Green News

Care for the Planet? Care For Your Car!

The U.S.’ “Cash for Clunkers” program has ended, effectively paying people who had the most offensive vehicles somewhere between $3500-$4500 USD to buy a new vehicle.  (How nice for them, to have We The People buy so large a chunk of their car for them, while those of us who have been ecologically minded all along pay for our own…)  So that momentary boost to car sales has passed… but the polluting of the planet remains.

We came across this ad from a mechanic in Denver, Colorado, which sparked considerable thought:

Care for the Planet?  Care for your car.  CarCareDenver.com

A brief look at some of the ways that statement is true yields that a car which leaks oil is putting the nasty stuff on top of the earth, where it runs into waterways, seeps back into our water table, and poisons other living things.  A car that isn’t tuned properly or has mechanical problems is at LEAST using more fuel than it needs to, often spewing the unburned fuel out the tailpipe.   Cars that are out of adjustment put out a lot more pollution as well, adding to the global climate and pollution problem.    These are just a few of the more obvious aspects.

Until we have electric cars run off of wind, hydro, solar and tide energy sources, we owe it to ourselves and our planet to  keep them running as well as possible, as efficiently as possible.  This doesn’t even cost money.  In fact, it saves!  If you lose 3-4 mpg because the car isn’t running well, you’re polluting, but you’re also tossing a pretty good chunk of change out the tailpipe every time you drive!  So we join the mechanic in saying it:

Care for the planet?  Care for your car!

Gadgets

Rechargeable Batteries - Fact, Fiction and Reality

We’re in love with portable devices and this is a digital world. Digital cameras (SLR and point & shoot) use 4 AA batteries. Digital voice and music recorders use them. Wireless headphones use them. Guitars, keyboards, effect pedals, clock radios… the list is obscenely long, and that’s not even counting all of the battery-operated toys the kids just got for over the holidays and for their birthdays.

Most of us would be broke if we bought high-quality one-use Alkaline batteries for these devices, so we’ve moved to Rechargeable batteries. Ah, nirvana! (No, not the band.) We’re in heaven! For the first few weeks, it’s magic. Just stick ‘em back in the handy-dandy recharger, and you’re set… if you’re one of the lucky ones. Sometimes, they never even take a charge the first time. Returning them to the store may gain you more hassles as they examine everything suspiciously, making sure you’re not pulling a fast one. Eventually you return with a new pack of batteries, ready to be elated again, only to find that these are duds too! What gives?

What gives, mostly, is the science in the batteries you’ve bought. Lithium Ion batteries are used in laptops, but you won’t find AA and AAA LiIon batteries. They’re still a bit too dangerous to let the consumer play with them. So mostly what we can buy are Nickel-Cadmium (NiCad) rechargeables. These store power in crystals. As the crystals are depleted, they become smaller. But if you don’t discharge them all the way, they regrow over the old stones while being recharged. This is why they sometimes don’t last as long as they used to. There are other things that can happen to them, (including overheating on cheap chargers) but we’re trying to keep it simple here.

Discharging them completely (sometimes called cycling or re-cycling) is one way to try to regain the other hundreds of charges the manufacture has promised. Few chargers will give you that option (and none of the cheap “plug it in the wall” types. The Fujifilm S5600 camera has that utility, but you’ll have to hunt for it… or explore a bit via Google and find out how to put a resistor to them, if you’re handy that way. Once discharged, so long as there’s SOME trace of current potential left, they should be given a full charge and be right as rain, or nearly so.

Sometimes they need a kick in the crystals to get their lungs started. That’s most often performed by allowing a paperclip to join the two positive terminals together (though we cannot recommend or endorse any such method, of course.) The lawyers make us say that, but really, if you manipulate the batteries, you do so at your own risk. Once again, having cleared the battery, it should be up for some more charges.

The problem is two-fold. First there’s the batteries themselves, which are often an exercise in marketing misinformation. Yes, perhaps they spec at twice the milliamps that they used to, but that doesn’t mean they MAINTAIN that charge for very long at all. Some only go days or hours. And part of that MIGHT be attributed to the second aspect, which is the charger. As a general rule, poor chargers do a poor job. You’ll often find them bundled with batteries at the checkout area for $10-20. Fair warning: It’s in their best interest that the charger NOT safeguard your batteries. Once invested, you’re more likely to buy their brand again, putting more batteries into the same irreverent unit. Not all manufacturers are that unscrupulous, but if you get a short lifespan or hot batteries, or both, it would be unwise to put more NiCad cells in that charger.

NiCads are best charged slowly. Charging them rapidly can be done, but burns away a lot of the battery’s life expectancy — and not consistently either. Then you’re left trying to figure out which of the four cells is bad. Unless you’re truly in urgent need, you’re far better off to buy an extra set of batteries and keep them at ready, always doing a slow overnight charge instead. See the next paragraph for a solutions to all these problems.

There may not be any such thing as a free lunch, but there are some reliable, quality chargers. One such option is the La Crosse Technology BC-900 AlphaPower Battery Charger. It can take over on automatic, or you can monitor the batteries’ status on various factors via the LED displays — one for each cell. This unit features 4 modes (charge, discharge, recharge and test) Four AA nad four AAA batteries and a carrying case are also included, so at about $40, you’re getting a nifty gadget, eight more batteries and adding hundreds of charges to your existing batteries!

