The Story of Stuff

Someone sent me this little film link about, well, the sustainability of our society model.
Quite educating
Check it out

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Oils don't belong in the sink

Oils. Everyone uses oil in the kitchen. From cooking oil, to sunflower oil, to olive oil, to fifty other types of oil used in kitchens around the world.
The problem is, what to do with it after it has been used?

“Oil forms a thin layer on top of water causing a range of problems. Oils act like a lid on the surface and the water cannot 'breathe'. It prevents oxygen getting into the water and restricts other gases produced in the water getting out. It coats the feathers of birds and fur of animals and causes problems for wading and diving birds. Insects that live on the surface of the water are also badly affected.”

“Oils, fats and organic wastes, including food scraps, reduce the levels of oxygen in water. Bacteria use oxygen in the process of decomposing organic matter, making less oxygen available for aquatic life. Decomposing organic matter can also produce methane and hydrogen sulphide (rotten egg gas) which can be poisonous to aquatic life.”

Department of Primary Industries and Water – State of Tasmania – Australia http://www.dpiw.tas.gov.au/inter.nsf/WebPages/SJON-52H88D?open (see also for other threats to the environment originating in our kitchens and bathrooms)

Because of the characteristics of oils, and because of their tendency to spread out into thin and broad membranes, one litre of oil may pollute thousands of litres of oil. Some sources mention as much as 1 Million litres of water.

So, don’t just throw it down the sink or toilet. Doing this can cause you a number of problems besides being problematic for your local waste treatment plant and the surrounding ecosystems.

Here’s why:

- it can clog up your pipes - Oil coagulates when it gets cold. Even if you pour it with detergent and hot water, consider that the hot water will only warm up the pipes for a certain length. From there the pipes will be cold and the oil will start clogging. Detergent will also only work so far. Even if you get most of the oil out into the mains before it clogs, this will help clog the system elsewhere, and if at some point there is an overflow the oils will end up in the ecosystem.

- Even if the oils make it to the waste treatment plant, large quantities of oil will wreak havoc among the bacteria working to clean the water there, making the whole plant less effective. Besides, it might clog the physical infrastructure of the plant. I’ve heard of stories of meters of gathered up fat at the entrance of the pipes to waste treatment plants during the Christmas Holidays due to all the fat washed into the pipes

Now, will this mean the water becomes unusable? No. But it does mean that the chain of life or habitat it sustained becomes jeopardized. Vegetable oils are nowhere as damaging as car oils and alike, and they do get degraded in time by bacteria and such, but, they characteristics and ubiquity mean they are an important threat to ecosystems. That is why specialists and agencies agree that a proper disposal of oils is one of the most important environmental tasks in our hands.

So what can we do with it?

To start with, make sure you can’t re-use it. I use as little oil as I can, and if there is any left at the end none the less, and it is reusable, I pour it (after it cools a bit) into a glass jar for later use.

When it needs throwing out, well, if you can give it over to a refiner it can be used to make diesel, which on top of everything burns cleaner than normal diesel. In fact, there are even small scale oil processing machines on the market so you can refine it yourself to run your car on if you have access to enough quantities of oil.

Great as this option might be, it is not there for everyone, so here are the instructions I found from authorities a bit all over the world:

- Strain/Pour the fats into a sealed container. If you can find a helpful local restaurant it might be willing to let you add the oil to their own grease bins (which they may be taking to be recycled into fuels or other products). If you are patient enough to gather a large quantity you should take into the local container park/landfill, and with a bit of luck they will have the possibility of processing it. If you have small quantities of oil, apparently the best thing to do is to put them into sealable containers and dumping them in the bin. Milk cartons are an example of container you might use

- If you do composting in your back garden, you can slowly and gradually pour small amounts of oil into it, at least if your composting pile has a healthy flora. Some authorities say you can dispose of small amounts in your garden. The assumption is that it will be possible to have small amounts of oil ‘eaten’ away without much damage, at least if it doesn’t hit water sources.

Also, to avoid washing oils into the sink unnecessarily, they advise you to scrape all of the oily remainders into the bin and swipe the pan before washing with a bit of toilet or kitchen paper.

Besides these ideas, a user on yahoo answers (mshonnie) suggests a number of great alternative uses for used vegetable oils. Here’s the link:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070930084319AA6rT5m

- Spray a key with cooking spray to make it easier to insert into a keyhole.

- Rub cooking oil onto a snow shovel and the snow will not stick to the shovel.

