GREENer HOUSE

Not as green as it looks

I’ve just finished writing an article for Red: the Green Magazine about a rather personal issue. Friends and relatives scoffed and chuckled when they heard that I was researching the environmental implications of toilet paper, but by the time I was finished I saw my father-in-law carrying a 9-roll pack of greener loo-paper home from the store. My wife has also switched to the environmentally friendly option.

So which paper is best? Good ol’ cheap 1-ply. Any brand will do because they are virtually all made from recycled paper, but if you want the added benefit of knowing that your roll hasn’t been rolling down the highway accumulating a carbon footprint, Twinsaver is made in Cape Town, Durban and Gauteng, so you are virtually assured of a local roll if you buy it in one of those areas. Carlton is only made in Gauteng. Otherwise, look for a local manufacturer.

I’ve heard all the arguments against 1-ply. People say it actually costs more because you have to use twice as much. This is wrong on three counts. For starters single ply is more than half as thick as double ply, 5/8s as thick to be precise. And there are 500 sheets on a 1-ply roll—or should be—and only 350 sheets on a 2-ply roll. Finally, research suggests that people use about the same number of sheets regardless of the thickness.

The other argument against 1-ply is that it is rougher. I cannot deny that it is not quite as soft. So keep one roll of extravagant, environmentally noxious, virgin 2-ply on hand for those moments when some unmentionable condition makes you tender down there. And let us know if you find a 1-ply that you think is softer than most.

Whatever you do, don’t waste your money on any high-priced bog roll purporting to be “green.” If you want to know why, you can read the full article from Red below:

How many trees have you flushed down the toilet in your lifetime? The South African paper industry is equipped to manufacture 4.7 kilograms of tissue a year for every man, woman and child in the country. So it is a reasonable estimate that consumers of tissue made from virgin wood will consume about a tree every decade.

Fortunately, South Africans have a large and growing range of options to reduce their loo-print, ranging from toilet paper made from sugar-cane fibre to 100-percent-recycled, 2-ply rolls. With choice comes confusion, however, and paying extra for green marketing may not help the environment. Often the cheapest rolls are also the greenest. When buying toilet tissue, saving the environment and saving money can go hand in hand.

For decades, most South Africans have been using 100 percent recycled toilet paper—without paying an extra cent. These shoppers did not even know they were making the environmentally friendly choice, though they might have noticed a few speckles in the paper that suggested its former existence as office paper. Three-quarters of the toilet rolls sold in South Africa are single-ply rolls that are usually tree-free, something shoppers would never know from reading the labels. The more expensive, two-ply toilet tissue is mostly made from virgin wood pulp.

The problem with virgin toilet paper is not the lost trees—they generally come from forest plantations where each harvested tree is replaced by a seedling. But toilet paper from wood pulp unleashes a host of other assaults against the environment for a product that gets used for only a few seconds. Tree farms take up land that could otherwise be home to diverse natural forests. The conventional pulping and papermaking process uses twice as much water and far more energy than recycled toilet paper. And logs, pulp and tissue are regularly shipped all the way across South Africa, adding to virgin paper’s expansive carbon footprint. Recycled toilet paper, by contrast, is often sourced, manufactured and sold all in the same city.

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Polar Bears Don't Like AC

The December issue of Red: the Green Magazine is out in the Cape, and it features an article I wrote about alternatives to air conditioning, especially evaporative cooling.  Here’s what it has to say:

Craig Bransgrove has been installing air conditioning in Cape Town homes and offices for the last six years. So it may seem surprising that when he recently installed a cooling system for his own home, he did not choose traditional air conditioning at all. Bransgrove’s Blouberg home uses an evaporative cooling system that takes advantage of the same effect that makes a wet swimming costume feel so chilly on a windy day. “I looked at all the options,” says Bransgrove. “It’s a lot healthier and it’s cost effective.”

