Wet Hot American Appliance

In 2018, it was the Water Products Purchase. In 2019, it was the Laundry Filtration Installation. In 2020 it was the Solar System Setup (and the clothesline!). It seems like every year, I make another biggish investment in some planet-friendly home improvement, but in 2021, there was not an environment blog post to be found! What happened? Did I give up? Had I succumbed to the allure of conspicuous consumption? Was I just too busy riding high on a lavish lifestyle of gas-guzzling flights around the world? (Hint: it was still COVID. I was most definitely not).

Of course I hadn't quit my commitment to a life of extreme green—I just got lazy about blogging! But here I am, only 8 months after the fact, finally getting around to telling you about my latest eco-endeavor—switching to a tankless water heater.

This story starts all the way back in 2016, when I first bought my house. My memories of this period are a little hazy because I've tried to block them out. It was a stressful 7 months of nonstop fixing of things that I hadn't known were broken! But among the most egregious of those things was the state of the water heater. Shortly after closing, I do recall having to bring in the gas company for some reason—maybe because my gas dryer wasn't running, or maybe to get the gas turned on in the first place. In any case, when the gas man left, he left in his wake two big red tags wired to my furnace and water heater, reading something along the lines of "HAZARD: DO NOT USE! TO BE REMOVED ONLY BY A CERTIFIED PLUMBER" and the gas lines leading to them firmly shut off. I, um, removed the tags.

Well, for at least a few days, I left the tags on and focused on regretting my life decisions. Then I had another technician come to the house for some other reason, and he blithely removed the tag on the furnace without a second's thought. He was not a certified plumber. So with that good precedent, I removed the tag from the water heater and lived with it in its life-threatening condition for the next 5 years. I am only telling you this now because no one died.

In case you're curious just what made this appliance so dangerous, it was this: The top of it was pitted with holes from years of rusting. The flue pipe, which at one point had been affixed to the top of the tank, now just balanced on three spindly and unattached legs, one of which had slipped into a rust hole and caused the whole pipe to teeter out of position.  I was informed that, when out of position, it could allow combustion fumes like carbon monoxide to escape out into my living areas. The solution, I decided, was to make sure it stayed in position. I placed it back in its precarious home and precariously positioned other objects around it to help it stay upright. I also kept my carbon monoxide detector supplied with fresh batteries at all times!

I hoped we could limp along like this until the heater crapped out entirely, at which point my home warranty should cover a replacement. But after 5 years of limping, waiting with one ear cocked for the wailing of a carbon monoxide alarm, I decided I was going to have to take matters into my own hands and replace the water heater with my own money.

Research-Time had arrived, and the more research I did, the more it became clear that tankless heaters are by far the most energy efficient of the water heating options out there. Among their other benefits, they take up less space than a traditional water heater, and they never run out of hot water. Since I wasn't really hurting for space in my basement and had never run out of hot water, those weren't compelling arguments to make the switch, but in my quest to protect the planet, it was really the only responsible choice.

Tankless heaters are much more expensive to install than storage heaters, but I felt confident that I would get a nice rebate in exchange, because the utility companies are always giving out rebates for Energy Star appliances. But alas! The electric company only gives out rebates for hybrid heat pump water heaters...which aren't compatible with my basement layout. The gas company gives out rebates for tankless water heaters, but only if you have them installed by one of their participating installers, all of which quoted me such high fees that I'd end up spending more even with the rebate.

Eventually I settled on paying a cheap company full price to install a gas-powered tankless water heater. When it was all said and done, I was underwhelmed.

Going into the project, I'd been prepared for be the biggest downside of going tankless: you have to run the water longer before it comes out of the tap hot. I didn't figure that would bother me—I can have a little patience, if it's for a good cause. But as I repeatedly stood idly next to the shower, watching the still-cold water swirl uselessly down the drain for what seemed like forever before I could even get in, I began to wonder: had I just traded lower energy usage for higher water usage?

Well, according to this handy graph from the water company, probably not. 

 

 

My new water heater was installed right about December 20, 2021. The water usage in the two billing periods after the installation was exactly equal to the usage in the same billing periods the year before the installation.

