No Impact Man

When to turf out an old appliance for the energy efficient model--The New York Times is wrong

Fair warning: there's going to be a lot of math in this post, so if you just want to get the gist, skip to the bold bits in the middle and at the bottom.

We'd all like to think that if you walk into a store and see a washing machine that uses 20% less electricity than the one you have at home--yippee!--you get to buy yourself some new home gadgets and at the same time do the environment a favor.

The problem is that the appliance you're thinking about requires a lot of energy to manufacture--"embodied energy." Plus, you have to factor in the habitat damage caused by mining the metals, the water pollution caused by smelting them, the energy of transportation of the appliance and on and on.

Of course, if you've already decided to buy a new appliance, it's best to buy the most energy-efficient model. The question is--and it's a complicated one--is there ever a time when it's actually better to buy a new appliance than to keep an old one that works perfectly well?

That's the question the New York Times tried to answer on Sunday with its story "If Your Appliances Are Avocado, They Probably Aren't Green," by Alina Tugend. According to the story:

“It takes energy to make a product,” said Noah Horowitz, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “You don’t want to replace perfectly good products.”

He gave me his rule of thumb for refrigerators.

“If it’s avocado or brown-colored, it’s time to retire it,” he said. Refrigerators from the 1970s, the last time I believe those particular appliance colors were in vogue, use three to four times the power of today’s models.

A spokeswoman from the Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees the Energy Star program along with the Department of Energy, told me that, generally, any appliance over 15 years old probably should be put out to pasture.

Tugend then goes on to write:

"It turns out that clothes washers and dishwashers have pretty much the same criteria as refrigerators — they have become much more energy-efficient. So if yours is inching toward 15 years, consider replacing it."

And while she's right about the 15-year-old fridge--replace it--it turns out she's wrong about about the 15-year-old dishwasher and laundry machine--use them till their dying breath.

Because, as you'll see below, only in the case of the refrigerator do the energy savings outweigh the embodied energy and other environmental impacts of manufacture (not to mention the impact of disposing of the old appliance).

To figure this out, I noodled around the internet but was unable to find studies giving the embodied energies of even a single appliance (if you know of a source for embodied energies of appliances, please email me or leave behind in comments).

What I did find, though, is a Australian government study on solid waste management that gives the weights of different materials in a variety of average appliances (154 pounds of steel, for example, for a refrigerator, 55 pounds of steel for a dishwasher, and 33 pounds of steel for a laundry machine). I also found this Tufts University web page which gives a range of values for embodied energy of the production of steel, the major material in most appliances (I'm taking a figure of 40MJ/kg or about 25 kilowatt-hours per pound of steel).

In other words, according to these figures, the embodied energy of the steel alone in an average refrigerator is:

154 lbs x 25 kWh/lb = 3,850 kWh.

The embodied energy of the steel in a dishwasher is:

55 lbs x 25 kWh/lb = 1,365 kWh.

And the embodied energy of the steel in a laundry machine is:

33 lbs x 25 kWh/lb = 825 kWh.

If my figures and math are anything near correct, to make it worth replacing your old appliances with new ones, those are the amounts of energy you would have to save, just to recoup the energy used to produce the steel. This, of course, doesn't include the energy of the other materials in the appliances or of the energy of the manufacture or distribution of the appliance itself. The actual embodied energy of each appliance is likely much higher than the figures above.

Now, considering refrigerators, today's models use about half the energy of a 15-year-old model, according to the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (the ACEEE). Since, according to the Consumer's Guide to Effect Environmental Choices (a book), today's average refrigerator uses 1,100 kWh per year (suggesting that a 15-year-old model uses 2,200 and that the annual energy savings would be 1,100 kWh per year).

In other words, recouping the embodied energy of the steel alone in a new refrigerator when replacing a 15-year-old refrigerator would take:

3,850 kWh / 1,100 kWh per year = 3.5 years (this means, to be explicit, that the energy savings of your new fridge would have to pile up for 3.5 years before it equals the energy costs of the steel in the fridge you bought).

