May 2009 Archives

Having recently purchased a baja style prerunner modeled 1986 Toyota Pickup (based on the European Hilux model) I was aware that the smog emissions might not be the best. Surprisingly, even this truck which is over 20 years old still gets over 20 miles per gallon and is quite efficient. While not everything on this truck is stock... my friend and I were able to clear emissions in the Bay Area and have been enjoying the jumps and offroading in Hollister California. Check out the video below, just for fun. The truck is named Maybeline and our hope was to convert it to solar electric but eventually we changed our approach and sold it off to someone from Oklahoma who could take better care of her aging components... That is after we threw a rod through the engine block and busted her front right drive shaft. Don't worry, I fixed all that before selling her.

Just the other day I received a notice from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District relating to Maybeline. Apparently, as a way to cut down on emissions the local government is offering cash for old vehicles which are then scrapped. Even though this program is specific to the Bay Area, there are programs nation wide offering similar incentives and sometime soon there may even be a federal "cash for clunkers" program put out by the Obama Administration. I would never in a million years do this to Maybeline as she is worth well over $5,000 and as I mentioned earlier is just as, if not more efficient than today's enormous gas guzzlers but the program may be of interest to other old car owners. The contents of the letter I received are listed below:

Dear Vehicle Owner:

Since the registration on your model year 1986 vehicle is expiring soon, please consider an alternative to driving this vehicle. You can receive $650 for your 1987 or older car, van, or pick-up truck from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (Air District) and help reduce air pollution. The Air District is the regional government agency that regulates air pollution within the nine San Francisco Bay Area counties.

The Air District's Vehicle Buy Back Program buys and then scraps 1987 and older vehicles. These older vehicles have less efficient emission control equipment and therefore produce much more air pollution than newer vehicles. This program is completely voluntary. If your vehicle is a classic car or otherwise valuable to you, please disregard this letter.

The following is a partial list of requirements your vehicle must meet in order to qualify to receive $650:

• Vehicle must be a 1987 model year or older.
• Vehicle must be currently registered as operable.
• Vehicle must have been registered as operable in the Bay Area for the past 24 months.
• Vehicle must be in operating condition.
• Vehicles with 60 days of a required smog check must take and pass their smog check.

Please call 1-888-690-2274 toll-free for the names and phone numbers of the auto dismantlers who will determine if your vehicle meets all of the program requirements. If your vehicle meets all of the requirements, the dismantler will buy and scrap your 1987 and older vehicle and give you a check for $650.

We hope that you will take advantage of this incentive to retire your vehicle and help improve air quality in the Bay Area.

Sincerely,

Vehicle Buy Back Program
Bay Area Air Quality Management District

939 Ellis Street
San Francisco, CA 94109
415.771.6000
www.baaqmd.gov

In our last story we covered ways to reduce energy and resource use by 50% doing things like adding an aerator to your sink and swapping out your old fashioned light bulbs for CFL's. Some of the tips were fairly obvious but one stood out from the pack as being both relevant and easy to implement. A company called SPRANQ has created a line of computer fonts that work for both Mac and PC that reduce the amount of ink required for printing. This font line is called Ecofont and it's available in two different flavors, the free basic version and a higher end corporate version that costs just ~$1.5 per computer per month with a minimum of 100 computers. Either one of these options will instantly help you save ink.

SPRANQ is a dutch company with a creative line of products. Ecofont was created through a desire to save resources and is inspired by dutch holey cheese. The font looks much like a normal font but instead of using solid black lines it has tiny holes throughout the letters, much the way that bone marrow, plane wings, and other light weight materials have holes and pockets of air. As a result of this simple holey solution Ecofont uses 20% less ink than an average font would require.

The Ecofont works best in OpenOffice, AppleWorks and MS Office 2007. Printing with a laser printer will give the best printing results and letters will appear like the above image. Get your free copy of Ecofont by visiting their website here and selecting your location then begin green printing!

Here are a few more bright ideas from the people behind Ecofont:

• End Users: print only when necessary, use a modern, efficient printer and use unbleached paper.
• Graphic Designers: use modern colour separation techniques to avoid unnecessary wastage in ink. In paper choice, take the environment into account.
• (Offset) Printers: avoid modern laser techniques that make ink indivisible from the paper. Keep an eye on innovations, such as plant-based ink.
• Printer Manufacturers: invest in environment-conscious innovation.

Sometimes just knowing what to is the hard part when it comes to energy and resource savings. Take a quick look over this short list, you may already know some of these saving techniques but we're willing to be at least one will be new to you.

