SEED | Logan Mark Ullyott

GreenSteps

2010-08-23T03:49:00.000-07:00

I'm taking part in the GreenSteps program, - a joint production between Griffith and Monash universities - learning to audit businesses for environmental impacts, energy and water use, waste production, carbon, etc. This weekend is the final weekend of 'training' before I do an internship inside a company or organization.

I've found a number of useful tools in quantifying these other inputs/ outputs of businesses, and a few strategies for trying to get businesses on board. Once the seminars are over, I think I'll have a few posts to share some ideas... and a nice glossy infographic or tool if I get the time/motivation.

Design Needs to Lose The "Sustainability Narrative"

2010-07-14T22:34:00.000-07:00

The world is starting to get it. Design (and “design thinking”) is becoming recognized as an important element of running a successful business, and sustainable choices are now seen as opportunities rather than ball-and-chain necessities. Sustainability is being heralded as a new direction for businesses looking to build market share, stay competitive, and increase their profits. This isn't a new idea. Only recently, though, has sustainability in business actually meant anything. Shareholders now get angry when Corporate Sustainability Reports are withheld or delayed, and “green funds” have been established to allow investment into companies operating sustainably and ethically, or developing clean technology.

What else do you need to know? Look how GREEN it is!

Product design, as Victor Papanek labelled it, is the most unsustainable industry there is. Designers need to mix greater amounts of environmental consideration into their products. At the same time, we need to move away from selling products based solely on those merits. Designers need a break from the sustainability narrative.

As a young designer and environmentalist, I'm pleased to see the importance of design and sustainability being recognized, and even more pleased that they are not exclusive to each other. Good design must now incorporate elements of sustainability, and vice versa.

As a young designer and environmentalist, I'm infuriated at the ease in which a company can claim their products or themselves “green” and reap the benefits of those claims. Quite simply, consumers aren't educated to determine what is or isn't green, and companies are free to make claims without verifying them... greenwashing rant will be saved for another time.

Okay, so the previously distanced realms of sustainability, design, and business are now melding together. Great.

Now, we've got greenwashing, for sure. But we've also got products being brought to market that are truly much more sustainable. The BetaCup challenge and its entries, as well as Puma's Clever Little Bag are two examples of sustainability being considered in design. Not perfect, zero-impact products, but dramatic improvements accompanied by transparent metrics.

Puma's Clever Little Bag

The BetaCup Challenge

Looking for simple solutions and tweaks to old products can create huge reductions in waste, energy, emissions. I'm all for these changes – I really think that any improvement or step towards sustainability is one worth taking. With one caveat.

In my final year studying industrial design, many (if not most) of our class wanted to re-design products to be sustainable. I focused on reducing waste in the bottled beverage industry, others designed motorbikes, commuter cars, and food storage systems. When pitching our concepts to our professors, one thing we often heard was “Don't try to include to much, keep it simple.” This was good advice. We couldn't include all the features and ideas we came up with, especially when having super-tight deadlines. We were familiar with the saying “If you try to do too much, you do nothing well,” and we took it to heart. Another piece of advice we received: “If you're designing it green, focus on making it green.”

I couldn't get behind this statement. The sentiment was that if you're designing a green product, it should be a green product, first and foremost. Sustainable aspects didn't become a feature of the product, they were supposed to become the main reason for designing it. Our professors (hopefully) meant to keep us from making green considerations a 'bolted-on' addition. In effect, we were steered away from combining environmentally considerate design elements with the other features. Again, if we tried to do too much, we might not do anything well.

As I said before, I think every effort made to make a product have a lower-impact is worthwhile. But, only selling a product based on its new-or-improved greenness is ignoring all the other improvements that could be made. And, by designing a supposedly green product, there is little thought as to whether or not this product should even be produced. What's green about sustainably-sourced bamboo furniture? Sure, bamboo's a great material. But, should we promote people buying new furniture just to replace old stuff to be sent to landfill? A few screws and maybe a can of paint could save that table from the incinerator, save the bamboo from being chopped down, save the machinery from shaping it into a table and the 18-wheelers from shipping it across the continent. Illustrating Jevon's paradox, people are actively looking to purchase items that are more efficient, economical, lower-impact, etc. - but this further consumption only increases the amount of waste.

