Many have done it — you’re out, far away from a modern toilet, and yeah, you decide that you’re going to have to go, “ancient school” and urinate right there on a bush.  In a modern society, this is not the best option (obviously) but if one uses discretion, it is unlikely to cause much of a stir before or after the, “evacuation complete” voice is heard (yeah, the one from Austin Powers).

Of course, you don’t want to go in the middle of a parking garage as Jerry Seinfeld did in an episode (as did George, both of whom were caught and used the same, “uromisitisis” excuse if my memory serves).

But I digress.  What if the bush you were peeing on were a blueberry bush or a few stalks of corn?  It might seem rather disgusting to us to think that people would be eating the harvest and that they had been “irrigated” in such a manner.  People actually do this and many have no other, or very little, choice.

In fact, a report shows that that is happening on a large scale in many developing countries/regions, with about 200 million farmers in China, India, Vietnam, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America partaking in the “pee party” (yet another reference to a Seinfeld episode; George decides to use Jerry’s bathroom, but doesn’t close the door — Jerry protests, “It’s a pee party!”).

According to the article in National Geographic:

Facing water shortages and escalating fertilizer costs, farmers in developing countries are using raw sewage to irrigate and fertilize nearly 49 million acres (20 million hectares) of cropland, according to a new report—and it may not be a bad thing.

Wow!  Really?  Yeah, really!  But like they said, it may not be a bad thing, because the alternative is hungry (or starving) people, or using what would be drinking water to irrigate crops.

The article continues:

When this water is used for agricultural irrigation, farmers risk absorbing disease-causing bacteria, as do consumers who eat the produce raw and unwashed. Nearly 2.2 million people die each year because of diarrhea-related diseases, including cholera, according to WHO statistics. More than 80 percent of those cases can be attributed to contact with contaminated water and a lack of proper sanitation. But Pay Drechsel, an IWMI environmental scientist, argues that the social and economic benefits of using untreated human waste to grow food outweigh the health risks.

And what’s more:

Agriculture is a water-intensive business, accounting for nearly 70 percent of global fresh water consumption.

So this of course is not without risk, but often the farmers see little or no other option, in fact breaking into sewage pipes to divert the needed waste product for use as fertilizer and irrigation.

With fertilizer prices jumping nearly 50 percent per metric ton over the last year in some places, human waste is an attractive, and often necessary, alternative, Redwood said.

In cases where sewage sludge is used, expensive chemical fertilizer use can be avoided, he said. The sludge contains the same critical nutrients—nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium.

While it may sound disgusting to those not in that position, using untreated human waste in this manner is a way of life for many.  Still, there may be examples of methods these people could be educated about to reduce the chances of illness spreading because of food-borne bacteria.

There are also low-tech solutions for “treating” human waste. IWMI suggests employing appropriate and time-tested indigenous practices.

The report cites examples in Indonesia, Nepal, and Vietnam. There, farmers store wastewater in ponds to allow solid feces and worm eggs to settle, possibly reducing bacterial content in the residual water.

Composting, in which heat kills much of the bacteria, is another option, according to the report.

What can you do?

For one, stop wasting your food!  A recent report (pdf) From the Stockholm International Water Institute states that about one-third of the food that is produced in the United States is thrown away each year.  The cost?  About $48 billion, wasting about ten trillion gallons of water, used in the production of said food.  Let us not forget the wasted efforts and carbon emissions due to farming and transportation, either.  Furthermore, half of all food worldwide is wasted, according to the report.

So, you can help put a stop to that waste.  Stop buying food that you don’t end up eating.  Plan your meals out around what you have on the shelf, to reduce the chances of spoilage, and also include leftovers in your family’s meals.  This saves money and helps to reduce the problem here at home, so that potentially, more food could be exported to countries where it is needed (of course, in a manner that does not to undermine the efforts of the farmers in those countries).

Part of the solution also is to help those countries’ people to learn ways to cheaply and effectively treat human waste.  Also, methods such as this free refrigeration method, highlighted by Matthew Phillip, could help reduce the amount of food wasted in developing countries.  Also, look to continue reading sites such as this blog, or read a Big News Page on The Huffington Post, such as: Green Living.

