Top green living myths

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/green-living-blog/2009/nov/26/top-10-green-living-myths

by envitar • 17 years ago

75 76 17 years ago

guardian.co.uk

ars7• 17 years ago

Very good info!

A rule of thumb: the cheaper it is, the less energy it took to make it. Some more details: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=346912

Be aware that less energy is not always equal to better for the environment.

revorad• 17 years ago

ars, you make a good point but pollution is a very big hole in your metric. If you can't account for it, then your rule of thumb is misleading.

ubernostrum• 17 years ago

Of course, something may have been cheap because it was produced in a place with lax environmental regulations (so lower compliance costs) and shipped via bulk freight options which dump a lot of nastiness into the atmosphere...

ars7• 17 years ago

Yes, certainly. But if you compare two products made in the same country/area they nearly always have about the same pollution load, so price is an excellent way to compare them.

"bulk freight" being a problem is not correct. Bulk freight is probably the best way to ship something, and any energy cost is contained in the final products price.

jrmg• 17 years ago

One thing that's always puzzled me: surely in the winter, when you have heating on, it doesn't really matter how efficient your appliances are - 'waste' heat from inefficient appliances will just replace heat that the heating system would generate otherwise?

henrikschroder• 17 years ago

Only if you have electric radiators. If you heat your home in any other way, you're wasting some energy, since electric energy is the least efficient to use for simple heating.

jrockway• 17 years ago

Indeed. It is amazing how much heat-per-watt of electricity you can get from a heat pump. Much better to use your electricity to power that than it is to use a bunch of old servers as your primary heat source. (Yes, I know someone who did this...)

akamaka3• 17 years ago

Well, not entirely true, depending on what you're optimizing for.

If it's cost, you need to see if gas bill savings + price difference of appliance < electric bill savings.

If you're optimizing for CO2 emissions, and live in France, with many nuclear plants, maybe using less electricity doesn't do much.

(I have ground source heating in my home, btw, and it's great for both!)

akamaka3• 17 years ago

Correct. That's often forgotten when promoting more expensive, efficient appliances.

For example, Ontario is banning incandesent lightbulbs. However, studies have calculated that because of the colder climate, there will be no net cost savings for the average consumer. Although the government is touting this as an environmentally justified decision, it's more due to Ontario's lack of electrical generating capacity. (which, granted, could be seen as an environmental issue, if you don't want a new nuclear plant in your back yard)

cperciva3• 17 years ago

In Canada, it turns out that switching from incandescent light bulbs to more "environmentally friendly" bulbs actually causes a net increase in CO2 emissions, since most of our electricity is hydroelectric, but most homes are heated using natural gas.

run4yourlives4• 17 years ago

I'd like to see some stats on that. Not that I think you're wrong, just that for me it isn't completely obvious that incandescent bulbs are giving off that much heat.

asmosoinio• 17 years ago

It depends: A lamp in the ceiling produces heat into the wrong place -- most of the warm air is stuck up there and not where people are.

And as other people mentioned, house heating is often produced with more efficient methods.

tome5• 17 years ago

Some of it is useful, some of it is useless nonsense, perpetuating other myths.

If you want to learn how negligible the effect of turning off your lightbulbs or converting to a gas heated kettle is, read "without the Hot Air" by David McKay: http://www.withouthotair.com/ It's transport and domestic heating that are the major energy consumers in the west. It's barely worth focusing on anything else.

"wood is a green fuel because the CO2 released when it gets burned will be sucked from the air by the trees planted to replace the felled ones"

What? No. Wood is a green fuel because all the CO2 released when burned was previously captured by the plant itself! What you replace it with is irrelevant.

The "Buy local" section is very good though. Local purchases will in general be a lot more wasteful than purchase of mass produced food which takes advantage of economies of scale.

mapleoin• 17 years ago

What? No. Wood is a green fuel because all the CO2 released when burned was previously captured by the plant itself! What you replace it with is irrelevant.

So burning oil into the atmosphere is green because the CO2 and other dangerous substances were previously captured by the oil itself? (though it takes a bit more for an oil deposit to form than for a tree to grow)

tome5• 17 years ago

You're right: the duration over which the CO2 was captured is important. The argument doesn't apply to burning the whole of the amazon at once! But burning growth which has happened since we started caring about CO2 has no net effect.

akamaka3• 17 years ago

It's a bit more complicated than that. Wood can be both green and non-green. Burning a full grown tree could release hundreds of years worth of carbon in an instant. Replanting that tree won't offset the effect of that CO2 within the 50-100 years in which global warming is expected.

