Ask The Green Miles: Are Smart Cars the Greenest Choice?

The quintessential auto show picture

When folks ask me for advice on car-buying, they almost always bring up Smart Cars. They're so small, they must be the most fuel efficient, right?

But smallest size doesn't necessarily mean the best fuel efficiency. Sure, the Smart ForTwo gives you a really good 36 miles per gallon combined city/highway at a very low base price. But a nice gas-sipping subcompact - say, a Ford Focus or a Toyota Yaris - will give you very similar fuel efficiency (low 30s) with TWICE the passenger volume for only a couple of thousand more.

If you're a short-to-medium distance commuter, all-electrics like the Ford Focus Electric or Nissan Leaf will deliver absolutely amazing savings on fuel cost and pollution. And for folks who regularly make longer drives and need a hybrid, the Toyota Prius is still king.

The Environmental Protection Agency's FuelEconomy.gov gives a great rundown of the most fuel-efficient cars, along with the most and least fuel-efficient SUVs and trucks.

That brings me to a related pet-peeve: When people think I'm reflexively anti-SUV. Yes, if you're a single person driving a Chevy Suburban because you might go skiing once next year, you're wasting money and polluting our air for absolutely no reason. But if you need some room for your family, get a Toyota Highlander Hybrid and you'll be getting only somewhat worse mileage (28 mpg combined) than those Smart Car drivers.

Ask The Green Miles: Mattress Disposal

Here's a question that cuts to the core of me, Baxter:

Do you have any ideas on mattress disposal?

You see, I recently bought a new mattress when I didn't really need to ... and trying to get rid of the old one made me wish I'd held onto it a little longer.

Goodwill & similar organizations won't accept used bedding for fear of bedbugs. Putting it on Craigslist only got me emails from scammers. I spent a week looking for a way to keep it out of the incinerator with no luck.

"There are some awesome mattress recycling facilities ... but unfortunately not in this area," says Allison Lohrenz, the solid waste programs coordinator here in Falls Church. "Cross your fingers that one will be here soon!"

Right now, mattress recycling is limited to local efforts & special events (and special events aren't so great for people who live in apartments & don't have a basement to stick their old mattress in until the next recycling event comes around). Grist's Ask Umbra points to some hope for mattresses in Massachusetts:

Massachusetts is home to one of the nation’s few mattress recyclers, and another outfit is venturing into New England soon. It’s amazing what happens to your mattress: the wood is chipped for energy, the steel springs recycled, the cotton and foam used for insulation or other textile needs.

You should email your local elected officials & recycling coordinator and ask them to support bringing a mattress recycling program to your area ... but in the short term, your mattress is most likely heading for the landfill or an incinerator.

Got a cool mattress recycling program in your area (or an alternate idea for what to do with your old mattress)? Let us know in the comments section.

Ask the Green Miles: Which Fish are Most Sustainable & Have Least Mercury?

First, the short answer: Check out the FDA's advisory on mercury in fish & shellfish, then cross-reference the FDA's chart of typical mercury content in fish with your local Seafood Watch pocket guide.

But in the big picture, if you're concerned about mercury in your fish, you should be thrilled about the Obama administration's new limits on mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants. They're often wrongly treated as separate concerns - coal plants pollute our air & water, and there's mercury in fish. That's why reporters let Republicans like Mitt Romney (sometimes joined by coal-state Democrats) bash Environmental Protection Agency regulations on coal-fired power plants in the abstract without connecting the dots to the 1 in 7 newborns at risk for brain damage and learning difficulties due to mercury exposure in the womb.

Grist's David Roberts digs deeper into why the new mercury rules are a BFD.

Ask The Green Miles: Real Christmas Tree vs. Fake Tree?

I don't encourage getting a live tree with roots still attached and trying to re-plant it. Getting a tree to survive a transplant is hard enough, but the cold outdoors-warm house-cold outdoors shock is more than most evergreens can handle.

Some related links:

• Arlington Christmas tree recycling info
• National list of organic Christmas tree farms
• Grist's Ask Umbra on the real vs. fake question

You can see more of my videos and subscribe at my YouTube page.


