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ALTERNATIVE TRANSPORTATION
Putting bicycles to work could produce enormous savings, like reduced air and noise pollution, better land use, less congestion and lower health costs. "Americans drive cars and taxis more than 1.5 trillion miles each year," said Gary Gardner, author of "When Cities Take Bicycles Seriously," an article in the September/October issue of World Watch. "Shifting just 5 percent of those miles to bicycles would save at least $100 billion."
Much of urban travel is already "bike-sized": 40 percent of all trips in the United States (and 50 percent in Britain) are 2 miles or shorter. More than 25 percent of all trips are under a mile in the United States. "Cycling could eliminate some of these short, air-polluting trips," Gardner said, citing estimates that 90 percent of emissions in a 7-mile trip are generated in the first mile before the engine warms up.
Strong support from citizens and local officials has been driving new bike policies around the world. In several major cities in the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany, bicycles now account for 20 to 30 percent of all trips. In many Asian cities, the bicycle's share of trips is even higher, accounting for more than half of all trips in some Chinese cities-more than buses, cars, and walking combined. In stark contrast, bicycles are used for less than 1 percent of all trips in Canada and the United States.
Driving is probably your most polluting daily activity. Each year the average automobile will emit nearly 730 pounds of regulated pollution -- carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, sulfur dioxide, and particulates -- and over 10,000 pounds of carbon dioxide when driven 12,500 miles. Light trucks (such as sport utility vehicles) driven the same distance can emit 40 percent more exhaust than that in one year. Vehicle use has the largest overall environmental impact when compared to other vehicle life-cycle stages, because these quantities are emitted every year over the lifetime of a vehicle (typically 10 to 15 years). The vehicle you choose to purchase and how you choose to drive it are the two greatest opportunities you have as a motor vehicle consumer to reduce these emissions. Find out more by visiting the Environmental Defense Fund's web site.
The best option is to reduce your driving time by taking mass transit. On campus, the Margarite now offers expanded daily service that includes routes into Palo Alto and Menlo Park. Go to Transportation Programs to get more information. Better yet, walk or ride your bike whenever possible. The weather's finally warming up so get out and enjoy it. You can usually bike to most places on campus in the same amount of time it takes to drive and you don't have to fight for a parking space!
COMPUTERS
What kind of computer monitor is most energy efficient?
Answer: Look for monitors with the Energy Star rating for the highest efficiency.
Is it okay to turn off my monitor when I'm not using it?
Answer: Monitors are built to withstand millions of on/of cycles without any problem. The same is true for hard drives. Your system will become obsolete long before the switch breaks. Energy saving devices both in software and hardware, make it possible for this to be done automatically for you without manually turning anything on or off.
GLOBAL WARMING
A new analysis released by Environmental Defense demonstrates the rapid increase in temperature and greenhouse gases that has occurred since the first Earth Day in 1970. In the space of 30 years, global temperatures will have increased nearly 1°F. That may not sound like much, but in terms of the global climate it is a substantial increase over a short period of time.
Are you doing your part to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions?
FACT: The increase in greenhouse gas pollution has intensified the natural greenhouse effect, creating global warming.
- Global warming is a pollution problem, created by the burning of oil, coal, and to a lesser extent, natural gas. As concentrations of greenhouse gases have continued to rise, global average temperatures have risen by approximately 1 degree Fahrenheit.
- The average temperatures for the first six years of the 1990s already make this the warmest decade ever recorded in the history of Earth. 1995 was the warmest year on record, and despite severe winter storms around the world, 1996 was the 6th warmest.
- Unless greenhouse gas emissions are curbed, the Earth's mean temperature is projected to rise by 2 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit in the next century -- a rate faster than any observed during the last 10,000 years.
FACT: The United States is the number one contributor to global warming.
- The United States has been the leading emitter of greenhouse gases for decades. With only 4% of the world's population we account for 22% of global emissions. We emit more carbon dioxide than any other country in the world.
Source: Environmental Systems of America, Inc.
HEATING/COOLING
Maintain a cool house or reduce air-conditioning use through natural (or passive) cooling. The most effective method to cool your home is to keep the heat from building up in the first place. The primary source of heat buildup (i.e., gain) is sunlight absorbed by your house through the roof, walls, and windows. Secondary sources are heat-generating appliances in the home and air leakage. A summary of pointers follows, for more detailed information visit the DOE's energy facts sheet Cooling Your Home Naturally.