- Restore the original glow to a wooden salad bowl and wooden utensils by rubbing them with vegetable oil. Let them sit overnight, then wipe off the excess oil the following morning.

- Add a spoonful of olive oil to a bowl of water and soak a stiff chamois in it to restore softness.

- To remove unwanted adhesive from a piece of glass, rub the spot with a small amount of oil using a paper towel. The adhesive should come right off. Rinse and wash the glass with warm, soapy water to remove oil residue.

- To remove paper that is stuck to a wood surface, place a few drops of salad oil on the paper and let it soak. The paper should simply rub away.

- Remove tar from an unwanted surface by rubbing olive oil on the tar and letting it soak. The olive oil will soften the tar, making it easy to remove.

____________________

And here's something really useful that you can do with oils: Pest and mold/rot/blight control

Many vegetable oils will do the trick and I think they should still work even if they are used oils.
Of course, since the idea is to use the vegetable oil in a solution that then is sprayed, you will want the oil to be relatively clean of things that might clog up whatever you will be using to spray.

Aphids

Anyhow, if you have grown plants, herbs and so on, you have probably already had to deal with aphids, or plant lice, at one point or another. They invade really fast and can kill your plant by sucking the sap out of the plant. Besides, they excretions increase the odds of fungus growths and they can carry plant diseases.

Now, using insecticides is usually not the best idea, at least if you will be eating the herbs afterwards. So here's a natural solution using vegetable oil that will get rid of your aphids fast, without harming the plant, and without putting poisons in your food. (you can, and probably will want to make it in smaller quantities of course)

- about 3,8-4 litres of water

- 2,5 soup spoons of vegetable oil (I used sunflower, but the on the web you hear talk of so many different oils being used I get the impression most of them will do)

- 0,5 tea spoons of detergent (like dish washing detergent for example)

= what this does is soften the aphids' exosqueleton so that they simply dry out)

Mildew

Against Powdery Mildew and blight the solution is pretty much the same except you add

- 1 soup spoon of Baking Powder

The oil helps the baking powder stick and make the environment extremely agressive for the spores of the mold. This solution (or others along the same lines) can in fact be used as a preventive measure to avoid mildew setting in being used then once every two or three weeks.
This formula is apparently called 'The Cornell Formula' as it was developed there and is usually as effective commercial fungicides (or so I just learned while writing this).
http://www.helium.com/items/937597-how-to-use-baking-soda-for-powdery-mildew
Note however, that if Mildew is very widely spread in a garden, it might be too late to do anything but severely pruning the plants because no solution or commercial fungicide will save it.

It's over our heads - Putting that roof to work

Roofs are one of those things one doesn't immediately think of when thinking of helping the environment. But once you do start thinking about it, well, you realise that your roof does more than just keep the rain out and serve as stand for the antenna. It is also a space, which, in some cases can serve more purposes and also, perhaps more importantly, it is something that dramatically affects your house’s energy performance.

Anyone who has lived in an attic studio knows how warm it gets in summer and how cold in winter in comparison to middle of the building flats. When you are in the middle your neighbours insulate you both from cold and heat, so your apartment is nicely averaged. You also leech a bit of the heating or cooling from your neighbours because walls do transfer a bit of the heat or cold, even when they are well insulated.
Anyway, I digress.

Roofs should be insulated. No argument about that. Even if you do not use your attic much, the colder or warmer it gets, the more it will cool or warm up the other floors.

But there is more that can be done, even in houses already built. Usually the outside of the roof is something that gets a bit ignored when thinking of how to improve the energy efficiency of a house. So I thought I would go a bit into what you can do with it and came up with three things to start

Solar panels
White roofs
Green roofs

Solar panels are the most obvious thing, even if they aren't the most basic approach. Solar panels will use the energy hitting your roof for something useful, but besides this, they will also shield the roof, meaning that they indirectly help insulate the top floor. Anyhow, everyone knows about solar panels so I won’t go much into that. Moving on.

The most basic thing one can do is paint one’s roof white (or some other light colour).
That’s right. It isn’t for nothing that traditional houses in the hottest areas in Greece, Spain, Portugal and hot countries around the world are often white.

White reflects more sunlight, and therefore keeps your house cooler. As simple as that and not all that expensive in comparison to other measures.

But besides this decrease in the need for cooling systems, white roofs actually help fight global warming more directly by the so called ‘albedo effect’. In short, everything has a certain albedo effect, ie, it reflects sunlight. But some things reflect more than others. Constructions tend to reflect less and absorb more heat, leading to the so called ‘urban heat island effect’. So, increasing the albedo of towns should help decrease warming (not fix it, but at least contribute in taming it).