On the other hand, according to this graph from the gas company, the energy savings from this new water heater, if any, have been negligible. 

 

 

My gas usage is in fact lower than the previous year's, for almost every billing period...but that includes all the billing periods before I even had the new heater installed. So while I'm apparently not wasting a ton of water with the new heater, neither am I saving any money or gas.

So, of all the eco-friendly home improvements I've implemented over the past few years, the tankless water heater might have been the least impactful. if I was expecting some monumental improvements in my quality of life or my bills, I didn't get it. The much higher up-front costs of this high-tech heater may never be offset by energy savings. And because it operates on a computerized system, I fully expect it to fail just out of warranty and require expensive repairs. I probably could have done just as well or better with a new, more efficient, storage-style heater. But, uh, at least I gained some extra floor space behind the furnace?

Getting Clotheslined

I made passing mention of my newly purchased clothesline way back in 2020, promising a whole post about it that was very long in coming. But now it's here! You finally get to learn how a simple string brought joy into my life.

During the lockdowns of 2020, I spent a lot of time obsessing about dog fur. It was all over every surface of my home and every article of my clothes. When I took to the Internet in an effort to find something that would actually remove the fur and that wasn't a lint roller (single-use sticky plastic sheets? Not eco-friendly at all!), I came across someone's claim that hanging clothes out on a line was a surefire way to get the fur off them. Maybe it had something to do with all the flapping in the breeze, I assumed, but I didn't think about it too much.

That was just the final push I needed to get me to buy a clothesline, something I'd been considering for a while. I'd never been happy about using a hot air dryer—it's damaging to fabrics, uses a lot of gas and electricity, and generates indoor heat which is very undesirable at the height of summer. Hanging all my laundry to dry sounded pretty labor-intensive, but if it would reduce both my environmental footprint and the amount of dog hair on my clothes, it sounded like it would be labor well spent.

I ordered a retractable clothesline (made of plastic, ugh—but that was bound to hold up to the elements better than any natural materials) from Home Depot. It was 50 feet long, long enough to run from my shed to a corner of the house which conveniently already had nails sticking out of it, and once I'd figured out a way to attach the clothesline housing to the sheet-metal shed without ripping holes in the metal (I screwed through the shed wall into small wood blocks to help distribute the load), it was laundry time!

I quickly grew to love the clothesline. Although hanging the clothes took significantly longer than stuffing them into a dryer and pushing Start, I found something pleasantly quaint about the whole practice. And, as mindless chores go, it was oddly soothing to perform. At that time, I was working from home, so I could wash my clothes in the morning, and the minutes I spent doing laundry became welcome breaks from work. Plus, the colorful array of garments outside my window reminded me of a festive string of flags—like fun and functional backyard decor!

Of course, there are definite downsides to air-drying your laundry. If you start too late, it'll still be damp when the sun sets; and leaving it out overnight, while possible, tends to result in it getting dewy and slowing the drying process. Sometimes bugs crawl into the clothes or spiders build webs on them! So you really must start in the morning and have the better part of the day to leave the clothes outside. When you don't have the luxury of working from home, timing of the wash can be a challenge.

A 50-foot clothesline, no matter how tautly you pull it, will sag under the weight of its load, unfortunately low enough that even if the clothes don't quite touch the ground, they're still low enough that your dog can pee on them. Yes, it's happened.

I also find something disconcerting about airing my undies for all the neighbors to see, but I've found a way to work around that. I just I drape my more personal garments over the edge of the laundry basket and set them in a corner of the yard where they're hidden by a fence.

And then there's the matter of towels. Cotton terrycloth doesn't get very fluffy on a clothesline, but if you like drying yourself off with stiff sheets of sandpaper, it probably won't be a problem for you!

I wouldn't recommend using a clothesline as the only means of drying your laundry, because there are just some days when it's too wet or too cold for it to be practical. I still have the gas dryer for those days, but I use it a lot less now. The rest of the time, I happily put on my flapping fashion show. For me, the satisfaction of reduced energy use (and the joy of pretending I'm a pioneer woman!) outweighs the drawbacks.