Sustainability isn't on the same plane as other features, or at least it shouldn't be. Our teachers would never tell us to choose between a design that looks good and a design that can actually be manufactured. Or, to choose between functionality, ergonomic use and durability. These are pre-requisites that a designer must include in every product they create. I'd like to make the case that sustainability (of the entire product system) should be considered on the same level - that products must be designed to be green, just as they should be made manufacturable, durable and attractive.

I Hate Green: Tana Water Bar

2010-07-14T20:29:00.000-07:00

Pretty much every day, I'll crawl through my RSS feeds – NotCot, Fast Company, Core77, Good Magazine, EcoGeek, and whatever else I can remember that day... and see a new handful of “Green _____ looks awesome and saves ______” postings. Skateboards that save water. Chairs that clean the air. Computer games that save starving kids in Africa.

Here's the Tana Water Bar: An “iconic, ecologically smart, and market-winning design.”

Claim: Will save 1000 water bottles from landfill per year, per household.

For $1000, you can buy this fancy gadget to sit on your counter. Pour water into it, and it will clean water for you, and spit it out later, in either hot or cold varieties. Sounds pretty cool.

That's the same thing that your tap water faucet does. Except that it doesn't cost $1000. And you don't have to buy $70 filters for it a few times every year. And you don't have to go through the effort of filling your tap up with water, in anticipation of later disposal.

So, how does it divert 1000 bottles from landfill? I guess the assumption is that the average household purchases 1000 bottles of water every year. I'm not going to refute that claim. But, I think that this gadget will stop very few people from purchasing water bottles.

What percentage of bottled water sold is purchased by people in their own home?
Compare that to: What percentage of bottled water is bought when people get thirsty at work/ the gym/ lunch/ travelling/ away from home?
Are people going to carry this massive device in their briefcases and purses? Does it somehow address the convenience of buying water? I've never bought a bottle at home.
(But, then again, I rarely buy bottled water away from home...maybe five or six times a year, and I re-use that bottle for weeks or months)

So... I'm going to suggest that this product doesn't really have a market need, and it's green claims will be completely negated. Where clean water is needed, people can't afford it – instead, they're given Watercones and LifeStraws by non-profits. The people that can afford it don't need it, they have clean water already! This is a redundant appliance that will only end up in landfills, along with all the plastics bottles it didn't help eliminate.

New Deal Design... nice renderings and awards. “Changing the culture of water consumption?” Not likely. Try context-relevant designing next time.

Photos, Music and Movies - Quantifying Data Sizes

2009-09-28T09:58:00.000-07:00

Physical storage VS digital storage

Pretty cool infographic illustrating how digital nformation has compressed itself over the years from vinyl to cassette to CD, etc... It also has some interesting info on the sheer volume of data we are posting online, and how much space that would take up in non-digital format.

From Mozy: link

America and Lawyers

2009-09-20T16:10:00.000-07:00

How much money would be freed up in America, if there were fewer lawyers? What could that money be used for?

America has, by far, the most lawyers in the world. About 25% of the world's lawyers, actually. I haven't had any altercations with the law since I was a high-school punk, but I still think there are too many lawyers in our society. I think they are over-paid, and have nestled themselves into a position where they have created their own demand - through interpretation, precedents, procedures, and other manouevres, lawyers have made it necessary for other lawyers, because the average layperson can not represent themselves and understand the convoluted system.

(I also think there's a link to the number of lawyers in the U.S., and the number of prisoners in the U.S., both of which are the highest per capita in the world, but that's something I'm gonna save for a time when I can look at the "War on Drugs.")

Semi-serious conversations about lawyers necessitating lawyers led me to think about the changes that could occur if less students passed their bar exams. Fewer lawyers would be necessary, and they would all be among "the best." Besides the potential benefits here, I began to think about all the displaced lawyers, and the impact they could have:

As a Canadian citizen, I think things are alright here. I still think we have too many lawyers, but I can still watch TV without being called to action by ambulance chasers and lawyers building class-action civil suits - so, I think it's fair if America's lawyers per capita was reduced to that of Canada's.