Note: Always call ahead to live Christmas tree farms, you never know when they'll take a year off from selling trees to let the young ones grow.

Ask The Green Miles: McCain vs. Obama on the Environment

You can subscribe to my videos here.

Ask The Green Miles: Computer Recycling

Here's a question for Ask The Green Miles:

Hi Green Miles... so what do I do with my old iMac computer once I get the data off of it?? I have no idea!!
Help me.

Sincerely,
It's Not Easy Being Green

Good question, bad pseudonym. It is easy to be green. The people who made your computer say so right on their website.

Apple offers free recycling of old computers. All you have to do is register on their website and take your packaged computer to the nearest FedEx location. Most other computer manufacturers will help you recycle your computer as well.

You can also donate your computer to the National Cristina Foundation. It will then match your donation to charities, schools and public agencies.

In case neither of those options work for you, the National Recycling Coalition can help connect you with your local government's recycling program. In DC, DPW offers a free, weekly Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) and electronic recycling (e-cycling) drop-off service at the Benning Road Trash Transfer Station, 3200 Benning Road, NE, each Saturday from 8am to 3pm. The weekly dropoffs started recently after the bi-annual e-cycling event turned into an epic fail.

Why do you need to recycle your computer and other household electronics? A study by the New Jersey Institute of Technology found consumer electronics account for only 1 percent of the total content of landfills by volume, but contribute up to 70 percent of their toxic content. Inform has more details. Grist's Ask Umbra is also a great resource for this and other issues.

Got an environmental question? Ask The Green Miles!

Ask The Green Miles: Recycling VHS Tapes

Jennifer asks:

I have several VHS tapes - movies and some blanks.
What do you think is the best way to recycle them? Thanks!

First of all, The Green Miles strongly recommends carrying at least five VHS tapes on you at all times in case you're stranded on a deserted island. Could come in handy.

It doesn't look like there's any easy way for consumers to recycle small quantities of VHS tapes. I'm just guessing here, but I'd think there are just too many different types of plastic, metal and chemicals in too small a package to make it worthwhile.

However, that doesn't mean you can't give the tapes new life. The website eHow has several recommendations for donating old tapes to places that can get more use of out them.

And for really creative folks, MyRecycledBags.com offers instructions for using the tape itself to make a crocheted sling bag.

UPDATE 6/30: Just heard about this option for businesses or apartment/condo complexes -- the GreenDisk Tecnhotrash can.

Ask The Green Miles: Can You Recycle Corks?

From reader VA Breeze:

Do you know anywhere in Southeastern VA that recycles cork-Thanks!

Generally my reply would go something like this: Don't sweat the small stuff. I'd much rather you spend the time it takes to recycle corks (or other small hard-to-recycle items like yogurt cups) doing something much more effective, like planting trees or telling your member of Congress to support climate action.

But thanks to The Green Girlfriend, I have an actual, non-obtuse answer to this question! For Christmas, she got me the Living Green Page-a-Day Calendar. It reveals that Yemm & Hart, a company that finds innovative uses for recycled products, is soliciting wine bottle corks. The corks are being converted into coasters, clipboards, and flooring, with cork contributors eligible for discounts on the finished products. All the details are on the Yemm & Hart website!

Got an environmental question? Ask The Green Miles!

Ask The Green Miles: Avoiding Recycling Faux Pas

My friend and fellow CRMer Brendan, who recently launched his own blog on the 2008 elections, was recently wracked with recycling interrogatories:

What say you, is it cool to recycle stuff that still has some residual food on it, like a peanut butter jar? I threw some soap and water in it and soaked the bastard for a while, but still had junk along the top.

Containers don't need to be perfectly clean before recycling, a rinse is usually fine and a soak in the case of peanut butter is good. They just need to be clean enough that they won't attract bears or George Costanza.

Peanut butter jars make the cut, but keep in mind the county only accepts narrow-necked plastic #1 or #2 containers like milk jugs, soda bottles, and laundry detergent containers. Yogurt containers, margarine tubs, etc. go in the trash. According to Stonyfield's excellent recyclable packaging explainer page, "Bottles and wide-mouth containers such as yogurt containers have different melting points, thus rendering them undesirable for recycling together. Many communities accept all HDPE plastics to avoid consumer confusion, then they landfill or incinerate all but the bottles."