I found the following text calculating the theoretical effect on global warming of painting all roofs white on http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/12/white_roofs_to.php
Please refer to it if you want more information. Or look up white roofs on any search engine for ample information on the subject.

“The Earth has an albedo of 0.29, meaning that it reflects 29 per cent of the sunlight that falls upon it. With an albedo of 0.1, towns absorb more sunlight than the global average. Painting all roofs white could nudge the Earth's albedo from 0.29 towards 0.30. According to a very simple "zero-dimensional" model of the Earth, this would lead to a drop in global temperature of up to 1 °C, almost exactly cancelling out the global warming that has taken place since the start of the industrial revolution. A zero-dimensional model, however, excludes the atmosphere and, crucially, the role of clouds. [But!] It would be interesting to see if more sophisticated models predict a similar magnitude of cooling.”
(Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York – Global Rural Urban Mapping Project)

Just an idea. It will help gain us time though I doubt it will solve anything on the long run, especially since estimates of global warming are now higher than at the time this was written, but the idea stays if you want to try it out.

Independently of the global cooling effect it might have, if will for sure cool your house down during the summer.

The big thing you can do is going for a Green Roof

A green roof is basically a roof with soil and vegetation on it. The idea is actually relatively new to most of us city dwellers but it has been around for a long time. In Norway and Iceland green roofs have been around for centuries.
Might seem mad, but putting vegetation up there is actually the best insulation you can come up with both against heat and cold. Actually, it’s not that mad when you think of how much cooler it is in the summer when you are in a wooded area, or even just surrounded by grass.

Besides insulation, a properly built green cover will also increase the lifespan of the roof and, with a bit of luck and depending on the type of roof you have, you might actually get a garden with flowers or even fruit where you used to have nothing at all.

Green roofs are also very good at retaining water, meaning that the plants there will need little water and the run off from the roof will be drastically decreased helping combat flooding in the adjacent area.

And if you’re a bird or insect watcher and you’re lucky, you might get rewarded by the appearance of wildlife attracted to your ‘roof garden’.

Besides the benefits for the owner, green roofs are quite a benefit for the surrounding areas.
They fight the ‘urban heat island effect’, absorb CO2, contribute to avoid overflowing of drainage and sewage pipes during heavy rain by retaining water and releasing it more gradually, and they filter rainwater, removing some pollutants and heavy metals which then do not end up on water sources. They also help wildlife facing shortages of natural habitat by increasing the green area and by working as stepping stones between green areas for birds, insects, wild plants, etc.

The types of green roof vary wildly, depending on area, slope of the roof (which will imply different levels of drainage and may require making the roof watertight if it is flat), type of of purpose and vegetation desired (you might want a deep cover of soil or simply a thin layer as a result), and amount of maintenance you are willing to provide (from heavy maintenance to virtually self-sustaining green roofs which need at most one visit per year).

There are many firms specializing on green roofs and much information is available online too. Just type green roof on a search engine and it should be easy to find your way.

Improve your driving style and save fuel, emissions and money

Well, there we have it. Oil prices are going off the charts, and you feel it every time you fuel up.
Of course, the best way to get around that is to avoid using your car and go for public transport. Or reach for the bike or your walking shoes, especially now Spring is setting in and it is nice and warm outside.

Nevertheless, it is certainly true that some things are simply not within easy reach by public transport. And not all live in close vicinity from work, shops, friends, etc. So, some people are likely to have to use the car at least sometimes. And they therefore feel the bite of the price hikes.

Is there anything you can do, short of selling your car and buying a Smart? Which is, by the way, to my knowledge at least, still the most efficient car on the market. Yes, even much better than the Prius.

Well, YES!

I remember reading a Belgian article that said that drivers in Belgium used up something like 30% extra fuel simply due to their driving style. And here we are not talking about anything hugely complicated. Small, simple changes, once they become second nature, can make a huge difference and get a lot of extra kilometres out of that fuel you are paying so dearly.

So, once you made sure you really need to use the car for a trip, here is a non-comprehensive list of things I found here and there that can help cut down your fuel bill and your emissions bill:

- If you have airconditioning in your car try to avoid using it unless it is absolutely necessary. It gobbles up fuel, and it's bad for you. The air quality within cars has been shown to be on average several times worse than the air outside. Also, big temperature shifts, ,when you get in and out of the car, will promote flu, colds, etc. In the same way, during winter, avoid overdoing the heating. If you keep one or two extra layers on, it won't give you such a temperature shock when you get out.