There is another model for a few dollars less, but it doesn’t include the batteries or case: La Crosse Technology BC700 Alpha Power Battery Charger. Like the BC-900, this model also performs in 4 modes (charge, discharge, recharge and test) but we recommend taking advantage of the package deal.

Another important factor is the quality of the batteries themselves. Of course, we always prefer Green companies, and so here we can recommend Green Batteries.

We’d also take this opportunity to remind you of the solar-powered battery chargers which we’ve written up before and highly recommend.

Summing up, while rechargeable batteries are a great innovation and good news for the planet, slow-charging will let your batteries last a lot longer. Fully discharging them is important, and investing in a quality charger can save a bundle! Thanks for doing your part in Going Green!

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Home Energy

Ozone Generators, Snake Oil of the Modern Age

Perhaps this goes to show that there will always be snake oil vendors.   For years, we’ve been sold on the idea that Ozone generators are a good thing, that they promote and create healthy air within our homes, remove odors, etc.  The manufacturers of ozone generators even go so far as to point out that it’s just as nature does with lightning strikes and thunderstorms.  This notion resonated with us. After all, isn’t there a hole in the ozone layer?  So more ozone is a good thing… right?  Up in the stratosphere, protecting our planet, it is.  Down here where we breathe, though, it’s actually flat out dangerous.

That last statement bears repeating: Ozone generators in our homes are dangerous.  Ozone is, chemically speaking, O3 — three oxygen atoms bound together.  It’s made by electricity passing through the air.  So what’s wrong with that?  Our bodies aremade to breathe O2, not O3.  O3 (Ozone) can make our throats sore and damage our lungs.  The same properities of ozone which can cause certain smells, bacteria and mold to be affected, those same properties also affect tissues within our bodies, and not in a good way.

There’s a long list of data to support what’s being presented here.  Research performed by both the U.S. and Canadian governments,  as well as others, all agrees with this.  Ozone up there is a good idea.  Down here, it’s a bad thing.  Even in a best case scenario, even “safe” levels of ozone will to little or nothing to provide helpful benefits.  Once the concentration is high enough to be killing off harmful or offensive aspects, it has become dangerous to our health.  There is no practical effective way to use an Ozone generator safely in your home.

Ion generators, preferably those which generate both positive and negative ions, do have a desireable effect, in that they help to knock down airborn particulates.  How much so?  There are too many variables to answer that, but the best bet is still to use air filters to remove allergens, to filter out dirt and dust particles.  It would seem that HEPA filters are still the best means of cleaning the air that we breathe.

Why are the manufacturers allowed to make the claims if they’re not true?   Apparently the government is not empowerede to regulate Ozone generators.  Or perhaps someone got a major payoff.  But if you check a bit online, you’ll find the EPA’s statement on the subject.  (Or you could follow the link we just provided here.)

If you’ve bought yourself some snake oil recently, you may want to return it.  If you cannot, it’s best to dismantle or crush it before disposing of it.  Normally we’d not be keen on adding such things to a landfill, but there are far too many people who remain unaware of the dangers of this.  Donating it to Goodwill or some similar organization just spreads the snake oil to some other unsuspecting person.   When disposing of an ozone generator, it’s best to follow the Golden Rule and make certain that no one else ever uses the thing again.

What can we do about the hole in the ozone?  Most dangerous aerosol sprays are gone, and the dangerous freon is unlawful to discharge intentionally.  Stop using combustion engines.  That’s the single best thing we can do for ourselves and our planet.

Wheels

Zagato’s PRT Pod A Huge Hit at WFES

Zagato is much better known for such suave stylings as those made for Maserati, Ferrari and Aston Martin, but it was their Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) pod which seems to have gotten the lion’s share of attention at the World Future Energy Summit (WFES) in Abu Dhabi this year. The PRTs are going to be used to transport students at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology this fall. For now, they’re on display and wowing the attendees.

The WFES has brought together heads of State, auto manufacturers, energy producers, scientists, and all manner of other concerned parties, both to network and to thinktank what our futures will hold. As you may have read, the Middle-east is sinking billions into alternative energies, and clearly taking the next wave of energy into their own hands — including acquiring the PRTs.The PRTs operate by calculating the number of revolutions of the tires, the direction traveled, and calibrating all of that by magnetic sensors which correlate with marked positions on the street. Sensors slow or stop the vehicle if there’s an object blocking the path ahead.

Studies have shown them to be much safer than having a human operator. The pods will travel to pre-determined stops, but will not run unless there are occupants, avoiding the waste of large bus routes which operate at all hours. Seating 4 comfortably (or 6 cramped,) the cost of these pods, once they’re being mass-produced, is expected to be about $40k each, will run on LiOn batteries from China, and will run for 3 hours before they need to be recharged. The pods are expected to play a big part in the zero-carbon city of Marsdar, as there will be 50,000 residents and another 40,0000 workers who arrive in the city every workday, all leaving their cars (if they have them) at the gate.  Similar craft have carried people in Europe already.  

2getthere, the same company which developed the PRT pods, has provided Holland’s Rotterdam with some 300 automated lorries, for example.  They also have developed human transport vehicles for use there in the Netherlands. The comfort and safety of the pods shows us a rather favorable vision of the future.  Ride on cushioned seats, holding hands or facing each other.  Have a conversation, catch up on the morning news.  The car will stop to let you off at your chosen destination.  Chauffeurs for everyone, and Green at that?  That’s our future?  Not bad.  Not bad at all! 

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