Evaporative cooling is gaining popularity as environmentally conscious South Africans increasingly look for ways to keep cool without resorting to air conditioning. In the driest parts of the country, the systems are actually more common than refrigeration air conditioning in residential installments. “I don’t think there’s a household in Upington that doesn’t have evap cooling in it,” says Philip Coreejes, owner of Hi Power Electric.

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Call me petty, but when I received a gorgeous shirt as a gift recently, I was a little disappointed because two Jeep tags were sewn onto the front of the shirt. (Green tags nogal!)

Chrysler consistently ranks at or near the bottom of fleet fuel economy rankings in the United States, and Jeeps are the thirstist vehicles in the Chrysler stable. Some Jeeps are rated at more than 21 liters per 100 kilometres. (4.7 kms/l or 11 miles/gallon.) They definitely have not earned their green tags.

I’d rather not walk around in a shirt that adds any cachet to the Jeep brand, but I didn’t want to waste a beautiful shirt. So I solved this problem with the help of a stitch-ripper, a handy tool that should be a part of any sewing kit. Without the green tags, my shirt is so much greener.

With petrol breaking the R10 barrier today, I’m sure the newspapers will be hauling out the AA’s list of fuel-saving tips yet again. We’ve all read them least a dozen times. The list is generally sound: use the correct tyre pressure, don’t accelerate too quickly, etc., etc., etc. Our eyes are glazing over, however. It’s time for a new list. It’s time to push the envelope.

The fuel consumption numbers in the literature for new cars (and now on windshield stickers in South Africa) are useful for comparing between cars. But few people can keep their fuel consumption that low on the streets. The official stats are derived under very controlled conditions that don’t really reflect the habits of typical drivers.

I hate to brag, but I do consistently match or beat the official fuel consumption figures for the cars I drive. You can, too. Follow me.

[Lawyer's note: Use these tips at your own risk. GreenerHouse is not responsible for your prang. Safety first.]

1. Don’t brake.
2. Hold your right foot in the air
3. Watch your rev counter
4. In town, windows down
5. Ride the roller coaster
6. Drive your spouse’s car
7. Change your clocks
8. Know your numbers
9. Rearrange your “To Do” list
10. Drive farther . . .

1. Don’t brake

Ok, if a ball rolls out into the street with a child running behind it, slam on the brakes, but most braking is an unnecessary waste of energy. You must learn to feel guilty every time you brake, converting all of that good momentum your engine has given you into wasted friction and heat, requiring you to accelerate all over again.

Not braking requires planning ahead, allowing space in front of your vehicle and exercising patience. A typical example is a street with speed bumps. Most drivers accelerate after each bump and brake before each bump. It makes no sense. The bumps are there because the people who live on that street convinced the government that cars should drive slowly for the safety of the neighbourhood’s children and pedestrians. Settle into the speed at which your car can handle the bumps and stay there. Unless you’re heading downhill, you shouldn’t have to brake.

Look way ahead to the traffic lights and let your car slow naturally well in advance of a red light. People are always in a hurry to sit at a red robot, wanting to give the poor smash-and-grabbers a sporting chance. Don’t worry about the guy behind you flashing his headlights. You’re saving him petrol and a smashed window, too. Smile and wave.

If you have to brake at the bottom of a hill or before a curve, it probably means that you were accelerating unnecessarily a few moments before. Slow down in advance—it’s not safe to brake on a curve, anyway—and keep your foot off that darned brake.

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Since the issue of Maverick containing my Solar Photovoltaics vs. Diesel Generators article is off the newsstands, I can now publish the article in full on Greenerhouse. Enjoy:

Bringing Back the Light:

Diesel vs. Photovoltaic

It began with an email. My brother-in-law asked me, the family’s resident green guru, to weigh up the relative merits of diesel generators vs. solar power.

Load shedding is clearly driving him to distraction. Computers are crashing in his home office, and he has scrambled to reschedule meetings of 30 and 40 people to stay out of the dark. He wants to know that the power will be there where he needs it, when he needs it. “I’m looking for a complete solution, and I don’t want hassles,” he told me, admitting that he was close to choosing the diesel route.