A couple of days later Brendan had another question:

So on the Arlington site it says drop-off recycling centers accept the following in the way of "mixed paper," among other things:

"paperboard (such as cereal boxes, paper towel rolls, shoe boxes, beverage cartons, gift boxes, and any other single-layered paperboard not coated with wax)"

SO, the question I'm wondering if you may know is, any idea how you can tell if something's covered with wax? It seems like some Trader Joe's OJ i have is, but am not sure, thought I'd see if you'd come across this. Cereal boxes even seem like they could be, but it seems like the OJ carton's a bit waxier...

I think the county website's reference to "beverage cartons" is misleading here. The paper case that a 12-pack of Pepsi comes in is recyclable as mixed paper. A waxed carton of milk or juice is not. Basically, if it's a paper container meant to hold liquid (milk cartons, juice boxes, paper cups, some frozen food packages, etc.) it's not recyclable.

Got a question about the environment, sustainability, or livin' la vida verde? Ask The Green Miles! You can check out the question and answer archive here.

Ask The Green Miles: Most Vulnerable to Sea Level Rise?

A question from The Green Miles' dad:

Is there a place that would show a rising ocean first and most dramatically? Would it be Florida, Holland, Venice, Bangladesh, some Pacific Island group, or where? Or is it too soon for that kind of extrapolation?

Too soon? The impacts are already right here in my backyard. No fewer than 13 islands in the Chesapeake Bay have already been swallowed up by rising sea level. According to a recent National Wildlife Federation report, over the last century air temperatures in the Bay region have risen 1.4 degrees, water temperatures are up two degrees, and sea levels have risen two feet. That's due mostly to thermal expansion (warmer water takes up more space than cooler water), not melting glaciers or ice caps as commonly though.

But back to the question. Obviously I am not a scientist, so my answer will be more subjective based on what I've seen and read, but this is a blog and you should know this already. In the US, the these are the areas that are most screwed when it comes to rising sea levels:

- New Orleans (I know, you're shocked). It's below sea level already and still sinking due to subsidence, the natural compression of land composed of flood deposits. Why hasn't this been a problem until now? Because before people came along, the land would sink, then Mississippi would flood and retreat, leaving a layer of sand and silt to build it back up. Then we decided to put levees up and build on the floodplain. Now there's just sinking, no silting.
- Hampton Roads, VA (Hampton/Norfolk/Newport News/Virginia Beach), just a few feet above sea level and home to major naval installations.
- Miami, three feet above sea level.
- Lower Manhattan and its hundreds of miles of subway tunnels.

All of the above are not only below or right at sea level but are in prime hurricane landfall zones. But let's be honest - as the richest country in the world, America can afford to build flood barriers or even relocate key populations without a devastating economic impact. Globally, it's the poor nations that can't afford to adapt that will be hit the hardest.

Island nations just a few meters above sea level like The Maldives face grave threats, but for total number of people threatened, I'd have to go with Bangladesh. Not like they're so safe and sound to begin with - a recent cyclone killed 3,400 people, about twice as many people as killed by Hurricane Katrina. One estimate says just a 1.5 meter rise in sea level could affect 17 million people in Bangladesh.

The most frightening part about sea level rise is that no one can truly say how fast it will occur. The human brain tends to think of everything as rational and directly related - a 1% rise in temperature will result in a 1% rise in sea level. But as anyone who has ever, say, made ice knows, at the margin a one degree difference is all it takes to go from solid ice to water.

How will we know if and when we're approaching a similar tipping point? The United Nations International Panel on Climate Change has more or less punted on the issue, focusing on sea level rise probability due to known factors like thermal expansion. Now Arctic Sea ice is retreating faster than even the most pessimistic projections. Can anyone say definitively that Greenland's ice sheet, with its potential to raise sea levels 20 feet, won't beat expectations as well?

Wikipedia can tell you much more about sea level rise. And if you have a question about the environment, ask The Green Miles!

