{In light of Russell’s recent Tuesday Question post, I thought I would reproduce a Hit Coffee post on environmental correctness}
Tim Noah suggests that Romney’s attack on the light bulb regulation that will retire the incandescents is misguided, and that he should instead focus on toilets:
A much more vulnerable target for anti-regulatory ire is the low-flow toilet, bequeathed by a law–passed in 1992 under President George H.W. “Poppy” Bush, so you can’t blame this on Democrats either–that mandates a very stingy 1.6 gallons per flush, as compared to the traditional three to five gallons. For at least the first generation of post-regulatory toilets, one of which I have the misfortune to own, 1.6 gallons is not sufficient. (Thank God I don’t live in California, where you get only 1.28 gallons.) This problem doesn’t get discussed much, even by conservatives, because the details are disgusting.
As someone who deals with toilet overflows on a regular basis, I am rather sympathetic to this. I have before recommended that we embrace two-flush mode toilets. As long as most trips to the restroom are urinary in nature, it does make sense to limit the amount of water being used (they do save water, extra flushes notwithstanding). However, a lack of water can fail to force large deposits through. And I tend to leave large deposits.
Really, though, bigger than toilets and lights (the new ones don’t bother me at all, though Clancy doesn’t like them) are low-flow showers. I have recommended in the past that we go with two-mode showers as well. You basically have a limit to the flow except when you’re pushing a particular button, which would send a rush that would slow back down (not unlike public sinks use to prevent people from leaving the water on. That way, less water when you don’t need it, but more water when you’re washing your hair. I don’t know how easy or difficult this is to do technically, however.
Bigger pains to me than that, though, is the phosphate ban. This does have some negative environmental repercussions, because it means more time is spent hand-cleaning everything before putting it in the dishwasher (and hand-cleaning uses a lot more water than dishwashes do).
The biggest pain on the horizon are the potential for plastic bag bans. For the most part, movement is towards a tax. I can actually live with a tax. I’ll pay five cents or ten cents for each bag. I’ll pay even more if they would make the bags just a little bit sturdier and larger. But bringing my own bags to shop with is rather problematic. Maybe I can get in the habit of it and I’ll wonder why I ever hated it, but until I started putting it on my phone, I was lucky if I made it out the door with my shopping list.
I would love to say that nothing in this post made me giggle. But that would be a lie.
And Cascade has phosphate-free products that still work really, really well without a lot of pre-washing.
Russ-
Any specific Cascade products that work well?
Our shower has a knob that we can turn that adjusts the pressure without affecting temperature. I actually only realized it after getting very frustrated with the low pressure but thankfully before ripping out the whole wall.
As a teacher of young children with a low flow toilet in the classroom, I can tell you that the logistics of their body and the toilet do not mesh. At all. I’ll spare folks the detail but it is the WORST!
With the lightbulbs, we’ve resisted “upgrading” because everything we’ve read says that the bulbs are only more efficient if they tend to be left on (at least 15 minutes at a time). Frequent on/offs actually diminish their life and eliminate any savings potential. We only keep lights on when we’re in the room for extended periods. Otherwise, the lights are off. So we might flick on a light as we move through the house and promptly flick it off, sometimes several times a day. Which basically means that these newfangled lights are no “upgrade” at all for us. Would we be better served to get them and just leave them on for longer periods? Or stick with what we’ve got? Is what I’ve read wrong?
They have little single-use packs that are great. I was shelling out the cash for the Seventh Generation version because of the phosphate issue, and then I saw the “phosphate-free” advert on the Cascade product and wondered how long I had been buying the more expensive “green” product when the very effective “evil” corporate version had the same benefit.
BUY LED LIGHTS.
http://www.amazon.com/ThetaLux-Light-White-5000K-Lumens/dp/B005T67AKI/ref=pd_cp_hi_0
go for the cool white.
I’ve been relatively disappointed in the lifespan of CFL bulbs. They do last longer, but die sooner in very specific circumstances: namely, when turned off and on a lot and in damp quarters. So what’s to do about places where lights are going to go off and on a lot? What about the bathroom? What about light fixtures, where CFLs are not supposed to go? It really feels like they haven’t thought this out. A tax on regular bulbs would have been a better way to go, I think, until the LEDs come around and solve all our problems.
I’ll give Cascade a try. I’ve heard Lemi-Shine works well, too. I’m motivated enough on this issue to blog about it, but not to try to address the situation :).
LOOK at the link just above you. They do sell sealed ones for outdoor/bathroom use as well. LED lights don’t have ballasts to break.
I paid $10 per CFL bulb. They lasted 10 years. Now they’re $1 apiece, and people are surprised that they don’t work for long?
Pay the extra money, the LEDs are good for it.
I’ve had some CFLs last a long time, but others died surprisingly quickly. That’s another difference between CFL and traditional: The latter seem to work for a more reliable – albeit usually more limited – timeframe.
If they were still using quality ballasts, I’d consider buying CFLs again. They aren’t, so I’m getting LEDs, which have NOTHING to break/shake apart — and will be more reliable (aka they haven’t used them long enough to figure out when they’ll break under normal use)
LED technology is still far behind other forms. The light is too directional and too dim. And the bulbs are super expensive. Seriously, Kimmi, where are you getting LED bulbs that are cost-effective and work just as well as other types?