But he also knows that his green credentials need some buffing since he traded in his Honda Jazz for a Land Rover Discovery last year. Is solar electricity an affordable alternative?

Until the beginning of this year, the answer to his question would have been simple: In South Africa, solar cells may be virtuous, but they don’t pay for themselves. (Solar hot-water panels do pay for themselves, but you can’t run your PC on hot water.) Even the national sales manager for Sanyo photovoltaic panels in South Africa, Win Kurzyca, says, “it doesn’t pay me to put 10 of these on my roof—even at staff price—instead of paying 32 cents a kilowatt hour for electricity.”

But suddenly everything has changed. In fact, the question has changed. My swaer is not asking whether photovoltaic panels pay for themselves; he wants to know whether solar electricity is competitive with diesel-generated electricity.

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The picture that I meant to take of Mandla

These are sad times in South Africa. And though I mostly feel quite distant from the terrible violence against our African neighbours, I have been touched by the tragedy in one, odd way.

For the past two years, a man name Mandla has rung my bell every Monday morning to see if I have any recyclables for him. I first saw him digging through garbage in my neighbourhood during one of my jogs. He was collecting white office paper, so I told him to stop by my house, since I always separate the good white stuff, which fetches a higher price. Ever since, he has made a weekly stop here. And as prices have risen for other commodities, I have given him cartloads of plastic bottles and cans in addition to paper.

I had just decided that it was time to write about Mandla on GreenerHouse. I liked the topic, because I believe that developing this kind of relationship creates meaning out of recycling, spares the collector the indignity and effort of digging through rubbish, and could save homeowners trips to the recycling depot. I had even decided that I would call the post “Meet Mandla.” I was going to take his picture and place it on the website.

It was going to be a good week for Mandla, because I had worked on the cleanup crew for my daughter’s matric dance and had rescued bins full of PET plastic bottles, aluminium cans and steel (tin) cans. I had them waiting at the gate for him. When Mandla didn’t show up last Monday, I didn’t think much of it. But now he hasn’t rung my bell for two weeks, so I know that last week was not a good week for Mandla. We had never discussed his origin; we mostly talked about the prices of various recyclable commodities. But it now seems clear that he was a Zimbabwean. In my experience, most of the hawkers who collect recyclables on foot are from other African nations.

I hope that Mandla is safe, wherever he is, and that someone is giving him lots of white paper to sell.

I cannot yet reprint my article on solar photovoltaics vs. diesel generators from Maverick magazine as long as the issue remains on the newsstand. But I can share a  few thoughts from what I have learned while reporting the article:

Prepare Ye the Way of the Panel. For years we’ve been promised that photovoltaic panels will come down in price as volumes increase. Well, volumes increased, but prices went up. Demand rocketed in Germany, Spain and elsewhere as governments made solar attractive financially. Solar-cell factories couldn’t be built fast enough to accommodate the new buyers, so the law of supply and demand took over. This is a temporary situation. As new factories are commissioned, prices will fall to not-yet-seen lows. If you’re feeling flush with cash and impatient, go ahead. Early adopters play a great role in advancing the acceptance of any new technology. But for most of us, it makes sense to wait, especially if the S.A. government implements a feed in tariff—like the one in Germany or Spain—which pays households for surplus solar electricity they feed into the grid.

In the meantime, there is plenty of work to do while getting your home ready for cheaper solar. Photovoltaics produce less electricity than you would expect. They belong in houses that already have low electricity consumption. Replace that old fridge. Install compact fluorescent light bulbs. Invest in a gas stove. Install a solar hot water panels, perhaps with gas back-up instead of electrical back-up for cloudy days. Consider space heating with gas or wood. And if you are doing any remodeling, plan a space in advance for batteries and an inverter. They need protection from the elements and ventilation, preferably in a location close to your circuit board.