Canadian population: 33,785,648
Lawyers - 68,000
People per lawyer - 497

American population: 304,059,724
Lawyers - 1,143,358
People per lawyer - 266

Simple algebra tells us that if America only had 611,790 lawyers, it's lawyer per capita rate would be equal to that of Canada's.

1,143,358 - 611,790 = 531, 568 English and Philosophy majors that studied law and didn't pass their exam. A number I found shows that the average lawyers salary is $96,129. Could that money be better spent?

If you take an especially negative view of lawyers and believe that they do absolutely nothing positive for society, then you can assume that their entire salary is wasted - ($96,129 X 531, 568) = 51.1 billion dollars that could be circulated through other areas of the economy.

If you believe that the taxes they pay are the only useful thing they contribute, then take 28% of their gross income away - And there are 36.8 billion dollars that could be be better spent.

Also, the economy would benefit from having educated, motivated individuals, coming from good backgrounds, moving in to other industries. Not sure how to calculate that, because I'm a little suspect of their ethics and morals :)

Driving and Talking on your Cell Phone: Good for the Economy?

2009-09-20T13:30:00.000-07:00

This article is modified from an essay I wrote for an economics class. It explores the rationale behind laws against driving and talking on mobile phones, and attempts to estimate the monetary effects of both sides. How much are all those important, productive phone calls for work or business worth? How much is lost from the economy when people are seriously injured or killed as a result of driving and talking on cell phones?

Many provinces, cities and states are banning the use of cellphones while driving or requiring the use of hands-free technology. The legislation is designed to save lives, but when a price tag is put on the value of human lives, the productivity of phone calls, and the frequency and severity of car crashes are considered, the legislation seems regressive.

Comparing the societal costs of injury, death, and downtime, and comparing them to the economic stimulation facilitated by in-car phone calls gives us an estimate of the worth of this type of regulation.

Tallying up the cost of cell-phone induced collisions

A report released in 2005 by the American Human Factors and Ergonomics Society states that 2,600 deaths and 330,000 injuries are related to cell phones distracting drivers every year. The Harvard Centre for Risk Analysis pegs the number to be between 800 and 8,000 fatalities and 100,000 to 1 million injuries. Another study done by Robert Hahn and the Brookings Institute attributes 300 fatal accidents and 38,000 injuries to in-car cellphone use. The wide range of data exists because the numbers are largely estimations – some made by examining the phone records of those involved in collisions, some made by reading police reports and some by extrapolating survey data. In order to do some back-of-the-envelope math, we'll use an approximate average of 2,400 deaths and 300,000 injuries resulting from distracted drivers every year.

You might think that 2,400 people kicking the bucket and another 300,000 a year being injured can't possibly be good for the economy. These accidents translate to a lot of downtime at work, lost labour, an increased demand for emergency and public services, and wasted resources in the form of destroyed vehicles – burdens which are non-constructive or must be borne by the government (Depending on your perspective, accidents also stimulate the economy. Autobody shops, funeral houses, and pharmaceutical companies would have far less customers in a collision-free world). The long-term economic effects of death are very hard to calculate, especially when a dollar amount has to be put on estimates such as the value of unborn children, one's growth potential, the lifetime wages one would have accrued, and the snowball effects and influence people have on each other. Nonetheless, many economists have taken it upon themselves to put a price on a human life. In 2003, Harvard economics professor Kip Viscusi published a report that determined the market value of one's life to be at $4.7 million. Ceteris paribus, that figure has risen closer to $6.3 million when adjusted for inflation at today's value.2 Viscusi's highly-regarded paper is used as the basis for many welfare economics calculations, and was also used in the Brookings Institute's paper to evaluate the effectiveness of anti-cell phone measures. Because of the esteem of Viscusi's findings, one's value will be set at $6.3 million for the purpose of this paper's calculations. It is now somewhat easier to find the price that car collisions carry.