On the other hand, according to the ACEEE, a modern dishwasher only uses 30% less energy than a 15-year-old one. Since a dishwasher according to the Consumer's Guide, only uses 299 kWh a year, that means a new dishwasher would save only only 90 kWh a year.

In other words, to recoup the embodied energy of the steel alone in a new dishwasher by replacing a 15-year-old dishwasher would take:

1,365 kWh / 90 kWh per year = 15.2 years.

Considering, finally, the laundry machine, the ACEEE doesn't seem to offer a energy efficiency comparison to older models, but I'll assume a 30% improvement over 15 years, the same as for dishwashers. The average laundry machine, according to the Consumer's Guide, uses only 99 kWh a year, which means a new laundry machine would save only about 30 kWh a year.

In other words, to recoup the embodied energy of the steel alone in a new laundry machine by replacing a 15-year-old laundry machine would take:

825 kWh / 30 kWh per year = 27.5 years.

What does all this mean? Well, first of all, let's be clear that the sources of my figures aren't the best and that I'm not a manufacturing analyst and that this analysis should be regarded more as a thought experiment than anything else. On the other hand, since all we're considering is the embodied energy of the steel content of the appliances, it would likely actually take more than the estimates I've made to recoup the energy of the new machines.

Regardless, what I conclude is that, if environmental impact is your chief concern, than your best bet is to keep using all but your most energy intensive appliances until they wear out.

In other words, when it comes to residential dishwashers, laundry machines, vacuum cleaners, and microwaves (the analysis would be different in business or industry where machines are used more consistently) , keep them till they keel over.

For more energy intensive appliances, like refrigerators, stand alone freezers, clothes dryers, hot water heaters  and air conditioners, assuming you make regular use of them and that they're not turned off six months a year such as in a summer home, it may be worthwhile to follow the EPA spokesperson's advice and consider replacing those that are over 15 years old.

Energy scientists, especially, please weigh in on this post. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Meanwhile, tomorrow's post will be not about the science of appliances, but about the approach we're taking in the formerly No Impact household.

Photo courtesy of the New York Times.

LV GRN: Keeping our drinking water fresh

Yesterday, I wrote about "peak water," and how we could eventually pay out our noses for drinking water if we continue to allow water sources to be privatized while letting our municipal water systems degrade.

To help preserver our water systems, one of the things we did during the No Impact project, and continue to do, is try to avoid allowing toxins and sewage from entering our waterways.

Sewage, you say? Yes, sewage. Because here in New York we have a system of nearly 700 "combined sewer overflows" (CSOs) that occasionally dump raw sewage into New York Harbor and the surrounding waterways. The good news is that there are only 70 such emissions a year. The bad news is that that amounts to 27 billion gallons of untreated wastewater in New York City waterways annually.

What happens is that both the household sewage from our homes and the storm water drainage from the streets and rooftops of the buildings come together in underground drainage pipes that take it all to wastewater treatment plants (click on the above diagram for a larger version). During a hard rain, however, those underground sewage pipes get overwhelmed and, to keep the sewage from backing up into our sinks and toilets, it gets dumped, untreated, through the CSOs into the rivers and waterways.

Want to go swimming?

Not in New York, right? Well, it turns out there are a lot of other places you may not be rushing to don your bathing suits either. According to the EPA:

"Combined sewer systems serve roughly 772 communities containing about 40 million people. Most communities with combined sewer systems (and therefore with CSOs) are located in the Northeast and Great Lakes regions, and the Pacific Northwest (see map)."

And the discharge isn’t just poo. It can contain industrial waste and just about anything people pour down their toilets or into the sewers: car oil, bleach, ammonia, antifreeze, bug repellent, rat poison and every other toxin you can imagine (picture of a CSO in Pennsylvania courtesy of the Larson Design Group).

Here are some measures each of us of can take to stop the pollution that flows from CSOs:

• Reduce water use so less wastewater enters the sewer system and it is less likely to overflow.
• Manage storm water so that less of it enters the sewer systems.
• Develop “end of pipe” innovations that prevent the overflows.
• Don’t put anything but water, pee and poo and TP down the drain (recipes for low impact soaps and household cleansers here).

