Archive for the ‘Being Green’ Category
The Future of Food: A Very Scary Movie
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Being Green on March 3rd, 2009
My wife and I didn’t need any additional incentive to move away from industrialized food toward organic foods: pick up just about anything in the grocery store aisles nowadays and see how many ingredients you don’t recognize, not to mention all the chemicals you can’t pronounce. Does anybody wonder why the incidence of cancer and other health problems continues to grow?
But even that paled in comparison to the shock at watching a documentary called The Future of Food. The show focused on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), specifically grains and soybeans that have been genetically modified to be be unaffected by the weedkiller called Roundup.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNezTsrCY0Q
On the surface, that doesn’t sound like such a bad thing, does it? Have a crop that you can spray with a weedkiller that will wipe out just about anything that’s green: the Roundup kills all the weeds and leaves the “good” plants alone.
But if you dig a little deeper, you’ll find that all that glitters is not gold, as the saying goes. First, the genetic modifications Monsanto makes to the plants – using similar techniques to what viruses use to invade cells (sorry, that sounds melodramatic, but it’s quite true) – involves insertion of genes from a variety of organisms that include a variety of bacteria and other non-plant species. What are the long-term effects of mutation and cross-species pollinization? What if someone who consumes the GMO grain products is allergic to one of the elements introduced into the grain?
Then there are the legal aspects, which were equally shocking. Monsanto and other companies conducting this sort of development patent the genes they develop, and have – successfully, it seems – made the legal case that anything that those genes can be identified in is essentially owned by the company. For example, if a truck carrying Monsanto GMO grain drives by your farm and some of the seed blows off into your field and germinates, guess what? You just violated Monsanto’s patent rights and are subject to a fine!
I just about dropped dead: if somebody else’s grain contaminates your crops, you’re the “bad guy” who’s on the hook. I had thought that the legal system was pretty well rotten, but this was too much.
But the scariest thing is that companies like Monsanto have developed genes for crops that are variously called “suicide” or “terminator” genes. There are different types, but basically that means that the crops will grow one season and not produce any viable seed that could be replanted.
So what happens when crops that have this terminator gene cross-pollinate with non-GMO crops? And yes, I said when, not if, because if crops like this are allowed outside the laboratory (heck, who knows, maybe they already are) it’s inevitable that they’re going to come in contact with and contaminate non-GMO crops.
But the worst part is that there’s no requirement for food manufacturers to label GMO ingredients in our food. So you could be eating something right now that has genetically modified corn, and you’d never know it. Why is that? Maybe it has something to do with so many senior government positions (up through 2004, at least, when the film was produced) being occupied by senior executives of Monsanto and other companies. That doesn’t strike me as a conflict of interest. Really.
So, what’s to do about it? First, learn more and – as with many things – express your feelings to your congressional representatives. I, for one, would at least like to see appropriate labels for food containing GMO products. That’s a good place to start, but there’s a lot left to do.
Our Latest Outrageous Electric Bill
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Being Green on February 9th, 2009
I think our utility companies think we have money trees blooming in the back yard! We just got our electric bill for February: $452!!
I suppose I wouldn’t be so shocked if we had the heat turned to 80 degrees and had all the windows open. But with the thermostat normally set for 65 (okay, every once in a while we splurge and turn it up to 67) during the day and 60 at night, I was still shocked. Granted, this year was colder in our neck of the woods than last year by 10 degrees, but holy cow. I can’t even imagine what the bill would have been if we had the heat pump running upstairs (we have a dual-zone system, with gas heat downstairs and a heat pump in the attic): we keep the upstairs rooms warm with radiant heater panels and leave that energy hog off the entire winter. Otherwise we’d have to declare bankruptcy!
So, past the sticker shock, what’s one to do? We’ve done most of the basic stuff, like replacing our lights with compact fluorescent bulbs and programmable thermostats, and so on. But in the short term, there are a few other things that should help:
- I’m going to finish covering the garage with radiant barrier material, which reflects heat inward during the winter and outward during the summer. I’m also going to look into putting radiant barrier material in the attic, too; if I could, I’d put it all around the house, and it drives me nuts that this isn’t a standard/code practice (for some great info on radiant barriers, check out Horizon Energy Systems).
- I need to find something to block the cold air coming in from the bloody fireplace in the living room (ironic, isn’t it?), and do the same for the outlets.