Lloyd Alter discussed in a recent article that as oil prices have increased (yes, of course, they have dipped down slightly recently) China has exported less steel to the U.S.  Check out his article or keep reading:

Lloyd talks about some of the political and economic implications of such a shift, but let’s look at the environmental effects.

Here, again, because of rising costs of fossil fuels, we see decreased consumption.  Suddenly, the difference in the cost of labor between the U.S. and Chinese markets, is eaten up by high oil costs.  From the article:

Rubin continues: “Shipping a standard 40-foot container from Shanghai to the US Eastern seaboard now costs $8,000. In 2000, when oil prices were $20 per barrel, it only cost $3,000 to ship the container. But at $200 per barrel, it will soon cost $15,000 in transport costs to ship from China to the US Eastern seaboard.”

Wow!  What a difference!  I had no idea it was that high of a cost to move something across the ocean (though I suppose I never had given the financial costs much thought).  This just goes to show that increased fossil fuel consumption and costs can force people to rethink the way that they act — and this is probably truer for companies moving many tons of heavy stuff (such as steel).

Let’s just hope that not only does this spark a large green energy industry, but also perhaps some manufacturing jobs of yesteryear return to the U.S. as well.

One other note: with the cost of iron ore also increasing, perhaps recycling rates and more importantly, required recycling programs, will increase as a manner of combating that high cost.  The environmental effects of mining for more ore and processing it versus recycling are high and extensive.

How are increased fuel costs affecting the way that you behave?

Last week, Wesley wrote an article about using the upcoming cold weather of winter for some of your refrigeration needs.  But what about during the dog days of summer when the weather is anything but winter?

Well, thanks to Mohammed Bah Abba of Nigera, you have free refrigeration that uses zero energy!  Bah Abba is the adward-winning inventor of the Pot-in-Pot system for refrigeration.  The invention was born out of the need for increasing the life of fresh produce that spoils quickly in the intense African heat.

How does it work? Basically, his design involves a small clay pot within a larger one.  The smaller pot is separated from the large one with wet sand and covered with a wet towel or cover.  Now, as the water evaporates from the sand between the posts, the temperature within the small pot decreases due to the law of thermodynamics (evaporation is a cooling process).  

Bah Abba was awarded the Rolex Award for Enterprise and is featured on their site:  Rolex Awards for Enterprise.  They have a great site which explains everything much better than I could here.  Anyways, I guess my point for posting this is to ask, “How can we take this concept and apply it to our modern lives?”

EHI There!  Tell us how you’d use Bah Abba’s ideas to reduce your carbon footprint!

If you’re trying to follow the envirohuman movement, you should definitely pick up these news stories:

Pickens’ Plan to Profit Off of Public Water

I did not know that Pickens’ plan, which includes a large project of transmission lines to move electricity generated from wind power from rural areas to urban ones, seems to double as a way to move water from what arguably should be considered a public resource.  The water, from a vast underground reservoir, would use the same transmission pathway as the electricity.  Seems we should be careful of what we wish for; even though so many environmentalists, capitalists, and government officials all seem to be in favor of this plan, is it fair for an individual or company to take so much of what belong to the public an make such huge profits off of it?  The same could be asked of oil companies drilling for and profiting off of oil under public lands.

Bloomberg Skyscraper Windmill Plan

I had always wondered about the high altitude created by, among other surfaces, skyscrapers, as points of interest for wind turbines.  Obviously, in the middle of a city, the power generated has more than enough available users, but also, cities have huge overall electricity needs, but relatively little open spaces to put windmills.  Or, do they?  It seems this may be a viable plan for reducing the need for fossil fuel-burning power plants for cities and the transmission lines it might take to move power from open plains into urban areas.

