OH NO!!! Thinking Christmas

Last week I saw my first TV commercial for Christmas. This week the Christmas virus must have spread, I've seen 3 new commercials from different companies. GAAAK!

OK, (take breath here) now October really is the time I've always started thinking of Christmas and Christmas presents. Though, unlike before, this year I'm imposing two constraints: 1) think basics, 2) pursue low footprint.

So how am I doing this? Had the ahha moment last spring when my handspinning guild started talking about a dishcloth ring. Never heard of it before. The premise is to make a handknitted dishcloth and exchange it.

Hmm. Handmade dishcloth. But why? A dishcloth costs under a buck, unless you're looking at designer stuff. Where would a handmade dishcloth fit in? But wait, it can make footprint sense! I knit a dishcloth and give it as a gift. Cost of gift is $1.50 in materials max (unless you have a field of cotton and have spun the yarn...sure I have many pounds of cotton fiber in my stash, but this year, not enough time to spin it into yarn for dishcloths, so I'll buy cotton yarn) and $0 in time (labor of love). Balance that against the cost of a stupid present that will be thrown out or regifted $5-$20. The recip of my gift will lay it over the kitchen sink faucet, whether they ever wash dishes by hand or not. No one will throw out a handmade dishcloth and they may actually use it. And each time they use it they remember the knitter. Warm fuzzy moment here.

OK now about packaging my gift dishcloths. I've saved up all the tissue paper from gifts-past. I've also saved past gift boxes and envelopes. Basically, having not landfilled either, saving for reuse, becomes my small statement against landfilling gift wrapping.

So basically, I'm now knitting a slew of dishcloths as Christmas gifts. Trying to start a trend back to gifts being a labor of love and practicality and not a 'just grab something from a store to satisfy a gift requirement' and buy gift wrappings that will instantly be put into the landfill.

Yes, we can reduce our footprint and return to the basics of what a Christmas gift from the heart really means.

Make it personal.

cash for clunkers--preventing CO2 emissions?

It's been all over the news. The cash-for-clunkers program blew through a billlion dollars in the first week. The House of Representatives has approved 2 billion more dollars before they headed out on summer vacation. The Senate has yet to vote.

Where is the money coming from? The bill states: "shall be derived by transfer from the amount made available for 'Department of Energy - Energy Programs - Title 17 - Innovative Technology Loan Guarantee Program' in title IV of division A of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)." In English this is the money that is suppose to go to the car companies to develop innovative new fuel efficient vehicles. So the decision point is --how much innovation can be made in auto technology with $2B? And what will be the environmental impact if the car companies aren't given this money to comply with the new MPG standards? Will this mean taxpayers will have to come up with the money later on? Good question.

Let's look at the footprint of this program...now realize that I have not put pencil to paper for a detailed analysis but here is some basic information: the biggest generator of CO2 is driving, accounting for 72 percent of emissions through the life of a car (calculated by Toyota) and the average lifetime of a car is 9 years or 90,000 miles. So how much CO2 is this cash for clunkers program preventing from entering the environment? Assuming one drives 10,000 miles/year and the car gets 18 MPG that is 556 gallons of gasoline used. If the new car gets 25 MPG, as required by the cash for clunkers program, the amount of gas used in a year is 400 gallons. EPA states that the CO2 content is 19.4 pounds CO2/gallon so the cash for clunkers program will save 3000 pounds of CO2 per car in the first year. This means the taxpayer is paying $0.50/pound CO2 not emitted by buying a new car now (assumption is that a clunker would have only lasted 3 more years). If the market rate of CO2 is $35/ton, thus, doing the math, the taxpayer is paying $1000/ton to reduce CO2.

Hmm. This doesn't sound like a cost effective carbon reduction strategy. However, the key comparison here is whether giving the car companies $3B, in LOANS, would result in a better return on taxpayer investment in producing innovative new highly efficient vehicles and the taxpayer would get their money back.

Granted, people seem to feel good about this program and at least it is putting control back in the hands of the citizens. What do you think?

Waste-to-energy element in the Cap-and-trade bill

As I discussed in my prior post, I have downloaded and am reading the House of Representatives 'energy' bill. If any of you wish to read it you can find it at: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:h2454eh.txt.pdf

One of the early things mentioned in this bill that peaked my interest is the short discussion of waste-to-energy conversion. The bill encourages waste-to-energy conversion operations for municipal solid waste (MSW), construction debris (of course this assumes we ever get back into constructing houses!) and disaster debris. The problem with disaster debris being using in waste-to-energy conversion processes is the government agency who is in charge. If an agencies SOP is to landfill, well then by golly they will landfill even though bills such as this one are trying to encourage use of renewable energy. We shall see after the next hurricane.

The restriction this bill places on waste-to-energy is that the locality that has such a facility must also have an active recycle program for 'residents' in place. The way I read this is that this assumes that waste-to-energy is under control of a local government and not a privately owned operation.