Doing right by the environment is not as simple as it seems. For example, is it better to use paper or plastic cups? (answer below)
To know, you have to consider the whole lifecycle impacts, as this prior report gets closer to doing -- how much energy to produce, how much energy to recycle, how many contaminants as byproducts, how many contaminants to dispose.
Many of these are very difficult apples to oranges trade-offs. Our environmental professionals have to do better in synthesizing these for consumers -- who can't possibly weigh these on their own.
Consider this cautionary story on Mercury in those energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs.
Beyond household accidents, how many people will mistakenly throw away these bulbs, contaminating our landfills and surrounding groundwater with Mercury?
Please, if you're involved with reviewing products for environmental impact -- help us consumers by providing the difficult analysis that spans the product's lifecycle. I have doubts whether I really should be buying CF bulbs.
(answer to question above: all things considered, it's actually glass cups that seem to have the best compromise of initial and ongoing energy consumption, and potential to recycle rather than dispose)
Monday, April 30, 2007
Considering the whole environmental impact
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4 comments:
I've seen this story on many blogs - usually gleeful conservatives post it. It's about half true - the lady talked to the wrong people - most folks just said "give me a break - that's not enough mercury to do any damage; if you use the vaccuum cleaner to pick up the glass bits anyways, you're fine".
Even with the supposed contamination, I saw several folks make the point that the coal most of us have to burn for electricity contains enough mercury that the extra burned to run the incandescent more than makes up for whatever might end up in landfills - so for now it's an unmitigated win. By the time we use enough renewable sources to not worry about the mercury in the coal, hopefully we'll be recycling these materials anyways.
Great comment. I didn't know about mercury emissions from coal plants. Still apples-to-oranges, but here's an article on that: http://www.tva.gov/environment/air/ontheair/merc_emis.htm
Plus, of course, you in particular get your electricity from a much better mix of sources than I do (we have a lot of green power for Texas, but you have to sign up for it when spots become available and pay more, which we've never been able to do).
In fact, in my neck of the woods, natural gas plants don't pollute enough to make the good old boys happy, so they burn some tires to make up for it.
After reading more over the last few months, this definitely seems like an easy choice -- the article I linked to overplayed the risks by far, and didn't lay out the other side of the mercury equation (as you did).
CF bulbs seem good to go for any kind of long-term view of personal cost or the larger environment impact.
So meanwhile, we've converted to CF for most lights in the house -- and looking at timer-based switches for the rest, so no power hog lights stay on.
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