Sunken Ship as Habitat

This is a very interesting concept for me, because while yes, much of this ship is made up of recyclable metals, it also includes some plastics that have concerned scientists familiar with the project for the negative effects of introducing chemicals associated with such plastics into the food chain.  This reminds me of a project that the New York Times detailed months ago, regarding the sinking of spent subway cars into harbors, also for the purpose of becoming marine habitat.  Again in that case, there was concern over the asbestos used in the subway cars, and how it escaping into the ocean might have a negative effect.  Still, the sunken vessel and the subway cars have made for great marine habitat.

Product Reviewed: Seventh Generation Liquid Natural Laundry Detergent 2X Ultra (Free and Clear)

Place of Purchase: Target (also available at other major Grocers such as Pick N Save, Jewel Osco, etc

Purchase Price: $14.99 for 64 Load (100 Fl Oz)

Available Online: Amazon.com (Pack of 6)

Product replaced: Tide Ultra with Synthetic Bleech

Ingredients: Aqua, sodium laureth sulfate, coconut alcohol ethoxylate and glycerin, sodium citrate, oleic acid and glyceryl oleate, sodium hydroxide, sodium borate, amylase, cellulase and protease, calcium chloride, trace minerals, and preservatives (explained on their site)

Like the powdered version of this product, I was unable to find any problems with the ingredients, which are all clearly listed and explained on the back of the bottle.

Use: Regular, everyday use including colors, whites, bed sheets, blankets, and bath towels

Results: My wife was more skeptical to try this initially than myself, in large part due to both of our misunderstanding that harsh chemicals and fragrances were actually needed to get tough stains and smells out from clothes.

Turns out that’s just not the case!  Seventh Gen did a more than adequate job cleaning all of our whites, darks, towels, and bed sheets.  In fact, from a cleaning standpoint, if you poured a bottle of Seventh Gen into an empty bottle of Tide, you would probably never realize a switch had been made — except for the absence of unnecessary dyes and fragrances!

We even ran it (as directed on the bottle) in cold water and so no noticeable drop off in cleaning ability – effective running in 45°F to 145°F according to the bottle.  And since there are no fragrances, your clothes come out without any smell so you can be confident that they really are clean and not just masked by some fancy perfume!

Best of all: It’s “free and clear” of perfumes and dyes, the 2X Ultra formulation means that 64 loads can be achieved using half the detergent of non-Ultra (100 oz of 2X = 200 oz of regular) which saves packaging and energy, it’s formulated to work well in cold water, and all ingredients are clearly detailed on the packaging (try finding that on a bottle of Tide!).

Why try it? I decided to try this product after reading Wesley’s review of the Seventh Generation Powdered Detergent ;however, I don’t like using powdered detergents in general as they can leave marks on clothing and not fully spread throughout the washing machine.

That being said, you should try it because it just works and works well!  I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised as to how well it actually pulls out smells and stains from clothing and other washables.

The drawback: At $14.99 for 64 loads, it’s a little more pricey than its non-Green competitors which usually run about $11.99 for a comparable size

The Final Thought: What prevents most people from making the switch to a Greener Laundry Detergent?  I would guess one of two things:  1) the belief that because it lacks the fancy (and harsh) chemicals of brands like Tide, it will not clean as well and 2) a premium price tag.

While Seventh Generation Liquid Laundry Detergent still has a slightly higher price than its non-Green counterparts, it clearly does not lack in cleaning ability.  It’s highly effective in cold water, saving you money and energy.  It’s non-toxic, biodegradable , and hypo-allergenic.

If you can spare the extra $3 for every 64 loads of laundry, you won’t be disappointed! Not to mention that as more people hop on board and Seventh Generation sells more, they’ll reach greater production efficiencies and economies of scale resulting (hopefully) in lower prices for all!

EHI There! What green products are you using that you love? What products are you trying to replace? Got an idea for a product you would like to be reviewed? We welcome guest columnists; just contact us!

Welcome to the August 22, 2008 edition of Cirque du Vert: Circus of the Green! Thank you for all of the submissions, unfortunately this will be a shortened edition due to BlogCarnival.com being down the last couple of days, preventing more submissions from being accepted.  Look for CdV to return to its normal form with Volume 4 in 2 weeks!