Oh, and remember the reason I bought the clothesline in the first place? That part about line-drying being a panacea for dog-fur infestations? Well, I've left clothes on the line for days. I've left them out in high winds and torrential rains, and the fur in my sweaters remains undisturbed. All the forces of nature combined are no match for the tenacious grip of a single dog hair. So while hanging my clothes on a line has proved a welcome practice in many ways, in the specific area of dog-fur-management, I'll be hanged if I wasn't fed a line!

A solar system for the planet

There's always some ecological endeavor going on in my existence, but since January, I've been keeping mum about my biggest, most serious investment in the environment yet. It's something I've been hoping to do ever since I moved into this house, and it finally happened! Can you guess what it is? I'll give you a hint: you probably won't find it too shocking, but it will certainly be electrifying!

Do you give up? (I'm pretending you haven't read the title of this post).

OK!

It's that I got my house hooked up with solar panels! I'm officially running on renewable energy!

Here's me sunning myself on my newly multipurpose roof!
(I really was up there for a legitimate reason, not just a needlessly risky photoshoot!)

The plan had been in the works since summer of last year, but good things take time. It wasn't until late January that I had a functioning rooftop solar array. I'm now almost 7 months into my solar-powered life, and I can tell you it's stellar.

Get it? Stellar? Huh huh huh?

The actual process of getting solar panels was so uninteresting that I won't detail it here (it mainly involved signing a lot of contracts and forking over painful amounts of money every few months), but I'll happily field questions from anyone who's interested in setting up their own home solar system (planets not included!).

Now that I think about it, the period after going solar was also uninteresting. My panels basically just sit up there on my roof and, well, sit there. The first few months, I wasn't sure they were even working because I was unclear on the complex financial dance between me and my solar cells, the power company, and the free market. But after a short delay, my electric bills went way down. And then a few months after that, I began receiving payments for all the surplus power my system was generating!

You'd think that with all that free money rolling in, I'd be ready to cut loose and burn electricity like there was no tomorrow, but, if the initial estimates hold true, I still have 8 years before I'll break even on my initial investment. So until then, it's business as usual. In fact, I'm bound and determined to conserve electricity more than I did before—because once you go green, why not go greener? So it's been an interesting summer—thanks to coronavirus quarantines, I've been home twice as much, but trying to use half the electricity.

2020 is the year we'll all remember as the one where COVID-19 ruined everything. But at least I'll also be able to remember it as the year I finally achieved my goal of going solar. I kind of always thought of it as a pipe dream, but now it's real! So 2020 does have a bright side, and that bright side is as bright as the sun!

Green Washing

If my plastic-related guilt complex were a book, and its phases were chapters, they would look something like this:

1. Whether to pleather
2. Down on Downcycling
3. Bye, Bye, Bottles
4. Oh, Fork
5. Doing Water I Can

Chapter 6 (today's blog post) is really just Chapter 1 all over again—but this time, instead of just fake leather, I'm expanding my guilt to encompass all types of synthetic fabric.

Fabric is a topic very close to my heart, as you might expect of someone who relishes in having a constant stream of new clothes cycling in and out of her wardrobe.

The problem is, as I have been increasingly made aware, every time you wash your clothes, microscopic bits of those clothes get separated from the fabric and washed out into the sewer system, and thence into the waterways. If the clothes are made of synthetic materials, as most are these days, then the bits that come out are actually tiny fibers of plastic that don't decompose. Once in the waterways, those microplastics float around and get swallowed by animals, which is detrimental, to say the least, to their health.

So back to my conundrum, which is really everyone's conundrum: as a person who likes to wear clean clothes, how can I avoid polluting the world's water supply with the plastic effluent of my laundry habit?

Well, one solution is to eschew all synthetic fabrics. This is not easy. Since falling in love with online thrift shops, I have almost stopped buying any new (as in, not pre-owned) clothing whatsoever, but on those occasions that I'm tempted to purchase something firsthand, I do try to avoid anything that's not a natural fiber. If all consumers were to do the same, eventually, we might have an impact on the supply chain.

But in the meantime, most of the used clothes that are available are still made of plastic-based fabrics, and I'm not ready to stop wearing or washing my clothes entirely.