It’s Your Health, Too. Burning more diesel is not just bad for the planet, it’s bad for you. Diesel fumes are known cancer-causing agents. Would you want your neighbour to idle his 1979 diesel Land Rover Defender in your driveway for several hours a day, spewing carcinogenic fumes toward your family? Running a diesel generator is no different.

You Get What You Pay For. People are always telling me that generators are cheap. And to look at the advertising inserts from D.I.Y. stores, you would think so. But some of these generators do not even have voltage regulators, leading to blown TVs. Even better generators with voltage regulators can create brief surges that are harmful to sensitive equipment. Seamus Finnegan of Northern Technologies SA recommends two layers of surge protection to protect against electrical current spikes as well as an uninterruptible power supply to keep computers operating during the lag between the beginning of load shedding and the start-up of the generator. “We see a lot of damage done by generators,” say Finnegan.

Heads Solar Wins, Tails Diesel Loses. Okay, maybe I’m biased, but diesel has problems under both scenarios facing South Africans. If load shedding becomes a serious regular occurrence, then the fuel expense begins to eclipse the upfront capital expense, and solar becomes more attractive financially. If Eskom gets its act together and load shedding ends, anyone who opted for solar still has a source of free, green energy. Those who bought a diesel generator are stuck with a rusting eye-sore.

The latest issue of Maverick magazine, which is arriving on newsstands this week, includes an article I wrote comparing diesel generators with solar photovoltaic panels. The point is that solar cells are normally considered pricey, with little hope of paying for themselves in the near term and maybe not even in the long run. Load shedding changed all that, however, because many South Africans are now shelling out tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars for diesel generators to make themselves Eskom-proof. In my article I compare what happens if that money is instead put into generating solar electricity on the roof. I use actual quotes for systems for one house and then run the numbers to see how the two options compare over time.

When this issue of Maverick comes off the newsstand, I will post the article in-full on GreenerHouse. In the meantime, I will share a few insights from my reporting here in the next few days.

Those Frogs Still Prefer CFLs

Yesterday in my daughter’s science class, the subject of energy efficiency came up, and another girl in the class mentioned that she had heard that our house was full of energy-saving devices. So my daughter had to explain what we were doing at home to save electricity. One boy asked if manufacturing those compact fluorescent light bulbs doesn’t use more electricity than making a common incandescent globe.

She didn’t know the answer. And neither did I. But I was glad that the younger generation thinks about the carbon footprint of the products we buy, and I thought it deserved a little research. After much digging, I came up with some information from Osram about the electricity that goes into making their bulbs.

Osram says that they need 3.36 kilowatt hours to produce each 15 watt CFL. This is about two-and-a-half times the amount of electricity required to make the equivalent 75 watt incandescent globe, 1.29 kilowatt hours. An incandescent bulb is a simpler product, after all. So the advantage goes to the incandescent on day one.

It loses the advantage quickly, however. If you use the two bulbs for four hours a day, by the 9^th day, the incandescent has used so much more electricity that it has lost its advantage. By the end of a year, my very rudimentary life-cycle analysis shows the CFL winning the race by 25.26 kWh to a whopping 110.79 kWh for the incandescent.

Even if you were burning these bulbs in Iceland, using carbon-dioxide-free geothermal and hydroelectric power, the CFL would be more environmentally friendly because it lasts longer and so one CFL is the equivalent of several incandescents.

If, like Noah, you know that the world is going to be swallowed up in a flood in a few days, an incandescent bulb is the green choice. If you think the flood might take a few more years as the Greenland ice cap melts, you should buy CFLs.

This week, my favourite little Rinnai gas heater stopped working when load shedding began on a cold night. It may use gas, but it also has an electric fan so it isn’t Eskom-proof. I’ve been looking at alternatives.

Last year at about this time, I wrote an overview of home heating options. In it, I ranked an open fireplace heated by gas 8th out of 11 options, well worse than average. This is because gas may burn cleanly, but any open fireplace loses most of its heat up the flue.