Ask The Green Miles: Beavers in Ballston?

This Saturday (July 28) at 5pm, Arlingtonians for a Clean Environment and Community Role Models will co-host the Ballston Beaver Pond Cleanup!

Most Ballston residents don't even know the pond exists. It's right next to the Fairfax Drive I66 on-ramp. You can see 66 in the background of this picture ... and in the foreground, trash floating in the pond.

Most cleanups are limited to just picking up trash on the water's edge, but we're going all-out for this one. ACE has arranged for two boats and skimmers, so some intrepid volunteers will be able to get out in the water to get every bit of trash in the pond.

Once the cleanup is over, we'll head over to Bailey's in the Ballston Common Mall. Always a friend of volunteer groups, Bailey's is providing us with free appetizers. Even if you can't make the cleanup, please join us at Bailey's! We should be there around 7pm.

Sign up here! Here's a question from a volunteer:

Are there really beavers in this pond??

I went to Elenor of Arlingtonians for a Clean Environment for the answer:

Good question. Not right now but there definitely have been off and on over the last few years. They tend to be transient, I guess like other residents of the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor.

It is a good wildlife spot with lots of birds. In general, a nice little oasis in the midst of I-66/Ballston high rises.

If you have an environmental question, Ask The Green Miles!

Ask The Green Miles: Paper Towel or Hand Dryer?

From blogger buddy Eric:

Which is better – drying your hands with paper towels, or using the electric dryer – assuming that is, that I’m wearing nice pants that I don’t want to use …

The short answer: Don't sweat the small stuff. And if you do, don't worry too much about exactly how you dry that sweat off.

Grist's Ask Umbra says it's pretty much a wash (no pun intended):

[I]t doesn't matter very much whether you use the blow dryer or the paper towel. The impact of how you dry your hands is so small that you'd be far better off spending your time and energy on more important issues, and those where the environmental payoff is clearer -- such as converting the lighting in all those public restrooms to energy-efficient light fixtures (or convincing the powers that be to do the converting).

Pablo Paster tries to take a crack at the issue from a greenhouse gas perspective, and finds paper towels may be slightly better, but not significantly.

Personally, I prefer the paper towel from a hygiene perspective. I dry my hands with the paper towel, then use it to open the door. MrsGreenThumb has some interesting tidbits about germ conventional wisdom - what's true and what's myth.

So on this one, you have The Green Miles' blessing to do whatever you'd like, guilt-free. If you like the hand dryer, use that. If you prefer paper towels, go for it. Just remember that they come from trees, so only take what you need.

The other choices that surround you will have a much greater environmental impact. Is the building you're in a green building? Do you drive or take public transportation? Do your members of Congress know you want them to sponsor legislation to cut carbon emissions 80% by 2050 to avoid the worst impacts of global warming?

Got a question for The Green Miles? Ask it here!

Ask The Green Miles: Are Microwaves Recyclable?

A reader recently submitted this question to Ask The Green Miles:

I've recently come across your blog and though you might have an answer to a question that I've not been able to find an answer to.

How does one properly dispose an old microwave oven? I thought I could take it to one of the recent hazardous household disposal days/e-cycling events, but they all said no small appliances and microwaves.

Calls to DC and Arlington County have gone unanswered. I know I shouldn't just toss it into the dumpster, but I feel like I've run out of options (and freecycle or free on craigslist is not an option -- it isn't really working anymore).

After a couple of quick emails to friends who work for Arlington County's Department of Environmental Services, I got this answer:

[O]ld microwave ovens are considered non-hazardous and are managed as a solid waste for disposal. There are, however, components that that are recyclable if demanufactured (e.g., metal, glass). Arlington County Solid Waste Bureau provides this service through their special-request collection in which a collection fee is charged.

For more information and/or to schedule a special collection for your microwave oven please call the Solid Waste Bureau Customer Service Center at (703) 228-6570.