So what's the solution for the problem of clothing-related plastics? One word: filtration.

I can no longer remember how I learned that it's possible to filter your washing water to capture most of the plastic fibers, but I did! And once I did, there was no going back. I simply had to start filtering my laundry.

While they do sell little (plastic!) balls that are designed to be tossed into your washing machine to capture the microfibers there, I decided that wasn't enough. The best a little plastic ball can do is grab the fibers that happen to touch it, but with all that water spinning around in your machine, there is surely a much larger percentage of loose fibers that never come in contact with it.

So onward to the big guns: drain-hose filtration devices. With a filter that sits between my washing machine and the sewer system, I could be assured that every drop of water in my laundry load would eventually go through the filter, resulting in a much higher capture rate for microplastics.

According to my research, there are really only about 2 options for post-wash filtration devices, and I went with the Wexco Environmental Filtrol 160. I thought it would be a simple addition to my laundry room: Unplug some hoses, stick the filter in between, reattach, and run my washer with abandon!

Well, as with all of my home improvement projects, it was naturally a lot more complicated. There were some wall-mounting woes (not easy in a basement with cinder block walls), some hose-incompatibility issues, and some requisite laziness, all of which caused the installation process to take me about 4 months (2 if you don't count the time it sat in the box while I felt too daunted to start the project).

Finally installed!

Fortunately, once it was set up, it was smooth sailing. I planned to blog about the filter as soon as I finished, but due to the magic of procrastination, it has been 2 months since I installed it. In that time, it hasn't leaked so much as a drip, and it's filled probably about 1/5 of the way. At this rate, I can last almost a whole year on one filter bag (and then I'll probably empty and reuse it, because that's the eco-cheapo way!).

The bottom line for my faithful readers: If you had any qualms about the environmental impact of your clothes-washing routine, installing a filter is a good solution! It's relatively inexpensive, as far as home improvement projects go, and easy enough that any bumbling DIYer can tackle it in 2 months!

This story holds water

In case you weren't aware yet, collecting water runoff in a rain barrel is an eco-friendly way to prevent erosion and provide a water supply for your outdoor needs. I first started considering a rain barrel when I moved into my house, but after thinking about the amount of water I spend on my lawn and gardens (none), I decided a rain barrel probably wouldn't be the most worthwhile investment. Last spring, that all changed when I planted some seeds in the backyard and had to water them a handful of times. This got me to thinking that maybe a rain barrel wouldn't be such a bad idea after all.

The timing was perfect. That summer, I learned that if I installed a rain barrel outside my home, Prince George's County would reimburse me the cost of the rain barrel, as part of the Rain Check Rebate program. If the rain barrel cost me nothing, well, that was a horse of a different color! At minimum, it would create at least one spot in my yard where the gutters don't run directly into the ground next to the foundation. So I bought and installed a rain barrel.

A lot of time passed. Summer turned to fall, fall turned to winter, the water in the rain barrel alternately iced up and overflowed out the overflow hose (right into the ground next to the foundation, SMH), and I still hadn't used a drop of the water I collected. I needed to step up my rain game.

Other than watering the plants in my landscape (of which there are few, and which I have very little interest in watering after their planting day), the first use I came up with for the rain barrel was to hose off my bike after riding it home in messy weather. For this, I tried to use the garden hose I already have attached to the front yard spigot, but it was too long and too high off the ground to produce enough gravity-powered pressure to blast the gunk off the bike. So I was obliged to purchase a hose, naturally the cheapest one I could find: a 15-dollar spiral hose that also failed to produce enough pressure to blast the gunk off my bike (I should have expected that, but optimism won over my tenuous grasp of hydraulic flow). Oh, well, at least I now have a hose for watering the plants in my landscape, should I suddenly develop a passion for gardening and a boatload of patience (watering a single plant takes forever with the trickle that comes out of the hose).

The second use I came up with for the rain barrel was to source the water I use on my houseplants. Unlike my lawn and yard, my houseplants are cared for more or less faithfully, and as they continue to grow in number, I need increasingly large vessels to water all of them efficiently. For the past several months, I've been using my boyfriend's beloved VitaMix blender cup, as it's the largest easily poured container in the house, and it's always sitting conveniently on the counter.