A 2007 report of personal injury payout claims from automobile accidents puts the average payout from an accident at about $5200. In the same way that Viscusi calculated the cost of a human life, the researchers at the Brookings Institute have come up with numbers we can use to find the cost of the injury. Hahn and his colleagues estimate that $630 billion are lost in car crashes every year, and that $270 billion of that are due to fatal accidents; $360 billion are the result of injuries and vehicle damage. Using the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration's numbers for 2007, 27 million vehicles were damaged. At an estimated average of $1500 in vehicle damage a crash, this translates to a negligible $40.5 billion lost to vehicle damage per year. What's left over? About $320 billion to cover 5.2 million injured drivers and passengers ( an average of $61,538 spent on each injured person). We can now combine this figure with the previously established $6.3 million cost of a death.

Cost of auto accident deaths caused by cell-phones = $6.3 million/per death * 300 deaths = $18.9 billion
Cost of auto accident injuries caused by cell-phones = $61,538/ injury * 300,000 injuries = $18.46 billion
Total cost = $37.36 billion

Why Driving with a Cell Phone is Good

37.6 billion is a huge number, but it has no context yet. It includes all the money that could have potentially been generated over a lifetime, for the individual, the businesses they work for, the public (through taxes)...

The economic benefit of cell-phone use is found by placing a value on a phone call, and multiplying that by the amount of time (number of calls made) from behind the wheel. Economist Steven E. Landsburg reasons that every phone call you make while you are driving has a price tag on it. By dialing a number, you are implicitly performing a cost-benefit analysis. You decide that you are willing to pay the cost of the phone call as well as accept the lowered awareness, reaction time, and safety that comes attached to it (Landsburg, 219). The researchers at the Brookings Institute follow this logic also - If a driver pays $1.50 for a 20 minute phone call, then that phone call must be worth $1.50. By finding the amount of money drivers spend on phone calls while behind the wheel, Hahn and his colleagues estimate that this market is worth $25 billion in the States (Hahn et al, 51). After Hahn's reasoning for pegging the value of a human life at $4.7 million ($6.3 when adjusted for inflation) has been shown, $25 billion seems to just scratch the surface of the real value of these phone calls.

Just as a death is valued by all the potential money that could have been generated, the same must be done for cell phones: To make an apples-to-apples comparison, we must take into account the potential value that a phone call has. In other words, an estimation should be made towards the opportunity cost that is lost when a driver decides to forego a potentially money-making phone call in favour of driving safer.

If phone calls made from the car are worth as much to the driver's employer as calls from the office, then the driver's time while making that phone call should be paid for, or at least accounted for when determining the value of a phone call. Conservative estimates suggest that America as a whole racks up over 25 billion minutes of business talk from behind the wheel each year(American population * Adult population % * cell phone ownership % * % of people that drive and talk on phone * % of driver's calls that are work related * 14.5 minutes a day the average driver spends talking on the phone a day * 365 days a year). That's equivalent to every man, woman and child in Orlando working a full work-year. If the average pay rate in America was applied to that time in traffic that is spent making business calls, $11.4 billion would be split among America's drivers. Of course, this is only the first level of value that is created. An increase in communication would theoretically lead to improvements in idea generation, business opportunities, strategic partnerships, sales opportunities, expanded networks and business relationships. Increased revenue from reaping these benefits leaves opportunities for further investments, or simply allowing compound interest to compile.

The Total Impact of Banning Cell Phone use while Driving

As illustrated above, the costs of collisions while yapping on the phone (injuries, deaths, vehicle damage) come in around 37.6 billion.
Phone calls from behind the wheel cost $25 billion (and thus create $25 billion in economic activity). The conservative estimate above shows that workers should be getting paid for another $11.4 billion for work-related phone calls (this represents only the time that they are putting in, not the positive effects for their businesses, work with other companies, etc. These two numbers combine for $36.4 billion

37.6 billion- 36.4 bllion = 1.2 billion dollars saved by enacting this law.
Cost of enacting this law to be "mildly effective" - $25 to $72 billion

Where could that money be spent elsewhere?
How about doubling the amount of money the American gov. spends on "Higher Education," the Dept. of Transportation, and the Dept. of the Interior (Parks, Fisheries, Land Management) ?