While researching microwaves, I got to wondering whether they were energy efficient. Looks like cooking something in the microwave is vastly more energy efficient than cooking something in the oven. From Yes! Magazine:

According to Louis A. Bloomfield, professor of physics at the University of Virginia, cooking with microwave ovens is neither energy-hungry nor dangerous. In fact, compared to conventional ovens, microwave ovens are about five times more energy efficient, transferring 50 percent of their energy into food compared to the 10 percent energy transfer of conventional ovens.

You can read past editions of Ask The Green Miles here.

Got a question for Ask The Green Miles? Email me!

Ask The Green Miles: Should Virginia Widen I66 Through Arlington?

A question from What's Up Eric ...

What about all this stuff about widening I-66? My immediate answer is no, we don’t want to encourage more driving, but what is the answer? I’m not sure the Orange Line can handle any more Metro riders at rush hour either.

The short answer is, given our transportation history of rejecting smart solutions in favor of the politically expedient, why wouldn't we expect Virginia to expand I66?

Originally, Interstate 66 through Arlington was proposed as an eight-lane double-decker highway. Only intense opposition from Arlington residents limited the road to its current four lanes and led to efficiencies like HOV and space for the Orange Line in the median. The website of the Arlington Coalition for Sensible Transportation provides an excellent background of Interstate 66, chronicle of local opposition, and details of current expansion plans.

The greatest myth about transportation in the DC area is that our problems are due to capacity issues. Not true. We have usage problems related to our work and social systems being set up around single-car drivers all leaving their single family homes in the suburbs at the same time trying to get on the same roads to the same city where their jobs are located. The majority of DC-area workers:

* Drive in their cars alone
* Go from rural/suburban areas to DC or adjacent areas
* Leave home between 6am and 10am
* Leave work between 3:30pm and 7:30pm

Our region's elected officials have done absolutely nothing to discourage these patterns. Home prices encourage long commutes. Employers stubbornly demand workers come to the office from 9am-5pm daily so they can be supervised in person, even though many of us are computer drones who could just as easily work from home. When Metro tried to encourage off-peak and reverse commuting last December, it got little support.

So what do we get? Attempts at easy answers.

Wider highways. More of them.

Even though a new lane of highway can only move 1,500-2,000 vehicles an hour. Even though the DC area is already an EPA nonattainment area for ground-level ozone and fine particulates.

And from the recent "forums" on proposals to add spot expansions to I66, VDOT seems hell bent on adding that pavement. You can read more on the strong negative Arlington reaction to meetings in the Sun Gazette and the Arlington Connection.

Eric is right that Metro's Orange Line is stressed. The system as a whole passed 200 million customer trips for the first time in fiscal year '06 (July '05-June '06). Especially during the height of the morning rush, the slightest problem can send ripples throughout the system, a problem I've experienced many times.

But we ask more and more of Metro without giving the system the support it needs. Metro continues to lack a dedicated funding source, even though it's the only major transit system in the area to rely on three states/districts for funding, meaning Metro has to beg, borrow, and steal every year to make ends meet.

Instead, we try to pave our way out of the problem without trying to encourage more carpooling, biking/walking, or reverse or off-peak commuting. Knowing the history, I would expect nothing less.

Ask The Green Miles: Proving Myself Wrong About Urban Heat Islands

Not quite a question, but worthy of a response nonetheless. Comment from Citizen Tom ...

It seems to me you worry too much. The fact we think we have global warming is obviously due at least in part to the heat island effect.

Check out this web site. http://www.epa.gov/heatislands/

As someone who spent nearly 4 hours chewing on a Nerf football during last Sunday's Patriots-Chargers thriller, I'm in no position to address my anxiety. (Irrelevant Google-induced sidebar of the week: Nerf balls are apparently a must for sailing.)

The Urban Heat Island effect is popular because it makes sense. I know I've never questioned it. It's hotter on the pavement than on the grass. There's lots of pavement in the city. The weather people on TV are always saying it's a few degrees warmer at Reagan than it is in, say, Frederick. And there are lots of cartoons like this one that make a colorful (if not quite scientifically rigorous) case.