I failed to mention then that I own a Jetmaster open gas fireplace. In the past, I only used it a few times a year for ambience when we had guests, but I’ll have to use it a lot more during load shedding this winter since it’s my only heater that runs without electricity. That’s a problem, because LPG has risen in price from R367 for a 48 kg bottle when I installed the Jetmaster in 2001 to R820 now. And according to my own ranking, I’ll be using one of the least environmentally friendly options around.

When I first installed the Jetmaster, I briefly considered a wood stove, but I knew that wood burning was a source of carcinogenic particulates, and I didn’t see how wood made sense in a semi-arid country with so few trees.

I’ve learned two important things since then. First, I got a quick lesson in urban forestry a few years ago when I had to remove a giant dying oak from my garden. It broke my heart to see tons of potential firewood being carted away by a tree-feller who told me he was taking it to the dump. (The trunk and limbs were too large for me to split.) The logs would ultimately decompose, releasing greenhouse gasses without benefiting anyone. I called around and learned that some other tree-fellers cut and split the wood they retrieve to sell for firewood. In the future, I would only use a tree-feller who recycled this way.

Johannesburg is sometimes called the world’s largest urban forest. I suspect that this is hyperbole that could not be proven, but the fact is that the city creates enough firewood to heat many more local homes than it currently does. (Though not all of the homes, of course.)

The second education I received was when I began researching the latest wood stoves and fireplace inserts. They aren’t just better than open fireplaces, they are unrecognizably better. An open wood fireplace loses 90 percent or more of its heat up the chimney and releases about 50 grams of particulates per hour. Anyone who has read what I have writing about diesel emissions in the Mail & Guardian and on this website knows that particulates are a serious health risk.

But modern stoves typically emit 2 to 4 grams of particulates per hour, and some are closer to 1, that’s just 2% of the particulate pollution from a wood-burning open fireplace. And about a quarter of what a typical diesel car might produce. In addition, they retain 75 percent or more of the energy in the wood to heat the room, losing just a fraction to the flue. A free-standing stove unfortunately doesn’t suit my lounge, but the fireplace inserts are only a few percentage points less efficient and just as clean.

Perhaps most important, burning wood is widely considered to be almost carbon neutral, because a decaying dead tree would release carbon dioxide anyway, while a new tree growing in the place of the old one absorbs the greenhouse gas. Firewood from the urban forest is even closer to carbon neutral than most because it was going to be cut anyway and involves minimal transport.

Only two fireplace inserts fit my opening, but they seem like good units. I’m seriously considering the Scan DSA 3-5, which rates at 76 percent efficiency. I haven’t yet found particulate emissions data for this fireplace, but it seems similar to the DSA 4 which emits a very low 1.1 grams of particulates per hour. If I could choose among a wider range of wood stoves, I would look for one with the Swan eco-label. Among the brands in South Africa, Scan, Morsø, and Jötul all have stoves that meet the wide variety of environment criteria to earn the Swan logo. A list of Swan stoves can be found here.
These advanced, closed-combustion stoves are not cheap. Expect to pay at least R10 000, and up to R40 000 for a top-of-the-line wood burning stove. But the wood is cheap. Malcolm Sims of Cosy Heating has done calculations suggesting that gas now sells for R1.23 per kilowatt hour of energy, whereas wood is about 30 cents per kwh if burned in a 75 percent efficient stove-cheaper than electricity. (Cosy Heating sells both gas and wood heaters.) Comparing my inefficient Jetmaster with the Scan fireplace, I could heat with wood for one-tenth the price, though the Jetmaster offers greater control in adjusting the flame, which would mitigate that somewhat.

Sadly, Cosy Heating says that my Scan fireplace is out of stock because of the load-shedding rush. So for the next seven weeks we’ll be huddling next to the open gas fireplace when the lights go out, and thinking about how warm that chimney must be.