However, the first time I used the rain-barrel water for my indoor plants, I realized I needed another container. As I watched the water flow out from the spigot labeled "non-potable," I realized I probably shouldn't be using a food preparation vessel to haul around water of questionable purity. Of course, I washed the blender cup thoroughly after that, but as if to remind me that the water from the rain barrel was just about as sketchy as water can be, my Norfolk Island Pine sprouted a magnificent garden of neon yellow fungus just a few days after watering.

That's not the kind of mushroom I want touching my kitchen equipment, so I vowed not to water the plants with the Vitamix any more.

But what to use, then? A sensible person would advise me to use a watering can, but I have never owned a watering can in my adult life, and I've never even run across one on Freecycle or at the thrift store. They must be the kind of thing that once you have, it's til death do you part. But my conscience (scientifically proven to be one part Extreme Cheapskate, one part Tree Hugger) wasn't really too keen on the idea of buying one new. Watering cans are outrageously expensive, apparently starting out at well over 10 dollars for a decent size. For something whose basic purpose is just to carry a couple liters of fluid, they seem exorbitantly priced compared to, say, a 2-liter bottle of soda, which can be less than a dollar in the right stores, and already comes with the fluid in it!

The compulsive crafter in me tried to devise a clever solution that I could construct from, say, a gallon milk bottle or one of the aforementioned 2-liters of soda, but ultimately, I decided I really wanted a watering can. I needed something with a spout that could get down to the base of my plants without spilling on the leaves (and thence to the floor, as such things go), that was sturdy enough not to collapse no matter what part of it I held onto, and that was graceful enough that I could maneuver it around my window fence without spilling or stabbing myself on a cactus. I needed an honest-to-goodness watering can, and I needed one now, before my plants dried out and I was forced to load up the Vitamix with fungus spores again. Finally, I acknowledged that, barring a miracle (perhaps a rain of watering cans instead of water?) I was going to need to pay money for this new necessity.

And this is when the other half of my conscience revved into action—the tree-hugging one. After reading a lot of recent news about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, I'm more depressed about the environment than ever, and, consequently, trying extra-hard to avoid buying new things made out of plastic. But sakes alive! All the steel watering cans out there are like 3 times the price of an equivalently sized plastic one...and the plastic ones are already exorbitantly priced, as I might have mentioned. I decided to search for a watering can made of recycled plastic, and I found one—one of the cheapest cans of its size, even, and made in the USA! Wow! Practically everything an ethical miser could ever want! I put it in my Amazon cart, and when I came back to make my purchase the next day, I found an even cheaper version of the same can! So, for 9.63$ (3 times as much as I'd originally hoped to have to pay, but less than I'd resigned myself to paying), I had a watering can of my very own.

When it arrived at my doorstep, I took it out of the box and was instantly worried because it looked smaller than the blender cup, and I'd really been hoping for an upgrade. But once I filled it with water, it became clear that looks are deceiving. It held as much as the Vitamix, and then some! I watered half my plants, did not stab myself with a cactus, and considered the whole endeavor a success. The can even makes an acceptable addition to my decor!

I usually like my stories to have a moral, but this one doesn't really, except perhaps to illustrate that even if you get a rain barrel for free, it's still going to cost you at least 25 dollars in new things that you didn't need before. However, if you are still looking for a more meaningful takeaway, let it be that if you're in the market for a botanical hydration vessel, perhaps you should consider this one.

Adventures in Cooking: Cake pop bars

I'm not a big fan of cake, so the first time I tried cake pops (last summer), I was rather surprised to find I liked them! I liked them so much that I contemplated making some of my own. I even looked up some recipes, which is how I learned that their secret ingredient – the thing that makes them taste so good and not at all like normal cake – is cream cheese. But really, who was I kidding? How could I, in good eco-conscience, willingly create a treat that required the use of a disposable lollipop stick, just for the aesthetics!? And all that effort, baking and rolling and freezing and decorating, only to make something I was just going to eat? Not going to happen!

