Living Like Ed by Ed Jr. (whitelam books .txt) 📗

The idea is to recycle things in a way that they’ll actually get used at the highest level possible, so you can save the most natural resources and the most energy.

Americans buy more than 85 million tons of paper per year. That’s about 700 pounds per person.

Save your old laser printer cartridges. They can be recycled, refilled, or rebuilt—stores like Staples will even give you a few dollars’ credit for bringing in your empties.

The caps for most plastic containers are not made from the same type of plastic as the containers themselves, so you should remove the caps before recycling the containers. Never dump hazardous waste—or any trash—into your city’s storm drains. What goes into most of these drains flows untreated into rivers, lakes, or oceans.

Check to see if your city has a special program after the holidays to recycle Christmas trees into mulch, which is then given or sold to people for use in their gardens.

4

ENERGY

SUN, WIND, COAL, WATER—WHERE DOES YOUR ELECTRICITY COME FROM?

Most people get the electricity for their home—or their business—from their local utility company. They pay the going rate, and they use what they need. They may take steps to reduce their energy use, like implementing some of the techniques I covered in Chapter 1, “Home.” But people typically don’t even know they have a choice when it comes to how their electricity is produced and by whom.

Well, I’m here to tell you: You do have a choice. Actually, you have a lot of choices. You can produce your own electricity, as I do using solar panels and a wind turbine mounted on the roof of my home. You can even sell some of the excess electricity you produce back to your local utility company.

But what if you don’t own your home? What if you’re on a tight budget? Or what if you live in a restrictive community that has rules against things like solar panels on your roof? Well, there are other options. For instance, you can still buy electricity from your local utility company, but you can choose to participate in a green power program. And if your local electric company doesn’t have such a program, you may be able to switch to another provider that does.

And even beyond all that—whether you do all of the above or none of the above—you can take steps to offset any carbon dioxide emissions produced by the electricity you do use.

And that brings us to the heart of the matter. Every source of electricity has consequences; it affects the environment. It’s just that some sources of electricity are more environmentally friendly—actually a lot more environmentally friendly—than others.

How Electricity Is Produced

Let’s start by looking at all the different ways electricity is produced. The most common is by burning things to create heat, which in turn creates steam. That steam is then used to turn a big turbine, and that generates electricity.

A lot of different materials are burned to create electricity, including

• coal (still the primary way utility companies create power in the United States)

• crude oil

• natural gas

• garbage

• biomass (which is typically waste from the manufacturing of paper and pulp products)

• methane—the gas that’s emitted from landfills

There are also ways to produce electricity using steam that don’t involve burning things. For instance, you can create nuclear reactions, or you can use the heat from the earth to create geothermal power.

How much electricity does your home use? I use 1,200 kilowatt-hours a month.

There are also steam-free ways to generate electricity, among them:

• Hydroelectric power. In this case, the force of falling or flowing water turns a turbine.

• Wind power. You can literally harness the wind to create power using windmills—or, more precisely, wind turbines.

• Solar power. The energy of the sun can also be harnessed to create power. Big solar electric power plants either use the heat of the sun to produce steam, which then turns a turbine or some other kind of generator, or they use photovoltaic (PV) cells to convert solar energy directly into electricity.

So these are the primary ways utility companies all across the United States create the electricity that powers your home and your workplace and your city.

Renewable vs. Green

Now, some of these sources of electricity are considered renewable, meaning they don’t require the use of limited natural resources. Renewable resources are generally considered inexhaustible.

Certainly no one would argue that waste, or trash, is in scarce supply. We obviously make plenty of it in this country. It’s definitely a renewable resource.

But, just as certainly, you can see that renewable energy is not the same as green energy. Yes, waste is considered renewable, but burning waste is certainly not an environmentally friendly way to make power. You’re just taking all that often very toxic material and releasing it into the atmosphere. I’m highly opposed to incinerators as a means either of dealing with trash or making power.

Different Region, Different Choices

The mix as to which power sources are used to generate electricity varies from region to region. Here’s how it breaks down where I live. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) generates 47 percent of its power from coal, 29 percent from natural gas, 9 percent from nuclear, 7 percent from large hydroelectric power plants, and 8 percent from renew-able power.

On average, the entire state of California produces

• 41.5 percent of its power from natural gas

• 19.0 percent from hydro

• 15.7 percent of its power from coal

• 12.9 percent from nuclear

• 10.9 percent from renewable resources

That’s in dramatic contrast to states such as

• Indiana, Kentucky, North Dakota, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming, all of which still generate more than 90 percent of their electricity by burning coal

• The District of Columbia, which generates 100 percent of its electricity by burning crude oil

• Rhode Island, which generates 98.9 percent of its electricity by