Cell phones and the Environment (Infographic)

2009-09-20T12:50:00.000-07:00

Great infographic I found at SayIAmGreen.com. Well organized and illustrated, a clear examination of something we rarely think about.

Bottled Water Ban - Quantified

2009-09-02T20:38:00.000-07:00

Bottled Water Ban

A few weeks ago, Bundanoon, a small town in Australia (New South Wales) banned bottled water from being sold in its municipality. What does this mean? How much money will be saved by this action? How much water is saved from being waster? What would this mean if shifted to a larger scale?

This is a historic first in the "fight" against bottled water. Numerous cities (Vancouver, London (Ontario), Seattle, San Francisco) have banned bottled water from being sold at or purchased for government offices and functions. This is a much bigger step, as now no citizens can buy bottled water in the city.

According to the article at The Guardian, the voluntary ban occurred after Bundanoon citizens discovered a company wanted to extract water from their ground, truck it to Sydney to be processed, filtered, and bottled, and then truck it back to Bundanoon for sale.

Bundanoon's largest town hall meeting voted 99.5% in favor of a voluntary ban - meaning business owners collectively agreed to stop selling water. 1 person opposing the ban warned that it would promote consumers to turn to less healthy alternatives, while the second person opposing the ban works for a bottled water company.

What difference will this ban make to Bundanoon's economy and environment?

First - we'll assume that they drink about as much water as Americans. In 2001, that meant 14 gallons per person. This equates to about ninety 600ml bottles per person, annually. Wikipedia states that Bundanoon's 2006 census counted 2035 people. Multiplying the two gives us 183,150 bottles. The idea now, is that Bundanoonians (?) will buy just one re-usable water from the town's businesses, and re-fill it with tapwater.

For simplicity sake, we'll say the citizens save 180,000 bottles of water from being purchased. At a pricetag of $2.53 a litre (Australias average bottled water price), this works out to $1.518 / 600 ml serving. We'll call it even at $1.50. 180,000 bottles NOT being bought at a $1.50 pricetag means $270,000 are being saved in the local economy.

Is tap water better?

Yes. Why? - Bundanoon has now (hypothetically) become very pleased with itself - it has saved $270,000, over 150,000 plastic bottles from being created and going to landfills, energy and emissions that would have been consumed in producing bottles, extracting water, transporting, processing, filtering, and recycling said bottles, as well as over 100,000 litres of water that would have been wasted in the filtering process.

Bundanoon was paying $270,000 for 108,000 litres of water - 2.5$ / L.
Bundanoon will now pay $540 for that 108,000L (at a $.005/L pricetag) but also saves 100,000L from being wasted. If we include that as "free" water, they now pay $0.00259/L
For the same amount of money, Bundanoon can pay for 965 times as much water by switching to their tapwater.

Suppose the people of Bundanoon hate bottled water so much, they want to ban it in other cities. They put all of their $270,000 into buying tapwater for their neighbouring cities - 104.2 million litres of clean tapwater. The math gets a little tricky here: Per capita - the savings from not buying bottled water, reinvested into tapwater yields 50,777 litres of water. If the average person needs two litres of water a day (considering only drinking water) that's 730 litres per year. Each of the 2035 citizens of Bundanoon, by not drinking bottled water, can buy enough tapwater for themselves, and 70 others, to last a year.

What does this mean?

If Perth, Australia, were to reinvest the money they would normally spend on bottled water to tapwater, they would spend enough to buy all of Australia their drinking water for a year.

If the same were true elsewhere, London, Ontario's abstinence from bottled water could pay for all of Canada's water for a year, and Los Angeles would be able to pay for all American's drinking water.