- Do not pull out from parking or traffic lights as if you were in a race. You are not. More likely than not the next light will be red if you go too fast, or red period. And fast accelerating is deadly for your consumption. Even if you are trying to get a better position in the next set of lights, ask yourself just how much difference being one car ahead will make. My guess is it will not be huge.

- Use your engine to break. If your car is less than 10 years or 15 years old, the likelihood is that its fuel intake is managed by a computer. As a result, when the engine is not providing power to the wheels, the computer cuts the fuel supply to the engine. That’s right: Not one drop of fuel is being used! This is because the movement of the car is keeping the engine moving. In neutral the engine needs fuel to keep going. You can check it on the electronic display if it has a real-time consumption indicator. Experts say braking with the engine, within reason, does not harm the engine, and that with current technologies, revving down the engine for braking has negligible effects on engine and transmission health. At least if you’re not revving down gears at over 4000 rpms, of course. If you put the engine on neutral or keep the clutch down, on the other hand, the engine will be using up fuel to keep itself going.

- Use the highest gear your car can comfortably handle at the speed you’re travelling. Especially in the city, there is no point driving at high rpms, since you will usually not be needing to accelerate fast and you’ll sound like you are a rookie. Higher revs are only useful when you need quick accelerations. The lower the rpms, the less often the cylinders need to be filled and the less fuel you use. Depending on car, you should change up a gear at least at about 2000 rpms for a diesel and 2500 for a petrol/gasoline car. Depending on the situation, for instance, slow moving traffic, it might make sense to gear up at even lower rpms.

- When driving in heavy traffic, avoid staying too close to the next car and braking automatically as soon as you see red lights going off in front of you. Instead, use the extra space you’ve kept from the next car to assess just how much it has slowed down and whether you simply need to take your foot from the accelerator. Hover the foot over the brake pedal just in case. If you do need to brake, do it smoothly and as lightly as is safe. This way you avoid problems behind you. This style of driving will not only be more efficient, it will also be safer for you and the other drivers. I have personally found that more than half of the times I don’t even need to brake. Often these are chain events of slight breaking for panic reasons by bad drivers. Someone steps on the brakes lightly, the car behind brakes harder and so on and the traffic jams or you cause an accident. I’ve read of traffic jams in Belgian highways being traced through traffic cameras back to one single event of braking 5 or 6 kilometres away. Resolving the jam can for over one hour.

- When driving on the open road, keep a steady speed instead of accelerating and slowing down all the time. The most efficient speed for most cars is usually under 90 Kph. But this is too slow for motorways and such. A steady speed between 115 Kph and 130 Kph will usually still be reasonably efficient (and safe). In general, most engines will start being progressively more inefficient once you go past 3000-3500 rpms. At speeds over 130 Kph (80Mph) the drag from the wind will also make a pretty large dent on your tank.

- Avoid stepping on the accelerator every time you come out of bends. Also, instead of braking a lot as you come into them, try to keep a good, wide trajectory that will allow a higher speed. This is safer too because a wider trajectory increases stability and decreases demand on the tyres. The best trajectory (i.e., most efficient and safer) for a bend is to go into to it as wide as you can (within your lane of course), cut smoothly to approach the inside limit of the lane at the middle point of the bend, and then ease the steering wheel so you come out of the bend as close to the outside edge of the lane as possible.

- The most basic measure is to turn the key only when you know you are about to leave and to switch the car off immediately when you stop. I’ll never stop being amazed at people complaining about fuel prices and then leaving the car on for ages while they chat with someone, pop into the shop, or look for paperwork, cards, keys, wallets and God knows what else.

- If you have a diesel, then remember diesel engines take a couple of minutes to warm up to the most efficient engine temperature. As a result, they will use up two or three times more fuel than normal for the first few minutes. You can see it if you have an electronic consumption indicator on your dashboard. That is why they used to be turned on a few minutes before usage back in the old days. It is not necessary to do this anymore with newer diesels but they do ‘wake up’ slowly. So, accelerate slower than usual for the first few kilometres.

- Do not rev up your engine. Ever. It is pointless, uses up huge amounts of fuel for nothing and my experience is that instead of making you look cool it makes everyone around you think you are a twit or an idiot.

Well, that’s pretty much all I can think of right now. I’ll add stuff if I remember anything else.
You should, however, already do pretty good with these hints.