Same for buying local. Buying mass produced grain from Brazil might be more efficient, but worse for the environment because of the deforestation that's driven by high food export prices.

We won't really know for sure until we have a comprehensive way of accounting for all the different factors on a case-by-case basis.

whatajoke2• 17 years ago

To quote from the article:

In particular hard cheese, which takes a lot of milk to produce, can have a bigger footprint per kilo than chicken.

This is super stupid. Hard cheese contains more than double the calories of chicken. And nobody in their right minds will consume hard cheese as the main food item.

jules• 17 years ago

From the Volkskrant (newspaper): cheese takes more kg of food for the cows to produce per protein than chicken. For vegerarians cheese is an important source of protein.

furyg3• 17 years ago

link?

whatajoke2• 17 years ago

For vegerarians cheese is an important source of protein.

Sorry, but the vegetarian you talk of is doing it wrong.

My primary source of proteins is pulses. Especially the red kidney beans contain the same amount of protein as chicken, 24 gm out of 100 gm.

Reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_(food)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_bean#Red_or_kidney_beans

silentbicycle• 17 years ago

Right - They're talking about cheeses like parmesan reggiano, which are typically grated and used in small quantities. Nobody eats a pound of parm at a time, just like nobody eats black pepper by the pound.

dtf2• 17 years ago

Being the UK, I would imagine we're talking about cheddar, which occupies the lion's share of UK cheese production. Give me a good cheddar (Montgomery's is excellent), a nice bottle of wine, packet of biscuits and the complete series of The Thick Of It on BBC iPlayer and I'll do my level best to get through that pound.

chandler• 17 years ago

Moreover, all these calculations of how much energy is required to grow meat fall flat when you consider grass-fed beef & pastured chickens (a la Saladin); unlike corn-fed beef, grass-fed beef can be self sustaining & actually rejuvenate the land.

Choosing veganism over corn-fed carnivory is the lesser of two evils, only because veganism requires less monocropping. However, at best it can only slow--never reverse--environmental destruction (without animals, the NPK source is petroleum).

From an environmental standpoint, the disease is "growing crops without animal input," and corn-fed beef is merely a symptom.

Ironically, the only way to turn veganism into a closed system is to avoid the large-scale monocropping of grains and re-introduce animals for a nitrogen source.

gaius• 17 years ago

That veganism is "sustainable" is another myth. It requires massive energy subsidies. It's not that long ago in Northern Europe (let alone Canada, Russia, etc) that if you wouldn't use animal products or labour you'd starve or freeze.

cake• 17 years ago

2. What they tell you: Buy a greener car

The perfect examples of this myth are the Toyota Prius and alike, it amazes me how wrong they are.

I've read that the production of these cars is more wasteful than the usual (because of the batteries that have to be shipped), that the global shelf life of the car is poor, that it is difficult to recycle them and finally that the fuel consumption is not extraordinary low (equivalent to a small car).

Yet they receive an enourmous media coverage because they seem to be the response to a greener car.

jws• 17 years ago

You have been misinformed about batteries and shelf life, the mileage is variable, it depends on the driver.

If you drive a prius with a thought toward efficiency it is quite good. If you are a pedal masher it won't be so good.

There are other, cheaper, paths to efficiency. A tiny diesel in a tiny car will get about the same mileage as the prius, but you will have to put up with slower acceleration. Most Americans do not tolerate slow acceleration. (The 1980s diesel rabbits were 50+mpg cars. 0-60 in 22 seconds with the air conditioner on, and they would fail modern emissions tests miserably, but cheap and efficient they nailed.)

mmt• 17 years ago

If you drive a prius with a thought toward efficiency it is quite good. If you are a pedal masher it won't be so good.

I have found this to be true for any car. The question for hybrids is if it's any more or less so. That is, is the effect of a "lead foot" more or less pronounced on average fuel consumption when compared to a non-hybrid economy car?