Finally, here is my New York City water activist friend Kate Zidar's really cool video project (made in partnership with the Center for Urban Pedagogy), The Water Underground, a 25-minute student-led exploration of where water comes from, where it goes and what happens along the way.

LV GRN: Making summer vacation choices

In the two summers before the No Impact experiment, we went to France and Italy for three weeks each. We rented cars and had the time of our lives. This year, though the No Impact year is over, we're continuing to make what, for me, is the difficult decision of keeping it closer to home.

Limiting air travel was the hardest choice of the No Impact experiment for me, but probably the most important, at least when it comes to carbon emissions. One round-trip, long-haul flight causes as much contribution to climate change as—get this—an entire year of driving.

Now, I'm not saying I'll never fly again but I am trying to continue to be much more conscious about flying. For our vacation this year, Michelle and I decided that we would rent a summer house for the month of August as an alternative to travel.

In choosing a spot, our qualifications were:

• That we we wouldn't have to fly
• That we would be able to swim
• That we could get to and from the summer house and New York by train
• That we would be within biking distance of groceries, restaurants and swimming to ensure that we wouldn't require a car.

That meant, essentially, we needed a village, on a train line, by some swimable water. Well, the good news is that we found it. A wonderful little house in the seaside town of Greenport on the North Fork of Long Island. It's a two minute bike ride to the beach or the village. And in the village there is a carousel, a movie theater, a farmer's market and restaurants.

In fact, though it has a lot less impact than previous vacations, it really isn't a compromise at all.

Here are some vacation tips you may find helpful:

• Vacation closer to home.
• Take direct flights that don’t zigzag to your destination.
• Combine three weekend trips into one week-long trip to reduce travel and flights
• Take the train or bus instead
• One less round trip means 6000 lbs less greenhouse gas
• If you must fly, buy a carbon offset from Native Energy

Image courtesy of Offbeat Travel.

LV GRN: 42 ways to not make trash

In the last, for a while, of the LV GRN posts about how to bring No Impact measures to your own life, I've decided to list 42 ways we adopted to avoid making trash. If you've been reading for a while, you'll have seen these before. But I thought the newer readers might like to take a look. The list is in no particular order:

1. No soda in cans (which means we’re probably less likely to get cancer from aspartame).
2. No water in plastic bottles (which means we get to keep our endocrines undisrupted).
3. No coffee in disposable cups (which means we don’t suffer from the morning sluggishness that comes from overnight caffeine withdrawal).
4. No throwaway plastic razors and blade cartridges (I’m staging the straightedge razor comeback).
5. Using non-disposable feminine-hygiene products that aren’t bad for women and are good for the planet.
6. No Indian food in throwaway takeout tubs.
7. No Italian food in plastic throwaway tubs.
8. No Chinese food in plastic throwaway tubs.
9. Taking our own reusable containers to takeout joints (except that now we’re eating local so this tip is out for us).
10. Admitting that we sometimes miss Indian, Italian and Chinese takeout.
11. Hopping on the scale and celebrating the loss of my 20-pound spare tire since I stopped eating bucketsful of Indian, Italian and Chinese takeout.
12. Buying milk in returnable, reusable glass bottles.
13. Shopping for honey and pickled veggies and other goods in jars only from merchants who will take back the jars and reuse them.
14. Returning egg and berry cartons to the vendors at the farmers’ market for reuse.
15. Using neither paper nor plastic bags and bringing our own reusable bags when grocery shopping.
16. Canceling our magazine and newspaper subscriptions and reading online.
17. Putting an end to the junk mail tree killing.
18. Carrying my ultra-cool reusable cup and water bottle (which is a glass jar I diverted from the landfill and got for free).
19. Carrying reusable cloths for everything from blowing my nose to drying my hands to wrapping up a purchased bagel.
20. Wiping my hands on my pants instead of using a paper towel when I forget my cloth.
21. Politely asking restaurant servers to take away paper and plastic napkins, placemats, straws, cups and single-serving containers.
22. Explaining to servers with a big smile that I am on a make-no-garbage kick.
23. Leaving servers a big tip for dealing with my obsessive-compulsive, make-no-garbage nonsense, since they can’t take the big smile to the bank.
24. Pretending McDonalds and Burger King and all their paper and plastic wrappers just don’t exist.
25. Buying no candy bars, gum, lollypops or ice cream (not even Ben and Jerry’s peanut butter cup) that is individually packaged.
26. Making my own household cleaners to avoid all the throwaway plastic bottles.
27. Using baking soda from a recyclable container to brush my teeth.
28. Using baking soda for a deodorant to avoid the plastic containers that deodorant typically comes in (cheap and works well).
29. Using baking soda for shampoo to avoid plastic shampoo bottles.
30. Using the plastic bags that other people’s newspapers are delivered in to pick up Frankie the dog’s poop.
31. Keeping a worm bin to compost our food scraps into nourishment that can be returned to the earth instead of toxins that seep from the landfills.
32. Switching to real—meaning cloth—diapers which Isabella, before she was potty-trained, liked much better.
33. Not buying anything disposable.
34. Not buying anything in packaging (and count the money we save because that means pretty much buy nothing unless it’s second hand).
35. Shopping for food only from the bulk bins and from the local farmer’s market where food is unpackaged and fresh.
36. Forgetting about prepackaged, processed food of any description.
37. Being happy that the result is that we get to eat food instead of chemicals.
38. Giving our second-hand clothes away to Housing Works or other charities.
39. Offering products we no longer need on Freecycle instead of throwing them away.
40. Collecting used paper from other people's trash and using the other side.
41. Using old clothes for rags around the apartment instead of paper towels.
42. Talking with humor about what we’re doing because making a little less trash is a concrete first step everyone can take that leads to more and more environmental consciousness.