Wesley Joseph presents Once you go Black, you might still go Back… to Google posted at EnviroHumanImpact.  He says “There’s been a lot of debate concerning ways to reduce the carbon footprints of our PCs.  We take a “Mythbusters” approach to finding out if you really can save energy by using websites with black backgrounds.  We also look at some other ways to save energy and money while using your computer.”

Louise Manning presents How sustainable is the global food supply model? posted at The Human Imprint.  Louise discusses the long term viability of the global food chain, specifically looking at the poultry supply chain model which has been under growing pressure lately due to rising grain costs.  Check out her extensive article and paper on the topic.

Ena Clewes presents Dealing With Garden Pests the Organic Way posted at Organic Gardening. Ena has a great article on organic gardening.  She details ways to lower your consumption (read: use) of insect repellants and eliminate harsh insecticides. Probably best of all, she gives multiple recipes for making your own home-made bug sprays (to kill bugs) and pest repellents (for keeping them away in the first place).

AdmirableIndia.com presents Lalbagh Botanical Garden, Bangalore: Part 1: Ancient Watch Tower and Organic Cultivation posted at AdmirableIndia.com.  Finally, this is a neat little article with pictures of a Botanical garden in India that is partially dedicated to organic cultivation!

That concludes this edition.  Submit your blog article to the next edition of Cirque du Vert: Circus of the Green using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Use the outside air to refrigerate our foods?

We hear it all the time about how much energy our refrigerators use, especially if using an older model.  But little attention seems to be given to the fact that we put refrigerators into buildings that, in the winter time, are heated, even though there is free cold air outside.  Some climates even have cold temperatures year round and could really take advantage of the cold air.

No, I’m not saying that we should store our cold items outside during cold months: much of it would freeze that is supposed to stay at refrigerator temperatures (aside from myriad other complications that need not be listed here).  But I am suggesting that we can and should take advantage of cold temperatures nationwide.

How do we do that?

Well, somewhere, whether built into a wall, a cabinet, or in a basement or utility closet area, an insulated chamber would be allowed to monitor and draw cold air from outside as needed.  The air could be pumped into the unit with a fan, filtered as it enters the home, mixed with indoor air or slowly released into the refrigerator or freezer in small quantities (the air would be piped into the unit) with the use of a thermostat controlling temperature so as to make sure correct optimal temperatures are maintained.

A thermostat would also be set to stop accepting air from the outside when it would be detrimental (meaning, too high of a temperature) to the operation of the refrigerator or freezer.  The refrigerator or freezer unit’s compressor could then seamlessly kick back into gear to keep the temperature optimal.  In this way, users would not have to watch for unexpectedly warm days or for change-of-season days with large temperature swings.

“But no one is going to go to that much trouble to save a few bucks on refrigerator operating expenses…”

Oh no?  What about icemakers in our freezers?  Those have grown to the point that the plumbing now comes almost standard in most homes, because it saves people so much time from filling and emptying ice cube trays and the frustrations of running out of ice.  The convenience is great!  But how much of a niche product and plumbing offering was that when it first launched?  Yeah, and now it’s pretty much standard.

If you tell people that for a few hundred dollars they can greatly increase the efficiency of their refrigerators and improve their envirohuman impacts, some certainly would do so.  It would become even cheaper as these units and the necessary infrastructure could be built into new and renovated homes.   Refrigerators could come standard with plugged openings that could be employed for such uses, much as they now do with ice maker capabilities.

It was not so long ago that refrigerators did not have ice maker potential built into the units and slowly it became the norm because homeowners had the ability built into their homes.  Many come with the ability to add an icemaker unit, and the same type of “add-it-if-you-want” option could be used initially for this technology.

Just imagine how cheap the feature could be if the refrigerators had a small chamber added onto the unit near the bottom or on the back of the unit for such operation.  All you would need is a pipe nearby that had access to the outside with a built-in fan and filter, and you would be in business.