Roofs
About a third of the unwanted heat that builds up in your home comes in through the roof. One good solution is to apply a reflective coating to your existing roof available at your local hardware store or lumberyard. Another way to reflect heat is to install a radiant barrier on the underside of your roof. A radiant barrier is simply a sheet of aluminum foil with a paper backing. When installed correctly, a radiant barrier can reduce heat gains through your ceiling by about 25%.
Walls
Wall color is not as important as roof color, but it does affect heat gain somewhat. White exterior walls absorb less heat than dark walls. And light, bright walls increase the longevity of siding, particularly on the east, west,and south sides of the house.
Windows
Roughly 40% of the unwanted heat that builds up in your home comes in through windows. Reflective window coatings are one way to reflect heat away from your home. These coatings are plastic sheets treated with dyes or thin layers of metal. Besides keeping your house cooler, these reflective coatings cut glare and reduce fading of furniture, draperies, and carpeting.
If you have a locally-controlled thermostat in your office, set it as high as possible. A recommended temperature of 78°F will provide a reasonably comfortable and energy efficient indoor temperature. If you apply this at home, the 78°F setting raises your home temperature 6 degrees, up from the standard 72°F. You should save between 12 and 47 percent in cooling costs, depending on the climate where you live.
Cut down on escaping energy. Plug any leaks in your heating or cooling system ducts. Also fix leaks in water/steam heat pipes. Savings: 2-3 percent of heating/cooling costs.
Treat your windows. Roughly 40% of the unwanted heat that builds up in your home comes in through windows. Reflective window coatings are one way to reflect heat away from your home. These coatings are plastic sheets treated with dyes or thin layers of metal. Besides keeping your house cooler, these reflective coatings cut glare and reduce fading of furniture, draperies, and carpeting.
Heating and cooling your home uses more energy and drains more energy dollars than any other system in your home. Typically, 44% of your utility bill goes for heating and cooling. What's more, heating and cooling systems in the United States together emit over a half billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, adding to global warming. They also generate about 24% of the nation's sulfur dioxide and 12% of the nitrogen oxides, the chief ingredients in acid rain.
You can save money and increase comfort by properly maintaining and upgrading your equipment. An energy-efficient furnace alone will not have as great an impact on your energy bills as using the whole-house approach. By combining proper equipment maintenance and upgrades with appropriate insulation, weatherization,
and thermostat settings, you can cut your energy bills and your pollution output in half.
Ductwork
The energy used to heat and cool a typical American house goes to waste not only through windows and around doors and up the chimney; a fifth or more of it escapes through leaks in air ducts that run through cellars, attics, and crawlspaces. Duct tape isn't the answer. Mark Modera, Lawerence Berkley Labs, has devised an aerosol-based sealing system that could save homeowners hundreds-and the nation billions-of dollars a year. Check out this article to learn more about this new sealant.
Air Leaks
You're probably not aware of it, but air leaks in ductwork and around plumbing, chimneys, vents, light switches, windows and doors can allow the entire volume of air in your home to escape as often as every half hour. Drafts will then replace the air you have paid to heat or cool. Without enough insulation, heat also transfers through the ceilings, walls and floors of your house. This kind of inefficiency can cost you a lot of money, and it doesn't do the environment any good either. In general, insulation creates warmer walls, making your home feel warmer and more comfortable, and your home uses less energy because you don't have to raise the thermostat to compensate for the cold surfaces around you.
Check out PG&E's site to find out how to seal up all those air leaks in your home.
LIGHTING
Use compact fluorescent lights. A 60-watt incandescent bulb lasts about 750 hours. A fluorescent bulb with one-third the wattage will generate the same amount of light and burn for 7,500 to 10,000 hours of normal use.
Increasing your lighting efficiency is one of the fastest ways to decrease your energy bills. If you replace 25% of your lights in high-use areas with fluorescents, you can save about 50% of your lighting energy bill.
Lighting Tips
Turn off the lights in any room you're not using, or consider installing timers, photo cells, or occupancy sensors to reduce the amount of time your lights are on.
Use task lighting; instead of brightly lighting an entire room, focus the light where you need it. For example, use fluorescent under-cabinet lighting for kitchen sinks and countertops under cabinets.
Consider three-way lamps; they make it easier to keep lighting levels low when brighter light is not necessary.
Use 4-foot fluorescent fixtures with reflective backing and electronic ballasts for your workroom, garage, and laundry areas.
Consider using 4-watt mini-fluorescent or electro-luminescent night lights. Both lights are much more efficient than their incandescent counterparts. The luminescent lights are cool to the touch.