But after reading up on Urban Heat Islands, there seems to be only one thing everyone agrees on: It's really hard to objectively measure the temperature in a given place. If you take a temperature two feet off the pavement on a summer day, it's going to be much hotter than a temperature reading taken 100 feet above the pavement. Which is accurate? Unfortunately from a scientific standpoint, urban weather stations tend to be in/on/near buildings, while rural weather stations tend to be in/on/near dirt, so it's hard to make an accurate comparison. For details, scroll down to "Disadvantages of Surface and Air Temperature Measurements" at this site.

Because of all that disparity, there's some skepticism about whether the Urban Heat Island effect even exists, nevermind its effect on global warming. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states, "Extensive tests have shown that the urban heat island effects are no more than about 0.05°C up to 1990 in the global temperature records used in this chapter to depict climate change."

So it looks like the conventional wisdom about the effect of Urban Heat Islands is wrong on the global level, and a little shaky even on the local level. In fact, the very EPA website that Tom refers to discourages any direct connection between urban heat islands and global warming, and says that if anything, it's the byproducts of the heat island effect that could contribute to global warming ...

Heat islands describe local-scale temperature differences, generally between urban and rural areas. In contrast, global warming refers to a gradual rise of the earth's surface temperature.

While they are distinct phenomena, summertime heat islands may contribute to global warming by increasing demand for air conditioning, which results in additional power plant emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. Strategies to reduce heat islands, therefore, can also reduce the emissions that contribute to global warming.

Ask The Green Miles

From blogger buddy Eric ...

Hey Miles,

I have an enviro question for you. ... What do I do with old batteries? I know you can recycle them, but I have no idea where or how. And is it just better to buy rechargeable batteries for everything to avoid the waste?

Thanks!
Eric

While batteries are not my area of expertise, I can definitely do some digging to try to find some answers.

Many batteries pose such a strong environmental hazard because they contain heavy metals. This is an especially strong concern in Arlington County, where our trash is incinerated. It's not cost-effective to recycle batteries, but they can be safely disposed to minimize environmental damage.

According to Earth911.org, the most environmentally-friendly way to go is to use rechargable batteries, but to then make sure you recycle THOSE batteries ...

Rechargeables
Rechargeable batteries result in a longer life span and use fewer batteries. However rechargeable batteries still contain heavy metals such as nickel-cadmium. When disposing of rechargeable batteries, recycle if possible.
The use of rechargeable nickel-cadmium batteries can reduce the number of batteries entering the waste stream, but may increase the amount of heavy metals entering the waste stream unless they are more effectively recycled. As of 1992, the percentage of cadmium in nickel-cadmium batteries was higher than the percentage of mercury in alkaline batteries, so substitution might only replace one heavy metal for another, and rechargeable batteries do use energy resources in recharging.
Rechargeable alkaline batteries are available along with rechargers.

Here are details from Arlington County on how to safely dispose of your batteries ...

Household Battery Disposal
Because Arlington's trash is incinerated at a waste-to-energy plant, residents are encouraged to keep most batteries types (except alkaline and carbon-zinc household varieties) out of the waste stream. Batteries can contain heavy metals that have to be removed from the emissions of the waste-to-energy plant. Rechargeable batteries, as well as lithium, siver-oxide, and mercury batteries should be deposited in special orange collection boxes located at most Arlington County Fire Stations or brought to the HHW drop-off site. These batteries enter the County's Household Hazardous Waste program, where they are either disposed of properly or recycled. Alkaline and carbon-zinc household batteries should be disposed of along with the regular trash.

Arlington County Fire Stations with Battery Recycling Containers:
Fire Station 1, 228-0101, 500 S. Glebe Road
Fire Station 2, 228-0102, 4805 Wilson Boulevard
Fire Station 4, 228-0104, 3121 N. 10th Street
Fire Station 5, 228-0105, 1750 S. Hayes Street
Fire Station 7, 228-0107, 3116 S. Abingdon Street
Fire Station 8, 228-0108, 4845 Lee Highway
Fire Station 9, 228-0109, 1900 S. Walter Reed Drive
Fire Station 10, 228-0110, 1559 Wilson Boulevard
Fire Stations 2, 5 and 8 have aluminum can collection trailers.

And finally, the most surprising thing I found ... we have organic food, organic wine, and even organic beer ... but are you ready for an organic battery?