do, I made him explain. It turns out a hot water recirculating pump actually helps the environment by not sending a bunch of extra water down the drain. It works by circulating the water through insulated pipes delivering hot water immediately to where you need it.
Some of the other “green” design concepts in the house include 3 foot overhangs on the eaves. It makes the house look more classic and luxurious, but it also helps with heat gain. We used natural materials wherever possible such as wood and stone. Better for the environment and better for our health.
We also used SIP panels in the timber frame construction. SIP stands for Structural Insulated panels. They are tremendously energy efficient and very attractive. The panels have six inches of Styrofoam sandwiched between beautiful natural pine paneling on one side and plywood on the other. We put a light wash stain on the pine to retain its natural color so it wouldn’t “yellow” with age.
The house located on a steep hillside, gave us the opportunity to use the stability of the earth’s temperature to moderate thermal fluctuations. We live in a warm climate and this “nestling” into the earth keeps our air conditioning bill to a minimum as well.
With a million dollar view, we opted for lots of glass in the house, but our view faces north, so we are not subject to heat gain. We also made an investment in this luxury item by purchasing high E factor windows made from wood, not metal, which would conduct heat or cold from the outside into the interior.
One of the more expensive investments into “Green” living we made was the two Water Furnaces or Geothermal heat pumps. The technology has been around for awhile, but the higher initial investment keeps most homeowners from going this route. The lake that we live on provides the “heat exchange” for cooling in the summer and heating in the winter. Wells can be dug for this process, and less reliable, depending on your climate, are the units that use the ground for this heat exchange.
When it came to appliances, we went all out with the most modern energy efficient models we could find. Those popular front loading washer and dryers actually are great energy savers. They use a horizontal or tumble-axis basket to lift and drop clothing into the water instead of rubbing clothes around a central agitator. Newly designed top-loading machines can be energy efficient as well, be sure to look for the ENERGY STAR before purchasing. Faster spin speeds, two-three times faster during the spin cycle, extract more water from clothes thus reducing dryer time and energy use.
Looking for the Energy Star is important when looking for other types of appliances as well. Viking, Kitchen Aid, Asko, Wolf, Sub Zero and Bosch are all name brands that you should be able to find energy efficient. While you might be able to afford those higher energy bills, luxury trends indicate consumers are looking for better technology that is eco-friendly. By choosing energy efficient technologies, appliances and taking steps to optimize the performance of your heating and cooling equipment, you are helping to prevent global warming and promoting cleaner air while enhancing the comfort of your home. It’s the moral thing to do.
June 4th, 2008 -- Posted in Environment |
The need to set up and implement a recycling program in the office is huge. If you work in an office environment then you are aware of the amount of paper generated in one small office. You can just barely imagine how much paper a larger office uses on a daily basis. The numbers are astronomical. When a business office wants to recycle the paper they would normally throw away. There are several steps, which must be implemented in order to make the transition of throwing in the recycle bin rather than the trash can.
The business will want to make the recycle as easy on their employees as possible, so in order to accomplish this they will strategically place recycle bins in locations to prevent their employees in making any extra steps to find a bin. They may wish to use desktop recycle boxes for standard sized paper in order to keep it simple. At a cost of only $1 to $2 each, every employee would be able to have one at their work station or a separate mini waste basket, which can be suspended from the normal wastebasket or sitting beside the wastebasket. Usually these boxes will resemble a tray or you can use a folder to place paper in meant for the recycle bin.
If the paper to be recycled at each desk is not just the standard size paper, but includes forms, computer paper, note pads along with standard sized letterhead, copier paper, etc. At a cost $4 to $9 you can have a container at each desk or workstation. The cost of the container will be made up for the savings in time, and increase recycling. In many large offices the copy machine and the printer is in a central location in order for several people share the printer rather than each employee have one of each at his or her desk. So a large recycle bin will place at the location of these machines. This will also give your employees a central location to empty their own personal desktop recycle bins or wastebaskets.
As a business start a recycle program in your company you will need to contact the site manager or the contractor of the cleaning crew. You want them to be aware of the recycle bins on the desktops and other locations, so everything doesn’t end up in the trash bin. They will know to empty them into a separate container specified for recyclables. Remember instructions in languages other than English may be required. Your office may or may not equip your desk with a desktop recycle bin. If it doesn’t you can create your own.
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June 3rd, 2008 -- Posted in Environment |
A locavore or localvore is someone who eats food grown or produced locally or within a certain radius such as 50, 100, or 150 miles. The locavore movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers markets or even to produce their own food, with the argument that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. Local grown food is an environmentally friendly means of obtaining food, since supermarkets that import their food use more fossil fuels and non-renewable resources.
2007 was the year of the “Locavore”. The Oxford English Dictionary picked it as their word of the year. The “Locavore” movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to grow or pick their own food, arguing that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. Locavores also shun supermarket offerings as an environmentally friendly measure, since shipping food over long distances often requires more fuel for transportation. Two years earlier the phrase 100-Mile Diet was coined by James MacKinnon and Alisa Smith of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, to describe their one-year local eating experiment. Their diet experiment consisted of eating food produced or grown within 100 miles of their home apartment. This included not only local produce, but also ensuring that any meat or dairy products came from animals that ate local feed and were packaged locally. We’re now about halfway through 2008 now and I’ll bet there’s only and handful of you who have either heard of or are in anyway living as Locavores or 100 Mile Dieters because committing to this virtuous act is at this point just too damned hard!
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June 2nd, 2008 -- Posted in Environment |
It’s the age of digital technology but the concept of “paperless office” still seems to be a distant future. The printing presses still play a huge role in supplying necessary office materials. They often range from booklets, pamphlets and brochures to business cards, calendars and stationeries. So it is obvious that printing presses, in order to meet the huge requirements of the modern day office need huge resources to deliver and meet the standards. And when it comes to resources required by the printing presses, the primary is energy. It is surprising that paper and printing industry ranks fourth among manufacturers in the amount of energy consumed.
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June 1st, 2008 -- Posted in Environment |
We are currently in a situation where the planet’s ecological structure is not coping with all the pollution because of a huge, continuously increasing, consumer demand. This excessive demand for consumer products has created most of the current ecological imbalances. These imbalances will become a much greater problem than most people expect this to be. These imbalances have already caused ecological disasters in different places all over the world, with many more to follow.
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