Using these hints on my seldom forays with the car, using a 10 year old 1.6 diesel Golf I personally consistently manage to do average consumptions of 4.5 to 4.8 litres per 100 Km in the city, and 5.0 to 5.5 litres on the highway, depending on traffic.

My personal record, however, was in a national road through the countryside. I was going easy, appreciating the landscape and when I stopped and looked down at the indicator it showed 3.8. Hell, that’s at least as low as a Smart ^_^.

Some bikes are greener than others

To cycle or not to cycle is no longer the question. To cycle will usually be the answer, at least for anything less than a few miles.
It's healthier and more environment-friendly. And people in busy city centres with limited parking probably know that it might actually be faster than driving too.
Now, having said that, there is the question of exactly how environment-friendly you are when you get yourself a bike to go around.

And the answer is: it depends on the bike you choose.

I'm not talking about the choice between buying a mountain bike, a speed bike or a traditional design bike like our grandparents used to have. That will depend on what you want to do and where you live. Try a fancy mountain bike in Amsterdam and leave it on the street and you're asking to see it gone within 5 minutes. Try using a traditional bike without gears up and down Lisbon's or Porto's steep cobblestone gradients and you're setting yourself up to quit on cycling within the first half hour.

What I mean is rather that how green your bike is depends on the material its frame is made of.
Traditionally, bikes were made of steel. But you see more and more people going around with aluminium frames, which are much lighter than steel. And the space age has also given us the carbon fibre bike, weighing less than one kilogram.
So, what should an environmentally conscious cyclist choose?

Well, definitely not a carbon fibre frame.

Carbon fibre is basically a composite material made up of carbon fibres planted on a plastic bedding or epoxy to make a material which is lighter than aluminium, but three times harder.
The problem is they are almost very difficult to recycle because after making the composite the fibres cannot be separated.
As a result, composites must be either burnt or ground. But even grinding is not a particularly good solution because while the ground composite is not usable for high value applications, the process of grinding is very expensive because the high resistance of the composite quickly damages the shredders and these need the parts to be replaced.

Besides, carbon fibre frames break apart easily and are likely to last you less than an aluminium or steel frame.
“Pardon? I thought you said they were very hard?”
Yes. Carbon fibre is very hard. But also very rigid. It does not bend at all.
This means that if it is subjected to strong forces, it responds by cracking. Aluminium and steel, are metals, which means they are able to bend and therefore adjust to stress without cracking.
Also, carbon fibre frames are made out of layers, which means that cracks may occur in internal layers that will not be visible until the whole thing breaks apart.

Dirk Van den Berk from Belgian bicycle manufacturer Granville said recently in an interview that it is perfectly possible that one single fall will mean the end of your carbon fibre frame. In fact, that is the reason that Granville’s models have only a 3 year guarantee for carbon fibre frames and a 10 year guarantee for aluminium.

So, unless you are a competition cyclist, forget carbon fibre.

What about aluminium and steel?
Well, here things are less clear.

The positive thing is that both are infinitely recyclable. So, your bike will not be waste when it comes to the end of its life.

But then the two production methods split.

Aluminium is very polluting to manufacture. I’m not an engineer but as far as I know you have to dip bauxite into highly a pollutant cryolite (sodium hexafluoroaluminate) bath, which has to be heated to 950 degrees. Then it still needs a permanent current to produce electrolysis leading to 20% to 40% of the cost of producing aluminium being energy costs.

It isn’t for anything that you see aluminium smelters mostly in developing countries where environmental standards are lower.

On the positive side, it is easier to recycle than steel while using only 5% of the energy required for producing from ore. Unfortunately, a percentage (15% according to wikipedia) of the aluminium is lost.

______________________

Producing steel on the other hand, requires actual fire, burning coal at extremely high temperatures on a permanent basis. This generates large amounts of CO2 which might be avoided when producing aluminium if the source of electricity used in aluminium manufacturing is green.
The production methods for steel, however, have improved significantly during the twentieth century and a large proportion of the steel we use nowadays is also recycled, as it is cheaper to recycle than to produce from new ore.

Of course, steel is also heavier than aluminium.

So, all in all, steel is probably the cleanest of the three options, though aluminium does not do too bad and it will probably help reaching for the bike if you live in hilly areas.
Carbon fibre (and glass fibre too I suppose) are probably best avoided for durability and sustainability reasons.

All of this said, even if you do want a composite frame on your bike, it will still be a hell of lot more environmental than going around with a car.