Does it use more energy to turn a light off, if it will only be off for a short period of time, rather than leave it on?
Answer: No, although that used to be true for fluorescent bulbs years ago. These days technology is such that a light need only be off for about 1 second to realize an energy savings.
RECYCLING
Be aware of the value of recycling. Each year 200 million tons of solid waste is discarded by Americans. Today, about 33% of these wastes are used to generate energy or produce raw materials for recycling into new products. The remainder, about 135 million tons, is sent to landfills and represents a great potential for additional energy production or recycling.
It takes several thousand years for a monitor to decompose in a landfill.
Only 20% of electronic equipment can be reused, the remaining 80% must be properly recycled.
68% of companies still use a dumpsite as their main source of electronic disposal. Millions of dollars are lost each year by companies not recycling their electronic and computer assets.
For every computer that is recycled there are 4 that end up in a landfill.
Want to learn more interesting recycling factoids? Visit Environmental Systems of America, Inc.
RESOURCE CONSERVATION
Benefits to Californians from their state's investment in commercial and industrial energy efficiency improvements between 1977 and 1995 range from $875 to $1,300 per capita, from an investment by the state of $125 per capita (both 1998 dollars).
Source "The Public Benefit of California's Investments in Energy Efficiency," Rand Corporation for the California Energy Commission, April 2000.
The easiest way to save energy in an office is to continually educate employees about how they can help. Simply turning copiers off at night and on weekends can reduce energy use by about 65%. Turning personal computers off when they're not in use can reduce the amount of energy they consume by more than 75%. Energy-conscious workers can save most of this energy by simply turning off their computer monitors when they aren't using them.
For example, in New York City, a collaboration between American Express and Consolidated Edison Company of New York resulted in an informational brochure encouraging the 10,000 employees working in the American Express New York offices to turn computers off at night and on weekends. If all the employees follow through with the plan, the company would save $730,000 a year!
On an even grander scale, computer giant IBM estimates it saved $17.8 million worldwide in 1991 alone by encouraging employees to turn off equipment and lights when they're not in use. The company estimates that the effect of these energy efficiency programs is the same as if 50,000 cars were removed from the road avoiding some 210,000 tons (190,000 metric tons) of carbon dioxide emissions.
Source: U.S. Dept. of Energy
Check out this site for step-by-step instructions on how to stop all that annoying junk mail at home and at the office. Or visit the Consumer Research Insitute's site to order their Stop Junk Mail kit. If only 100,000 people stopped their junk, mail, we could save up to 150,000 trees annually. If a million people did this, we could save up to a million and a half trees.
If every commuter carried just one more passenger daily, we'd save 600,000 gallons of gasoline and keep 12 million pounds of pollution out of the atmosphere every year. Now there's an incentive to carpool! Source: Sprint
Check out this list of suppliers of `tree-free' paper. Help Stanford save the remaining old growth forests by lessening our demand for paper products.
What is acid rain?
Answer: Acid rain is more acidic than normal rain and forms through a complex process of chemical reactions involving air pollution. The two most important pollutants that contribute to the formation of acid rain are oxides of nitrogen and sulfur dioxide, which react with moisture in the atmosphere to form nitric and sulfuric acid. The sulfur and nitrogen compounds that contribute to acid rain primarily come from manmade sources, such as industries and utilities. Emissions also come from automobiles and other forms of transportation and industrial processes, such as smelting.
Acid rain can harm forests and crops, damage bodies of water, and contribute to the damage of statues and buildings. Researchers are considering the possible effects of acid rain on human heath. These acidic pollutants can be deposited through rain, snow, fog, dew, or sleet. Large quantities can also be deposited in a dry form through dust.
Pollutants that contribute to acid rain may be carried hundreds of miles before being deposited on the earth. Because of this, it is sometimes difficult to determine the specific sources of these acid rain pollutants.
WATER
"Americans are using less water" even as the US population grows, according to a recent report by the US Geological Survey.
The newly released statistics show that the US is using 402 billion gallons per day for all uses, 2% less than in 1990 and nearly 10% less than in 1980, "despite a continuous increase in population over that same time period." Freshwater per-capita use also decreased from 1,340 gallons per day in 1990 to 1,280 per day in 1995 (USGS release, 10/6).
The government "said conservation programs in many communities, improved irrigation techniques and efficient industrial use have helped cut consumption." The largest uses of water were for irrigation and electric power generation (Washington Post, 10/9). |