- I think I’m going to make radiant barrier panels to put up in our existing traditional skylights, which are a major source of heat loss in the winter and gain in the summer. We have two in the living room and one in the master bathroom. If I had things to do over, I would’ve skipped those and gotten tubular skylights instead.
- I’m going to look into installing a timer on the hot water heater. We really only need hot water in the early morning when my wife and I take a shower, then again in the evening when the boys take a shower and we run the dishwasher. The rest of the day it’s keeping that water hot for nothing (and I already have it wrapped in a radiant barrier cover). I’m also going to get a quote this spring on a solar hot water system.
- Windows. Our windows suck, but replacing them isn’t an option: it’s just too expensive. They don’t leak, but the effect of convection results in a flow of cold air in the winter and more heat gain in the summer (although the winter’s the worst). I haven’t come to grips with this one yet, but at least the windows upstairs that we don’t normally look out of need something, even if some sort of semi-transparent insulation like bubble-wrap!
For us, I think those are the biggest problems. We’ve got fairly new appliances (particularly the refrigerator, which is brand new), so they’re reasonably energy efficient. But this sort of thing is one more reason why I’d really love to build an earthship – just think of all the other things we could do with all the money we’re spending on utilities!! Yikes!
Why I Want To Build An Earthship
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Being Green on February 6th, 2009
While I obviously enjoy reading and writing fiction, an earthship isn’t something you’re going to see on the SciFi channel. It’s something that you can see today, right here on good old planet Earth.
So what is an earthship, anyway? In brief, it’s a self-sustaining – in terms of water and power – structure that is also very environmentally friendly. On top of that, depending on how you build it, it can be significantly less expensive than a conventional home.
The brainchild of Michael Reynolds, the earthship concept essentially takes materials that are currently looked up on as wasted products – used car tires, glass bottles, and aluminum cans – and uses them as the foundation for a structure that is incredibly sturdy, stays cool in the summer and warm in the winter, can supply its inhabitants with water through rain catchment, electricity through solar power, and even provides an indoor greenhouse to freshen your air and even give you some extra food.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDRstVYF7wA
I don’t know about you, but I really hate paying increasingly outrageous electric rates. Water is not only becoming more expensive, but it’s a precious commodity to begin with – and much of the water we use is simply flushed down the toilet, creating an enormous burden on the sewer systems (which means more money spent to maintain and upgrade them).
But with an earthship, all that goes away.
- Three foot thick walls – tires filled with packed earth – help maintain a pleastant temperature year-round, even in very cold or very hot climates. So out goes the air conditioner and the heat pump (you’ll still likely be required to have a backup heat source – how about an adobe fireplace?).
- Since you just got rid of the biggest users of electricity in your home, you can get by with a much more manageable solar power system. You have to be reasonable in your electric budget, but wouldn’t it be worth changing your lifestyle slightly to thumb your nose at those heinous electric and gas bills?
- You can use rainwater caught by your roof and drained into large cisterns for your potable water. Poof! There’s no more need to pay for water or those expensive hookup and footer fees.
- Waste water from your sinks and shower (or bathtub) can be used to water indoor and outdoor “gray water” planters. So in addition to recycling a precious resource into food or attractive plants, you also just eliminated most of your need for a sewer connection or septic tank.
- As for the toilet, my personal leaning there is to just get a composting toilet and ditch entirely the use of water to flush away the poo. I mean, really: we use drinking water to flush away our bodily wastes. How dumb is that? But even if you don’t like that idea and want a conventional flush-away system, you’ll only be flushing toilet water and not all the other reusable water.
The earthship also doesn’t require you to be a supergenius with building materials. It’s made out of pretty basic stuff: tiers, dirt, wood, glass, aluminum cans, concrete, and stucco (plus the plumbing, fixtures, etc.). The biggest ingredient you’ll need is labor: you’ve got to pound a lot of dirt into every tire that goes into the walls, and depending on the size of your earthship, there will likely be anywhere from 500 to 700 tires. That’s a LOT of tires, yes, but if you can hire a dozen folks for a couple weeks or so, you can probably get it done (hey, offer a free barbecue every weekend to the local high school football team until the tires are done!).
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TbxhpG-Y4Q&feature=related
And you can build an earthship anywhere you can get the basic ingredients together. There are variations in the design based on the climate, but it can be built anywhere in the world. When I retire, we plan to move somewhere in the southwest and start building one of these puppies!