Shopping
Next time you get the urge to shop, grab your laptop and browse the online aisles. Shipping a 10-pound package overnight by air uses nearly 50% less fuel than you'd use going to and from the mall. Do even more by opting for ground shipping which uses 20% less energy than air shipping. Many online stores such as ABSTRACTmall also use drop shipping which means they don't stock items, instead they are shipped direct from manufacturer and that saves even more energy!

In The Home
Attaching aerators to your faucets can significantly cut down on water use. The savings in gallons-per-minute that you create will be close to 50% and most aerators cost under $5.

In The Kitchen
Next time you want to heat up a TV dinner or a leftover casserole, use a toaster oven instead of a conventional oven. As long as it's got enough room for air to circulate around it, the smaller appliance will consume about 50% less energy.

At The Office
Did you know that paper account for more than 50% of all trash? Cut down on the amount of paper you're using by paying attention to what you send to the printer. The next time you print a document through Microsoft Word, change your layout settings to print 2 or more reduced-sized pages per sheet. You can also make your printer's ink cartridges last a little longer by using Ecofont - an environmentally friendly font that uses up to 20% less ink. Developed by SPRANQ, the font is totally free and compatible with Windows and Mac operating systems.

On The Phone
If you still have a landline, make sure you're using a corded phone. Because corded phones don't need to spend any time in a recharging cradle like their cordless counterparts, corded phones cut down on energy use by over 50% and are much less harmful on the environment because they don't require batteries.

Washing Clothes
Filling your washing machine up with cold suds instead of hot ones will cut down on your energy usage by at least 50%. Combine this with non-toxic, biodegradable laundry detergent like Natural 2x Concentrate Laundry Liquid from Seventh Generation and you can get clean clothes with a clean conscience. When you do eventually wash your clothes or do the dishes, do it late in the evening when the electrical grid is less packed, during the day electricity is more expensive and more limited because everyone is using it all at the same time.

Laundry Detergent
Pay careful attention to the amount of liquid detergent you use and pour only the recommended amount. Most people use twice as much as needed. Using less can save 50% of the product, which equals 50% less packaging.

Drying Clothes
If you're throwing a half-sized load of laundry into the dryer, only use 50% of a dryer sheet. And when the load is done, you can repurpose the used dryer sheet as a duster. Keep one in your glove box to wipe down your dashboard or use it around the house. The antistatic properties of the laundry sheet will attract dust.

Grocery Trips
Try to plan your grocery shopping trips so that your purchases will keep you from going back as often. 50% of the pollution it takes to transport food comes from your drive to and from the store.

Removing Stains
Instead of spending money on stain removers that could be environmentally toxic, do a search for helpful home remedy tips. For instance, you can get rid of sweat stains on laundry by soaking the garment in salt water for an hour, then rubbing the area with a mix of 50% white vinegar and 50% water before washing it.

Outdoor Grilling
With summer coming up, some of you will be investing in a new grill. Consider purchasing a gas grill which produces 50% less CO2 than charcoal grills and about 1/3 as much as electric grills. This also goes for your indoor stove! If you are going camping consider this biomass powered solar camp stove that doesn't require any fuel aside from a few twigs you can pick up along the trail, the unit also weighs less than a conventional camp stove.

At The Table
Your diet has an effect on greenhouse gas emissions. Start substituting only one meal a week with a vegetarian option, and you can reduce your carbon footprint. If you take the plunge and go completely vegan, your diet will be 50% more effective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions than switching to a hybrid car. Vegetarian options are usually cheaper, require 1/10th of the energy that livestock use, and livestock in the US are fed nearly 50% of the fresh water produce across the country so you'll save water too!

In The Home
Opt for a universal phone charger instead of one designed for your specific wireless phone and you'll save yourself some hassle, plus use about 50% less energy. Don't forget to recycle your old charger. You might also consider a portable solar charger which can cut 100% of the energy you use to charge your ipod, phones, and other electronic devices.

In The Shower
Install a low flow showerhead and use 50% less water every time you shower. These shower heads come in many different styles and can actually feel better than traditional high flow shower heads. You will probably spend between $15 and $50 depending on the style you choose, while you're at it, fix that leaky sink or toilet and save even more water!

Leaking
Got a leaky faucet? Fix it! A dripping faucet can leak enough in one month to provide enough water for one person for two weeks. Fix that faucet and use 50% less water. You can call a plumber or depending on the situation you can buy Teflon Plumber's Tape for less than $5 and try to fix it yourself.