Homeowners choose such options all the time: think about not only the ice makers most people now use, but also units to remove radon gas from basements.  They are increasingly choosing solar electric or water heating systems, as well as other greener options, that are often costly upfront but eventually payoff both financially and environmentally.  Wind turbines are becoming more common on peoples’ roofs and properties, and a box on the back of a refrigerator would seem like nothing to that type of consumer.

How about commercial refrigeration?

Yes, think about all of the meatpacking and cold products industries, not to mention restaurants and grocery stores, that use huge industrial refrigeration units for keeping large quantities of foods cold.  Wow, what a savings for both the country and those businesses, in terms of pollution, energy, and cost savings!  Yes, it depends upon the climate and the time of year, but for many businesses, this may be yet another way to cut costs by improving their envirohuman impacts.

Now, if we could just get a major appliance manufacturer to put the same genius marketing behind that which launched that time-saving icemaker found in so many homes.

“Baby, it don’t matter if you’re black or white” – The Prince of Pop

Debate has raged on (seemingly for years now) as to whether or not switching to websites utilizing black backgrounds makes a real and significant difference in power consumption of computer monitors.  Proponents such as Blackle claim that if everyone switched to a black version of Google, we could save upwards of 750 Megawatt-hours per year.

So what’s the truth? Do black background websites really make a difference in power consumption?  Well, according to an article and research on Techlogg, the difference is somewhat disappointing.  Basically, they ran a pretty extensive test of 27 different computer monitors of various sizes and brands (including 23 LCD monitors) and found that in most cases, the power consumption difference was pretty negligible (some monitors even consumed more power using the black background Blackle!).

Now in all fairness, when testing standard CRT (Cathode Ray Tube or big, bulky, old tube-television style monitor that takes up my entire desk) monitors, they found that consumption was lowered but by closer to half (7-8 watts) of the 15 watts claimed by Blackle and its sources.

How about a little perspective? Did you know that LCD computer monitors now dominate the world marketplace for computer monitors at over 75%?  If your math is a little shaky, that means that less than 25% of computers worldwide are still using CRT monitors, which means that the 7-8 saved watts of blackness is less significant everyday that someone upgrades to a new LCD monitor.  The results of the Techlogg study were not necessarily surprising to me or probably anyone familiar with how an LCD TV or computer monitor works.

According to Webopedia:

“Short for liquid crystal display, LCD is a type of display that uses two sheets of polarizing material with a liquid crystal solution between them. An electric current passed through the liquid causes the crystals to align so that light cannot pass through them. Each crystal, therefore, is like a shutter, either allowing light to pass through or blocking the light.”

So in other words, when you visit a site with a black background on an LCD monitor, the backlight is still turned on but the “shutters” are closed and screen now black.  I suppose if you still own a CRT monitor you could relish in your 8 watt savings OR you could go out an purchase an LCD monitor and save upwards of 50 watts at all times the monitor is turned on.  That’s right, LCD’s consume about half the energy in the first place compared to CRT monitors!

So the bottom line? If you’re using a CRT monitor, you are saving a pretty small amount of energy on black background sites; however, if you’d upgrade to an LCD monitor, you could be saving between 5-7 times the energy at all times when your monitor is turned on.

How do you make an LCD monitor even more eco-friendly? Try this free and simple method that will tell you just how much power and money you’ll save each year using it!

This post is coming to you on the road from my hotel room in Providence, Rhode Island.  With US consumer traveling less and new hotels sprouting up all the time, competition for limited customers has really put the squeeze on hotel chains’ profitability, especially with escalating transportation costs.  As a result, hotels have been adopting new ways to limit expenses and make more money, all the while reducing their envirohuman impact!

You might already know where I’m going with this if you stayed at virtually any hotel around the country in the last couple years.  First, consider the number of bath towels washed every single day at hotels and motels around the world, many of which are barely, if at all, soiled or dirty.

So basically, a little card might say,

“Help us conserve our natural resources.  If you would like your towels replaced each morning, please leave them on the floor.  Towels left hanging on the towel rack tell us that you wish to reuse them.  Using towels  more than once saves hundreds of pounds of detergent and thousands of gallons of water each year.  Thank you for helping us conserve water and save the environment.”