… Kaz, you got the “I paid $10 per CFL” upthread? I paid about $12 for the 6W, and I got $20 for the 9W, which will save me a good deal of money on electricity too.
EarthLed is my supplier, linked upthread.
I agree on the directionality — that’s just what they do. If you wanted fuzzy shadows, this isn’t what you want.
I have 6 9W lightbulbs in a HUGE living room (600 sqfoot?). Not dim to me. Feels just like sunlight on a cloudy day.
There used to be a line of showerheads with a little button on the side that would impede or open the flow of water.
I don’t remember who made them.
I grin that the banner ad is now trying to sell me light fixtures. It doesn’t specify if they are green or not.
Damned straight. I hate those lo-flo toilets. This country has lost its goddamn mind, acceding to all these unscientific knuckleheads. Do-gooders are the curse of the world.
Want to save the environment? Reform our sewage disposal process. All those phosphates and organics could create so much useful methane we’d have trouble selling it all. Most wet garbage, ditto. Feeding the seagulls at your friendly local landfill is just the most absurdly wasteful mechanism imaginable. Huge nitrate blooms in the Gulf of Mexico, it’s just maddening to think it could have all been put to productive use. Might have to make a few changes to our cleansers to keep them from screwing up the eventual fermentation. All these insane flood control mechanisms, we know how to deal with this issue: create large riparian overflow areas, big shallow canals where topsoil could fall out of suspension . Letting it settle to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is literally allowing our country to flow out to sea. We’re losing hundreds of hectares of land every year in Louisiana because we don’t allow our deltas to do their job.
These CFL bulbs are crazy. Others have pointed out the problems associated with turning them off and on: shortens their lifespan. LED technology is the way forward on that front.
I really don’t see why we don’t have a brown water system for other than consumption.
Why would anyone want to put drinking water in their toilet?
Because sometimes we get drunk and drop our tooth brushes in them. Some people are struggling in this country, Will.
While you’re correct in theory, installing two sets of cold water piping might be more solution than the problem warrants. We’re busily creating mountains of merde and whole mountain ranges of garbage, to no useful end. Meanwhile, the Do-Gooders fret and whine about our energy problems as our gut bacteria go on creating millions of tons of methane in our primitive sewage processing plants, a worse greenhouse gas than comes out of our cars’ tailpipes.
Not to get all partisan and crap, but I think what annoys me most about the do-gooders is not that they seek to inconvenience me for the sake of the environment. I get that there are reasons to do that. Rather, it’s that they seem to often deny that there are any inconveniences at all. Like on the phosphates, I was told by more than one green-type that my less clean dishes were psychosomatic, they only looked less clean because I was expecting them to (actually, I noticed they weren’t getting clean well before I knew about the phosphate thing). People who didn’t like those sterile white CFL bulbs were just being dumb. And it was a long, long time before the shelf-life of CFL’s being shorter than advertised were wrong. And so on, and so on. It’s one thing to say that the tradeoffs favor the environment over our conveniences and preferences, but another to deny that there are tradeoffs. Which I keep running into among my (well-intentioned!) green friends.
1) Do you use rinseaid?
2) It’s not MY fault your decor looks like shit under sunlight. No, really, it’s not. Yeah, you can pay more to get “incandescent like” LEDs. And I’ll laugh at you, for being dumb. I mean, really, who hates the sun? Dumb people. I rest my case. [People who disagree? Laugh at me, I dare ya.]
Some people don’t want a light that mimics the sun during the evening. Ever think of that?
Hi! I come from SAD headquarters. (Seasonal affective disorder). Those people are the only people who STAY.
I thought SAD HQ was in the Puget Sound area.
We have our own artillery at the Truman House. Both Sunrise Lights and Happy Lights.
Will,
we get fewer sunny days in February than Seattle does. (2-3 in case you’re curious). It’s really bad.
1) No. I use regular detergent. In the phosphate days, that was enough.
2) The CFLs have gotten better, but they were rather… distinct… at the outset (and did not look like sunlight). Never bothered me any, but I eat Spam.
you don’t read the manual, you don’t follow the directions, and you wonder why everything’s fucked up?? 😉
(we bought special bulbs to have sunlight CFLs. the leds do it far easier).
Thanks to the Irish, I’ve discovered that public urination can save on my monthly water bill.
Do you have a porch?
Reserve #2 for the balcony?
Our local municipalities have taken to banning plastic bags. It’s fun, it’s easy, it lets them portray themselves as Concerned About The Environment, and everyone who actually lives in the town is like “um, wait, did we actually vote for this?”
Note that the local dump owners are pretty happy too, because those damn bags keep gumming up their trash shredders.
That said, I’m having a lot of fun using my wife’s sewing machine to make fabric tote bags. (She got me some fabric with cartoon pictures of meat that we use for the “meat bags”, so that we can keep the meat separate from other food and avoid e. coli cross-contamination.)
Argh! now have image of Howard the Duck at a sewing machine smiling maniacally sewing a bacon bag together.
When I think of Density, I don’t think of Howard the Duck. I think of that picture of the Duck with the hammer about to hit the computer.
I’m actually not the first (or the only) person to use the moniker. (I do think I’m the most extensive.) I originally saw it on a message board, with a picture of a duck jumping up and down and causing an elephant to bounce, and I’m a sucker for alliteration so the name stuck with me.
Clean toilets, clean hair, and clean dishes are for pussies. Nothing personal.