If you’re interested in finding out more, there’s a PDF overview, plus a few of the many sites that have more info:
- AIDG Blog
- Our Earthship
- Energize Clinton County
- Kirst’s Earthship Adventures
- Oscar and Lisa’s Earthship Build
Find Your Household Energy Hogs With the Kill-a-Watt Meter
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Being Green, Reviews on February 3rd, 2009
One of the things a lot of folks wonder when they look at their electric bill is, “Where the heck is all my money going?” Which appliances are using more than they should, or just more than you think they do? How can you tell?
I found an answer in the Kill-a-Watt meter by P3 International. This thing costs about $26, but could save you some serious money by pointing out the electricity hogs in your house. This is also an extremely valuable tool for anyone trying to figure out the wattage requirements for a backup generator.
When the price for electricity shot up last year and we decided we needed to do something about it, I started looking for a tool to tell me how much power the various things in our house were really using. Some things, like the light bulbs, weren’t a big problem because they have a rated wattage and I’m willing to take those at face value.
But other things in the house, like our refrigerator and freezer, the computers, and so on, aren’t so easy. Take the refrigerator: you can read the spec sheet and see how many watts it pulls when it’s running. But how long does it run during the day? How many watts does it use overall, or on average? The manual can’t tell you that, because it’s going to vary depending on what setting the refrigerator’s on, the temperature in your house, etc.
So, after digging around on the internet, I found the Kill-a-Watt meter by P3 International.
Using the Kill-a-Watt is absurdly simple: unplug the device you want to check, plug the Kill-a-Watt into the outlet, then plug the device into the Kill-a-Watt. The meter will then start keeping track of how many watts are currently being drawn, how long the device has been plugged in, and the total watts used (so you can figure out the watts/hour by dividing the total watts by the time).
It will also tell you some other good information, like the exact voltage from the outlet. But the main part for me is counting watts, which translates directly to how much money that device costs per month.
My wife just shook her head and muttered as I went around the house testing things. And just a tip for testing devices that may have hard to reach plugs or outlets in tight quarters: plug a 3-prong extension cord into a convenient outlet, plug the Kill-a-Watt into that, then plug in your device.
While I still have to test some things, I made a couple of interesting discoveries. For one thing, I found out that the refrigerator and freezer didn’t use nearly as much electricity as I thought they would: over a 24 hour period, the fridge uses 70 watts/hour, and the freezer uses 80. So that works out to a bit over 50 kWh for the refrigerator per month (or around $5, depending on the cost of your electricity), and about 60 kWh for the freezer (or around $6 per month). Not too bad, and a lot better than I thought!
I checked our Econo-Heat radiant panel heaters, which are rated at 425 watts. However, when I checked them with the Kill-a-Watt, they actually came out to 395, which was nice.
The computer we use as a home office server was another surprise: this thing has four hard drives, half a dozen cooling fans, a pretty powerful AMD CPU and ATI graphics card, and a 21″ CRT monitor (not one of the newer LED/LCD models), and it was only pulling 250 watts (the power supply is rated at 500 watts)! So, that was the good news. But for a variety of reasons, we often leave the machine on overnight, so I figure it’s costing us somewhere around $20/month to run. The solution: make sure I get my butt downstairs every night to shut it down!
By comparison, our laptops use about 25 watts, which is a surprise in a way since they’re as powerful CPU-wise as the server machine, just without the extra hard drives and big CRT monitor. So when you’re shopping for a computer, add power consumption to your list of considerations: I figure each of our laptops costs about $1 in electricity each month! And that savings can definitely add up over time.
And as I mentioned earlier, if you’re looking into getting a backup generator for your home, it’s very important to know just how much power you really need. The Kill-a-Watt can tell you: you no longer have to rely on estimates that may be way off for your particular needs.
The best part of the Kill-a-Watt is that it’s cheap! It’s only about $26, but can potentially save you a lot more than that by pointing out energy hogs in your house.
The only real downside to it is that you can’t use it on the biggest electricity users in your home: your air conditioning, furnace, hot water heater, or stove (it doesn’t handle 240V appliances).
But still, the Kill-a-Watt can help you bring some of your other energy hogs under control, and for me the price was well worth the peace of mind.