I’ve noticed over the last couple years more and more hotels posting similar policies in the guestroom bathrooms.

Now, from a business standpoint, since hotels don’t charge additional fees for more towels being washed and dried, if they could reduce the number of them that are cleaned each day, they could potentially save significant amounts of wasted money on water, detergent, and electricity (remember it’s not just the water and detergent to wash them but all the heat to dry them right away!).  I suppose it’s just nice to see when the desire for greater profitability falls in-line with green business practices.

Since we’re discussing the environment, it’s important to step back and take a look at some of the aspects of our daily lives that might receive little attention, yet potential changes abound that could have a huge positive envirohuman impact.

So, standardized reusable shipping containers?  Yes.  At your place of work, you likely see hundreds of boxes come in the door, get unpacked, broken down, and sent off as garbage, or, hopefully, shipped out for recycling (or maybe you don’t see them, but they’re there).

Let’s take, boxes of printer paper, for example.  We all likely do some printing or copying in our everyday lives, or at least use paper that someone has printed information onto in our meetings and correspondence.  Billions if not trillions of sheets are printed daily.  Boxes, like those at the left, are used to ship that paper to our place of work, and, once unpacked, most of them make their way to the dock of the building in which we work, again, hopefully at least for recycling.

Recycling is a good way to continue the lifecycle of usable material, but it is highly energy- and cost-intensive for the very reasons of shipping, water use, and chemical, manual, and mechancial processes that all go into continuing the cycle of that product material, like the paper fibers used in cardboard boxes.  A better recycling process is one in which the material is reused again and again, hundreds, if not thousands of times before it gets sent off for recycling in which it gets broken down into its raw materials for future reproduction of new materials and goods.

What the heck am I talking about?  At your place of work, you likely receive a good deal of mail, which, hopefully gets recycled when you’re finished reading it.  But have you noticed the bins that the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), the United Parcel Service (UPS), and Federal Express (FedEx) use to bring your mail?  It’s usually a plastic-, angle-sided, open-ended container with metal reinforcements, that make these containers so reusable.

You might also receive beverages, like bottled water and sodas, that might be shipped in reusable hard plastic trays, like those here from Pepsi-Cola, that also can be reused many times before needed to be broken down again for recycling.  Although I recommend you choose a better beverage option: water, served from a reusable water bottle, these trays prove that shipping materials can be made to withstand repeated use, abuse, sliding and slamming all over the country (and world!) and that disposable, one-use shipping containers need to become a rarity.

Inter-office mail systems often reuse envelopes within a building several times before discarding them, which goes to show that there are many ways in which we have built the idea of “reusability” into our daily habits.  That’s something we need to take to the next level and push toward doing on an even larger scale.

On and off of postal and parcel trucks, beverage trucks, and others, we receive shipments of items from both reusable and those deemed throwaway, one-use packages.  But back to those boxes of printer paper.

Printer paper typically is packaged in reams of 500 pages, wrapped in paper, and placed ten to a box.  Because large businesses (and small ones, too) use so much paper, this results in millions of boxes being used for the purpose of packaging paper (only one of very many items packaged in this way) and then being tossed shortly thereafter.  Why not mimmick the boxes used by our postal deliverers?

We could have plastic ones made from recycled plastic product with straight sides, metal reinforcements, and a corresponding lid that would cover the box (just like the cardboard ones have).  In this manner, the boxes could be picked back up by those delivering the paper, be it OfficeMax or others.  The point is that reusable packaging for such industrial products, where the packaging does not even matter to the consumer, are a great place to start with reusable packaging.  USPS and Pepsi are already doing it, now how about others?

Certainly, the boxes may weight slightly more than the cardboard, however the fact that they are reusable will be a net monetary savings to the companies using them, and a net savings to the environment as our methods of shipping move toward clean, renewable fuel sources of the next decade or two.  Also, the fact that less paper will be used on packaging boxes would be even more helpful.