At least, it wasn't going to happen...until I started thinking about that block of cream cheese, sitting in my refrigerator, bored and lonely...and how there was a precedent for making a treat that is traditionally rolled into balls and dipped, in a much less labor-intensive bar form instead.

And so I made it my personal mission to find a way to make cake pop bars! Here is the recipe, in classic Adventures in Cooking style.

Ingredients:

1 package of Oreos

2/3 package of cream cheese

candy melts (melting chocolate)

1. Remove Oreos from package. This is an actual step in my recipe because it gives me the opportunity to bring up the fact that you probably don't have Oreos. You don't have Oreos because who wants to pay 4$ for a 14.5-oz pack of cookies when they can buy the Target brand sandwich cookies for $2.09 and get an extra ounce in the bargain? So open up your pack of Market Pantry sandwich cookies and begin to contemplate how many cookies are in that extra ounce and whether you should modify the recipe to account for that.
2. Use a food processor to crumble cookies. If you don’t have a food processor you can put the cookies in a large plastic bag and use a hard object to crush the cookies as finely as possible. You don't have a food processor, and you don't have a clean plastic bag, either (because buying bags just to use them once would be wasteful), so improvise by emptying the industrial-sized bag of M&Ms in your fridge and using that. Eat a couple M&Ms.
3. Because the bag has been previously chewed by the dog, allow cookie crumbs to spill out of the holes and onto the counter. Be unsuccessful in completely crushing the cookies (despite the use of a heavy cooking pot in lieu of a rolling pin, because who has one of those lying around!?) and so move them into the blender.
4. Blend cookies several times. Spray more cookie crumbs on counter.
5. Get cream cheese out of refrigerator.
6. Realize you probably should have let the cream cheese soften before attempting to mix it into the powdered cookies, so take a break. Start writing a blog post about this recipe or something.
7. When you come back 2.5 hours later from selling stuff on eBay, in a bowl, combine Oreo cookie crumbles and cream cheese. First try to do this with a wooden spoon, but find that the cream cheese is too attached to itself to want to mingle with the crumbs. Then try using an electric hand mixer. Spray more crumbs on counter. Go back to the wooden spoon, spill more crumbs, then finally decide to wash your hands and knead that stuff!
8. Form dough into one large ball and chill in refrigerator for about 30 minutes or the freezer for 10 minutes.
9. Three hours later, come back and read the next step, which says "Now, roll dough into 1.5 inch balls." Realize that since you wanted to spread the dough into a pan rather than roll it into balls, it was probably counterproductive to refrigerate it. Oh well. Forward momentum!
10. Ignore the following step: Use the second half of my Cake Pop Recipe to complete your pops. I like to serve mine chilled. Recipe will yield approximately 25 cake pops.
11. Instead, press the cake pop batter into an 8x8-inch pan.
12. Get out a bag of white chocolate. Overestimate how much you need, then melt it in the microwave per the instructions.
13. Spread melted white chocolate over pan of batter with a rubber spatula. Realize you have either not melted your white chocolate enough, or it is just too thick by nature, because it is dragging crumbs of cake pop batter wherever you spread it. Eventually succeed in spreading the now-blackened white chocolate over the entire pan.
14. Cut the bars while the white chocolate is still hot, because it is far too thick and certainly won't be cuttable while it's cool.
15. Take some photos, go wild with the filters, and try to make it look delicious!
    
16. (Optional) You now have 1/3 of a package of cream cheese and some unknown quantity of white chocolate left over. Imagine what kinds of Adventures in Cooking you can have with that!

This recipe was lovingly modified from one I found online.

Second Life: Reusing the Plasticware

Every workplace has an Office Mom. At mine, I think I might be the "Office Earth Mother."

We have an official Green Office Coordinator, who is not me, but I'm the one always nagging my coworkers to be more green. I tut-tut at them when they use the handicapped button rather than just pushing the door open themselves. When we go shopping for refreshments for our monthly meeting, I refuse to let my coworker get plastic bags, even when I've forgotten the reusable bags. I carry everything out in a big awkward armful on those days. I'm the only one in the office who adamantly refuses to get double computer monitors—because double the monitors means double the power consumption!