Green Cigarettes and Packaging

2009-08-09T19:17:00.000-07:00

Really. I don't understand it. I've seen a few ads like this now, and they leave me scratching my head every time. The folks at DuMaurier felt that they had created something that would really advance mankind, so they took out a full-page ad in Toronto Life to show off their new creation:

Here's what the text reads - "We have updated our packaging to reduce it's impact on the environment. Small steps make the difference. Foil is now paper, making it kinder to the environment. Cardboard packaging that meets standards supporting sustainable forest management."

I'm all for redesigning packaging to be more environmentally friendly or whatever, but this is kind of different. Selling products that literally do nothing useful, good or constructive, in a different box, doesn't mean you are now better, or green. It's like an ad that reads "Killing the environment slower than we're killing you."

On the other hand, people aren't going to stop smoking any time soon, so the whole "any progress is good progress" mentality could be applied. I still don't see many merits in re-packaging death.

Even better than the DuMaurier ad is this gem.

"We grow our premium natural tobacco in a responsible, sustainable way through our earth-friendly and organic growing programs. We also strive to reduce our footprint on the earth by using recycled materials and renewable energy sources like wind power. Protecting the earth is as important to us as it is to you."

Pretty impressive. Pretty much a paragraph of green fluff, covering every greenwashing cliche from organics to wind energy. Like DuMaurier, they're making improvements, and lots of them, but they're throwing the term "sustainable" around a little loosely.

Wikipedia partially defines sustainability as the "potential for long-term maintenance of well-being." Let's suppose that the contents of these smokes really are organic. Let's even suppose that 80% of their energy is wind-powered, and 95% of their cardboard is recycled. Make any assumptions you want, and you still end up with a wasteful company. Anything produced by this company is still a waste of resources, energy, labour, etc., as there is nothing positive to show for it - no contribution to our planet's well-being.

Compact Fluorescents in Canada: Useless?

2009-08-06T00:22:00.000-07:00

This is an issue I've been thinking about for a while, and one that me and my dad somehow manage to argue about now and then.

The argument: Compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) are ineffective in Canada, because their improved efficiency means more money has to be spent on heating bills. Saving money on electrical lighting is countered by spending more money on electrical or gas heating bills. This article tries to quantify the savings spent on energy and compare it to the increase in heating bills that would hypothetically be required.

Background: Canadians have to pay for heating their houses through most, if not all, of the year. Compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) are "good" because they are more efficient than incandescent rivals. That is, more of the energy that enters the light bulb is actually turned into light - whereas incandescents "waste" more energy than CFLs, and produce more radiated heat.

I've seen enough busses in Toronto with posters of David Suzuki encouraging people to switch to CFLs. I have no doubt that in California or Arizona, CFLs are a smarter choice, as the lights last longer and don't produce heat. North of the 49, however, I'm not totally convinced that the benefit is as big as Canadian Tire would like you to believe. I'm going to do my best to quantify the overall difference between David Suzuki's CFL-filled house, and my grandma's house. (She hasn't heard of CFLs, and has enough incandescents to last till the end of her days, and then some.)
Okay, now, lets assume both example houses have 50 lights.

Grandma's favorite lights are 100-watt incandescent light bulbs rated for 10,000 hours of use, and were purchased for $3.25. Suzuki picked up equally strong CFL bulbs that run on 23 watts, last 15,000 hours and sell for $7.00 each. (Source 4)

If the cost per light is based on its duration, the incandescent costs $2.84 per year, while the CFL costs $4.09 per year.

For whatever reason, both home-owners need to replace all their lights on January first. Grandma goes down to her antique-filled basement and grabs 50 bulbs. 50 incandescents, at $2.84/year means this year will cost her $142 in light bulbs.

Suzuki gets a shipment of CFLs from Canadian Tire (they're grateful that he's pushing everyone to buy them.) At $4.09 apiece, his 50 lights should have cost $204.50.

Buying lights costs the CFL owner (Suzuki) $62.50 more

Assuming Suzuki keeps his lights on for 16 hours a day, all year, and electricity costs 8cents/kWh (Calgary is currently 8.5,) each light costs $10.75 apiece. Lighting all 50 costs $537.5

If Grandma's forgetfulness means she keeps her lights on just as often, her 100W bulbs are going to cost her $2336.00. ($46.72 per bulb)

Lighting the bulbs costs the incandescent owner $1798 more. Suzuki saves cash!