LV GRN: Why recycling is nowhere near enough

People used to to ask me, essentially, why I was making such a big dig about not making trash during the No Impact project. They'd say, "I mean, it's recyclable, right?"

As Annie Leonard says in Story of Stuff, "Recycling reduces the garbage at [the landfill and incinerator] end and it reduces the pressure to mine and harvest new stuff at [the production] end. Yes, yes, yes, we should all recycle. But recycling isn't enough."

Annie goes on to point out that for every garbage can of waste we put on the curb, industry created 70 garbage cans of waste to manufacture it. Even if we recycled every garbage can's worth coming out of our house, it wouldn't make a scratch in the 70 cans created upstream.

Besides, as writer Dan Rademacher points out in his article "Manufacturing a Myth: The Plastic Recycling Ploy," plastic bottles, for example, are not recycled to make more plastic bottles. They are "downcycled" into, say, fleece jackets or a park benches or toothbrush handles, all of which eventually ends up in the trash.

That means that new plastic is required to make every bottle and every bit of plastic used to make that bottle--even if you end up wearing it or brushing your teeth with it for a while--ends up in a landfill or an incinerator. That's not true recycling.

Even the rates of what passes for recycling are often abysmally low. PET water bottles only get recycled at the rate of 14%. The rest ends up in the landfills and incinerators, according to the Container Recycling Institute.

Meanwhile, producers who advertise their products as "recyclable," even if their products do not end up actually getting recycled, may get a boost in demand. The paradox? That this can cause an increase in the use of resources consumers expect recyclability to prevent (and if that's not green-washing, I don't know what is).

In my view, true recycling between producer and consumer occurs, for example, when a glass milk bottle is returned to the dairy, washed and refilled. Even then, using it is not free of environmental impact. There remain the environmental costs and carbon emissions associated with washing it, refilling it, and transporting it.

This is why, during the No Impact project, the object was to produce no trash at all, not even so-called recyclable trash (not newspapers, milk cartons, magazines, junk mail, not packaging of any sort, not really much of anything that would end up getting tossed).

LV GRN Tip #2: As the saying goes, "Reduce, reuse, recycle." Recycling is at the very end of the list. That doesn't mean it isn't worth recycling. It does mean that recycling is not without environmental cost, though it has less cost than just throwing stuff away.