Energy
Swap out your conventional incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents and you'll use at least 50% less energy in every room. Plus, you'll have to change them much less often; fluorescents last up to 10 times longer than their traditional counterparts. These days you can get many different styles, even dimmable CFL's!

Printing
Buy recycled paper for your printer and your school or work notes. A ton of paper made from recycled material saves 17 trees and uses 50% less water.

Dust
Dust your light bulbs frequently and you'll get better use out of them. A coat of dust on a light bulb can prevent 50% of light from illuminating your room. When you are cleaning or first installing lights, try to keep your fingers from touching the glass as it can heat up and cause the bulb to burn out faster.

Water Pollution
Recycle all your glass products and purchase products made from recycled glass when possible. Recycled glass produces 50% less water pollution than glass made from non-recycled materials.

Landfill Waste
Recycle all your paper products. If every American recycled all their paper products, landfills would be filled with almost 50% less waste.

Lawn Watering
Water your lawn as little as possible. Most people water their lawns twice as much as needed. One way to know how much water is enough is to place an empty tuna can in your yard. When the can is full, turn off your sprinkler and you'll use about 50% less water. You should also try to water your lawn and other plants in the evening or shady times of the day so the water seeps down into the ground instead of evaporating.

Buy Aquafina And Biota Bottled Water Or Use A Nalgene / CamelBak Bottle
Many of the "Save 50%" tips shared here are courtesy of Aquafina which has cut the plastic used in their water bottles by 50% since 2002. Biota uses biodegradable compostable plastic made of corn for their product. Using a Nalgene or CamelBak style bottle will save over 50% and if you don't want to pay $10 for one of these, just use a glass bottle from a drink like Snapple.

Got another way to save 50%? Add it using the comment system below...

I'm a big fan of reusable water bottles, ever since the days of Nalgene sport bottles I've been carrying one with me. They are fun to toss around, easy to clip to bags, and quite durable. I feel great about not using throw away bottles, even though they can be recycled they are a lot more wasteful in terms of shipping and packaging. Taste can be an issue with localized water, or if you fill up with OJ or soda, but many people own a Brita or PUR water filter pitcher to help with that... We'll get more into this later.

These days you can get several different designs and colors in Nalgene type bottles and other companies like CamelBak have also entered the market. New designs are made to fit in cup holders and backpacks, store more or less liquid, and feature bite valves or screw tops. Thankfully, the standard that is emerging for lid design and opening size is the wide mouth... This is a great design because it makes cleaning and filling much easier, especially when adding ice. That said, drinking from a wide mouth bottle can be a sloppy process because the opening is SO wide. Splashguards help to diminish this challenge and the latest lineup of splash guards do more than just keep the splash down, they have a built in filters!

Introducing the TapGuard from Guyot Designs (shown above). Add it to any widemouth bottle and you've got instant carbon-filtered water from any safe source. I bought one of these today from REI for a cool $15 and have been very impressed with the performance. The TapGuard comes with the splashguard unit in blue, orange, or black and contains two replacement carbon filters (shown in the aluminum pouches above) which is enough for 200 liters of water - the equivalent of hundreds of disposable bottles of water! When those two carbon filters eventually run out you can get two more replacements for just $6. That's way more affordable and convenient than a pitcher filter, and it takes up less space in a refrigerator.

Since I take my bottle everywhere with me (and leave my fridge at home) this method of filtering allows me to use water from drinking fountains, friends houses, and garden hoses and still get a great taste and cleaner water. Compared to a regular splash guard I had to suck a bit but it's not much different than the sippy cups of my youth. This is a great product that is both healthy and environmentally focused. Guyot Designs seems like a responsible earth minded company and has several other cool products coming out, so keep an eye on them!

The CamelBack "Better Bottle", which is BPA Free, is my favorite model and definitely what I'd recommend for use with the TapGuard. Bisphenol-A (BPA) is an ingredient used to make polycarbonate; suspected of being hazardous to humans since the 1930s. According to Wikipedia, concerns about the use of bisphenol A in consumer products were regularly reported in the news media in 2008 when several governments issued reports questioning its safety. Some retailers even removed products made from BPA from their shelves.

CamelBak BPA-free bottles feature the same great properties customers have come to expect from polycarbonate "old fashioned" style Nalgenes: vibrant color, clarity, durability, dishwasher-safe, and no residual taste. Additionally none of CamelBak's bottles have ever contained phthalates. Phthalates (pronounced thal-ates) are a component added to some plastics to make them soft and pliable. As of the end of April 2008, the entire CamelBak bottle line will be available in BPA-Free materials in North America.