Remember now, that the CFLs are better because of their efficiency. The 100 watt bulb puts out the same amount of light as the 23 watt CFL, meaning 77% less energy is used to light the CFL. In other words, 77% less energy is wasted in heating the house.

If we take 77% of the incandescent's kWh, we have 22,484 kWh that the CFL lights are not using to heat the house.

Using an online unit calculator (here) all this energy equals 76,718,850 BTUs (British Thermal Unit / the unit used in heating, air conditioning, power).

So, about $1800 in electricity was wasted on heating the home through the incandescents. Grandma's home still got heat, so it wasn't a complete waste. If the house has electric heating, that's $1800 that was spent on heating the house through electric lights, instead of heating through another electric device. In effect, the cost is the same, but it comes from another (similar) source.

What if the house is heated through other means?

Canada's houses are typically heated with electric, propane, or natural gas furnaces. Remember that we're not finding the cost of heating the house - we're finding the cost of replacing the heat lost by using CFLs. Using a little algebra and this handy calculator, this is what I found:

If your house is heated with electricity, and you leave incandescents in, you've got nothing to lose (and your house won't have that weird distorted lighting that CFLs cause.)

If your house is heated with electricity, and you switch to CFLs, you lose money by paying extra for the lights. In our example, $62.50.

If your house is heated with natural gas, you might save some money buy switching to CFLs. Heating with natural gas is cheaper than heating with electricity. If you replace 50 lights, like in our example, you'd pay $1485 to pump this heat out through a furnace, $1548 with the added cost of the CFL lights. That's $250 in savings by switching to CFLs.

Using a propane furnace, you'd pay $2,425.85 to recover the same heat that the incandescents created. $2,488.35 with the added cost of the CFLs. It costs just under $700 to switch to CFLs.

For Canadians, there are basically four scenarios for those considering the switch to CFLs. If you've got electric heat, virtually no change will be noticed. Natural gas - you might notice a slight reduction in price. Propane - you could see an increase in what you owe to the utilities company.

Remember, these are all estimates influenced by fluctuating market prices for resources, capabilities of technology, efficiency of heating equipment, households ability to retain heat... and the example was based on changing a LOT of bulbs at one time, and all of these bulbs being on 16 hours a day - whenever you're not sleeping basically.

I'm going to go ahead and declare CFLs ineffective at solving energy problems for Canadians that rely on heating their houses. For our neighbours to the south, the benefits are obvious, but in Canada, they're more likely to perpetuate Jevon's paradox than conserve resources and save money. Sorry, Suzuki.

EcoFont

2009-08-05T15:15:00.000-07:00

Here's something I found recently that I thought was pretty cool. Haven't had the chance or need to test it out yet, but it seems like a good idea.

It's just a type-face/ font, and it looks kind of Barnum-and-Bailey-esque when it's blown up to this size, but at the "regular" size 10 or 12, the empty space (white holes) won't be visible when printed. Why is this cool? Maybe I'm the only one that thinks it is, but it means a reduction in the amount of ink required by your printer. When compared to the font BitStream Vera, (the font EcoFont was based off of) a 20% reduction in ink resulted. You won't notice the difference on paper, and you'll save cash. My last trip to Staples cost me $78 for ink, and I'd gladly have $15 of that back to spend on my vices.

Download it for free: EcoFont

SEED

2009-08-05T14:51:00.000-07:00

This is going to be my home / web presence for the next little bit, my place to rant, rave, and rationalize.

I'm envisioning this as a spot where I can rip into people making important or influential decisions, give props to those making well-informed or brave ones, and hopefully bring some important issues to light. Ideas, products and concepts in design, policy, economics, technology, education, sustainability, or whatever else I currently like will show up here. If I can stimulate a few conversations that aren't about reality T.V., celebrity deaths, or sporting events, I'll be happy.

No post schedule, no idea how this is going to work out.