Top of the pyramid is reduce. That means, even in our post-No-Impact life, we still work hard at not consuming what we don't need to. Then comes reuse, which means once we have it, use it as often as you can before we get another. And finally comes recycle, which we've talked about enough.

PS For those of you who don't dig the LV GRN posts, never fear! "Big issue" tomorrow.

LV GRN: What am I?

There are readers who like it when I post about the environmental "big picture," those who like it when I post "individual action tips" and others who like it when I post my "personal experience." I got to thinking that I might write some posts about where those areas all intersect (as Sharon Astyk often comments, there is no distinction between the personal and the political).

For example, during the No Impact project, I found and continue to find some aspects of individual action really difficult. Go to a restaurant and not only can you largely forget about local food (the approach to sustainable eating I chose) but you can also forget about not making trash--you're faced with a current of throwaway paper napkins, plastic cups, glass bottles, paper place mats, etc.

Dedicate yourself to reducing trash in your own life and that's a great step forward (individual action). But use your own experiences to see where reducing trash is difficult--like in restaurants--and you've discovered some great areas to work for system change (collective action). The same applies in the areas of sustainable purchasing, low carbon transportation, etc (it's also important to make sure that concentrating on lifestyle change doesn't blind us to environmentally catastrophic industrial practices).

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to write a series of posts (each distinguished, like this one, by the LV GRN label) discussing my experiences and thoughts with both the individual and big picture issues and how they intersect in the areas that relate to each stage of the No Impact project: not making trash, no carbon transportation, local eating, sustainable consumption, reduced household reliance on fossil fuels and positive impact.

I thought I'd start with trash (and I'm going to come to that soon).

But then I realized that in many ways, the project doesn't start with trash at all. Actually, in a strange way, the project starts with questioning the nature of my existence, of our existence. Because in many ways, the way that I've lived my life has assumed that what I am, that my function, is about getting more and better stuff and life conditions in order that I should be happier.

In a lot of ways, the very structure of our culture, our politics, our government and our economic system assumes that that is the purpose and the meaning of an individual's life and that the purpose of our institutions is to facilitate it. Indeed, getting more and better stuff and life conditions, when it comes to the underprivileged, probably should be the purpose of those institutions.

But what about when it comes to someone like me, a solidly middle-class person who pretty much wants for nothing? Should our culture be trashing the planet to make sure that someone like me gets more and better stuff--which really means a cooler cell phone? Indeed, should getting a cooler cell phone or a bigger house be the purpose of my own life?

These are big questions, the point of which is to ask, if I and people like me are trashing the planet, what are we trashing the planet for? Am I trashing the planet for purposes I don't even really hold dear to my existence (I'm not planning, for example, to have my cell phone put in my coffin)?

For me, to answer these questions, or at least to loosen my grip on the illusory answers to which I've too often clung, it helps me to ask even harder questions. Where was I before my mother and father were born? Where will I be after my grandchildren die? Towards what should I spend this life working?

And in the larger realm, towards what should my culture be working? Because if my life is not about more, should my culture really be about higher GDP? Are there more worthy goals?

The point of asking such questions on a personal level--or I should say one of the points--is not to come up with an answer so much as to shake my confidence in the false answers--like that my life is for getting more. Maybe since, as they say, you can't take it with you, my life is about giving more--which naturally leads to a sustainable lifestyle.

I don't mean to sound pious. Anyone who has to discuss and remind himself of such things as often as I do clearly has no place being pious. Nor do I mean to go all esoteric.

But such thoughts and questions are what nagged me into wanting to lead a more sustainable life. They are the root of my launching myself into the No Impact project. They've won a place in this series of LV GRN posts that will, next, move on to a discussion about trash.

But for now, I'll leave you with an ancient poem that I've posted before and which says much more concisely what I've attempted to say here. It's called "The Human Route":

Coming empty-handed, going empty-handed -- that is human.
When you are born, where do you come from?
When you die, where do you go?
Life is like a floating cloud which appears.
Death is like a floating cloud which disappears.
The floating cloud itself originally does not exist.
Life and death, coming and going, are also like that.
But there is one thing which always remains clear.
It is pure and clear, not depending on life and death.

Then what is the one pure and clear thing?