My anecdotal experience with economy cars versus a similarly small, "sportier" car (Honda Prelude) is that efficient driving has more effect on the the latter (17 to 30 mpg, factor of 1.76) than on economy cars (25 to 36 mpg, factor of 1.44)

they would fail modern emissions tests miserably, but cheap and efficient they nailed

IIRC, the high-efficiency "HF" version of the 80s Honda Civic CRX typically got 45-50mpg, with the same caveat that it couldn't be produced today due to more stringent emissions standards and the added one that it only had two seats.

Daishiman2• 17 years ago

However well-intentioned these articles are, I think it's intellectually dishonest to focus on such ridiculously irrelevant things as heating the water for your coffee when the fact is that it won't make any difference.

If you want to reduce your energy footprint, buy insulation for your house and stop driving. Really, everything else is insignificant in comparison.

dazzawazza• 17 years ago

You're correct but since people do 'boast' about these tiny changes to their lives turning them green it's useful for 'authoritative' sources to slap them back down.

pbhjpbhj3• 17 years ago

Really, everything else is insignificant in comparison.

The problem with these sorts of statements is that nearly everything is insignificant compared to something else. The UK shouldn't bother about efficient energy use or renewable sources as China is a far greater consumer and anything we do will be insignificant. I shouldn't bother insulating my house because my neighbour owns a mansion and heats it to 25 degrees C all year and keeps the windows open. There's no point in fitting loft insulation as my car wastes more energy that that would save. There's no point turning the tap off when I brush my teeth because the tap at work drips all day and wastes just as much water ... you get the idea anyway.

Millions of people doing small things in lots of instances creates a large(r) difference. It's a sort of bystander effect that prevents such things; no-one acts because someone else could do more - like #6, if everyone signs up for the renewable then they're not going to be able to meet the demand and will have to bring online more sources of renewable energy.

The reusable nappies issue, #9, is that they assume the nappies are not reused. We bought most of ours 3rd hand on ebay (some 2nd hand) and also used moltex nappies that can be degraded completely by vermiculture within 1 year (though we simply composted them) - our second child is now using the reusables (4th hand) so that makes manufacturing cost just over a quarter (due to disposable paper liners) what they were considered to be in the study mentioned. If you use nappy liners then cleaning is easier. There are other benefits including end-of-life reuse (floor cloths) too.

jerf2• 17 years ago

"The problem with these sorts of statements is that nearly everything is insignificant compared to something else."

Yes. Yes it is. Welcome to reality, and engineering. The problem with your statement is that if you're burning a lot of time and mental energy on the insignificant things, then you are wasting your time.

If you, personally, have already taken the time to secure your housing's heating situation, already have an energy-efficient car and minimize driving anyhow, then maybe for you worrying about your kid's diapers is the lowest hanging fruit. I mean that completely straight, not sarcastic at all. However, if you're sitting here encouraging others to worry about their diapers while their homes sit there blowing 75% of their heat out a leaky door, then you're just wasting time.

It's the 80/20 principle, only when it comes to things like energy budgets it's more like the 95/5 principle; one or two things make up 95% of your energy budget and the rest is fiddling around the edges. Optimize the 95% first. Worry about the 5% later, if at all.

(Fiddling around making optimizations smaller than the noise threshold is also a waste of time. "Noise threshold" may sound like a weird concept to apply here, but it does; making a small food optimization that, even if applied by a million people, is still less than the daily variation in the amount of food thrown out by restaurants daily would be a complete waste of time. This is an example, I have no specific optimization in mind. The temptation is to say "Well, these things add up", but in fact when you're dealing with these sorts of distributions, sometimes they don't! Even ten .001% optimizations don't add up to much, and for the effort of getting those you probably missed out on a 1% somewhere else. These distributions can be very counter-intuitive, we don't do well with such large order-of-magnitude ranges.)

rdtsc• 17 years ago

> The problem with these sorts of statements is that nearly everything is insignificant compared to something else. The UK shouldn't bother about efficient energy use or renewable sources as China is a far greater consumer and anything we do will be insignificant.

You were being sarcastic, but that is a very good point. I am tired of feel-good "stop taking hot showers" + "ask for paper bags at the store" kind of articles aimed at individual consumers. Sure it makes the writer feel good, it makes the consumer feel good -- they are all working together to save the planet. But if they really wanted to have an impact they should aim the article at the government and the big industrial giants. Instead of "stop taking hot showers" the article should say "write your representative".

Because even a million people taking cold showers might not make as much difference for the environment as installing a single scrubber on a coal plant, or forcing P&G to stop dumping tons of crap into the air. Those are the things that really make a difference. But somehow those things don't get talked about in the mainstream media.

Then we have China and it is a real big problem. How does one make China cut down on its coal plants? Can they claim that they are still industrializing, so they shouldn't adhere to the same rules as the rest of the 'already developed' world? Can we tell them what to do when we are also major offenders? Want to do something, talk to your congressman. Get involved, get the media involved...

And I am not advocating to start buying Hummers and letting our hot water run all night, but we shouldn't delude ourselves that it actually makes a real difference. We do it because it is a good thing to do, it make us feel warm and fuzzy but that is about it.

lsd5you2• 17 years ago

Or elect to not have a child - something even more significant. Though arguably that is essentially 'freeing up' a permit for someone else.

It conflicts with our view of family values and wholesomeness, but in general a wasteful consumeristic childless individual is going to be more ecological in the long run than pretty much anyone with several kids.

ars7• 17 years ago

Not true.

In every country where people might listen to this idea, population shrinkage is a bigger problem than population growth.

The net value of a human to society is positive not negative.

The problems of overpopulation is a myth.

tome5• 17 years ago

Exactly, and as I noted below, this book spells it out very clearly: http://www.withouthotair.com/

LucaDuval2• 17 years ago

As usual the single most important advice is missing:

* Don't have (more than one) child. *

We could build an everlasting eden for humankind if we could persuade everybody to limit themselves to one child for couple for the next two or three generations and then switch to two children for couple.

Lacking that we are doomed to damnation.

ars7• 17 years ago

No you couldn't. Instead you would doom billions to death and starvation, because during the transition time you need young people to support the old.

And who exactly would operate this "everlasting eden"?

Just about every single technology we have only exists because there are so many people in the world, which makes the cost of the item bearable.

LucaDuval2• 17 years ago

Overpopulation is a menace and family planning is the only viable solution. Two or three billions of healthy, nourished, educated human beings are more than enough to substain our economical, social and scientific structure.

nomoresecrets• 17 years ago

"Instead you would doom billions to death and starvation, because during the transition time you need young people to support the old."

Not if we kill them when they reach the age of 30.

dtf2• 17 years ago

Maybe one thing that could help cut domestic energy consumption in the UK is the introduction of decent real-time meters. Getting a massive bill through the post once every three months doesn't really help you understand where your money's going, especially as they usually have confusing terms (kW/H, BTU etc) and strange pricing structures.

Look at these new ones from British Gas:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8375711.stm

If you could see how much you were spending each minute, do you think that would encourage you to optimize your usage?

gridspy• 17 years ago

Or even better, see how much you are using each second [My company] http://www.gridspy.co.nz/

narag• 17 years ago

Spain has just passed a law to regulate temperature in public places like government offices, bars and shops. It shouldn't be higher than 21ºC in the winter, it shouldn't be less than 25ºC in the summer. Of course, what it's being regulated is the heating or AC devices! :-)

Hopefully this law will prevent us to freeze in theatres in the summer. And of course, it will reduce energy comsumption. There are more measures like forcing locals to have automatic-closing doors.

pmorici• 17 years ago

"especially in colder months when any heat from the flames that escapes around the side of the kettle will warm the room, reducing the burden on the central heating system"

this article is nonsense. Excess heat from an electric heater is going to warm the ambient air just the same as a gas burner will.

bh23ha• 17 years ago

The buy local meme is everywhere and sadly like so much of environmentalism it is short on smarts, case in point:

What they don't tell you: The transport of goods accounts for a small but significant proportion of the human impact on the climate. It generally makes environmental sense, therefore, to favour local food and other products. However, it's not always true that local is best. One study suggested that lamb from New Zealand, with its clean energy and rich pastures, has a lower footprint when consumed in the UK than locally produced lamb, despite the long-distance shipping. Another study showed that cut flowers sold in Britain that had been grown in distant but sunny Kenya had a smaller carbon footprint than those grown in heated greenhouses in Holland. So while transport is important, it's not the only factor to consider.

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