But the Green Office habit I wanted to talk about today is reusing the plasticware.

When my coworkers and I go out to eat, one or the other of them will almost always grab a big handful of plastic forks to use later. Every time I see this, I have a silent conniption.

First of all, I think it's rude to take more than you need at that moment; if you need plasticware at the office that badly, then maybe you should buy some. But secondly, it's wasteful! I feel bad enough when I have to use a single disposable utensil at a restaurant. But it's one thing to use a plastic fork out of necessity because that's all the restaurant has and you need one to eat your meal. It is quite another to stockpile forks at your desk because you're too lazy to wash your own silverware.

But what can I do? It's hard to fault my coworkers for their habits when having your own silverware at our office is such a pain. We don't have a kitchen, so if you want to use reusable dining implements, you have to wash them in the bathroom sink—which is not conveniently located—with stupid foaming hand soap that doesn't clean anything.

Fortunately, I've found a solution! Whenever I go out to eat now, I wipe off my plasticware and take it home. I wash it in the dishwasher and bring it to the office.  Then the next time I need a utensil, I use one of the re-used ones! This really takes a weight off my conscience because I don't feel as wasteful using plasticware at restaurants. And I don't have to go through the hassle of washing my utensils in the restroom! After my meal, if the utensil is still reasonably clean and unbroken, I'll take it home for another wash and re-use.  If not, then I can throw it away with the reassurance that I at least got one more use out of it than I would have if I'd tossed it at the restaurant.

After several months of this, I've amassed such a collection of forks, knives, and spoons, that there is no excuse for anyone at the office to stockpile single-use utensils. So the next time I see them going for the forks at a restaurant, my conniption will not be silent! "Stop that!" I'll say! "I'll give you some of mine!"

Office Earth Mother allows no misbehavior.

Putting the "can" back in "incandescent"

I bet you've been worrying nonstop since I told you that Congress had effectively banned incandescent bulbs starting in 2012. I know I have.

I even went so far as to stockpile incandescent bulbs for later use. That is, I bought a 4-pack back in July, knowing that 4 light bulbs will probably last me 4+ years...as long as I don't keep knocking my bedside lamp onto the floor as I've already done twice this year.

Well, it turns out all my fears were unfounded, since at least one company is now manufacturing a dimmer-friendly bulb that complies with the new regulations!

Phew. Huge sigh of relief.

Next on the agenda: find a job that doesn't require me to get out of bed before sunrise.

Huge sigh of premonitory defeat.

More carrots, less sticks

Today is Earth Day. In honor of the occasion, I'm going to throw out (er, compost?) an environmental topic that I've been hoarding for later use.

Everyone's hopping on the ban wagon these days. They seem to be obsessed with "banning" environmentally unfriendly products like single-use plastic bags, bottled water, and incandescent light bulbs.

Energy efficiency seems good, but banning energy inefficiency is the wrong approach!

People don't like to be oppressed. Wouldn't it be a lot more sensible to hype the incentives of using eco-friendly stuff, but still make the ucky stuff available for those who really want them? Energy efficient lighting should be something that everyone should want! If they don't want it, it's probably because they aren't fully aware of the benefits.

Or they actually have a legitimate use for the old inefficient technology. What about heat lamps, whose sole function is to waste energy through heat loss? What about sunrise alarm clocks, which rely on the dimmability of incandescent bulbs to wake their users up in the morning? (I've heard they make dimmable CFL's but they work like crap.) Although the US didn't outright ban incandescent lights as some countries have done, they have instituted stringent energy requirements that today's bulbs can't meet.

In my opinion, governments should spend less effort banning things that are supposedly "bad" and spend more effort educating people about why "good" things are good.

Until our lawmakers come to their senses, though (or until light bulb manufacturers make an energy efficient bulb with light output proportional to power input), I'm just going to have to build up a stockpile of incandescent bulbs before 2012 rolls around.

Elegy for a water bottle

I'll tell you a secret: What I do now because it's environmentally friendly, I did originally just because it was cheap.

I remember the bottled water craze, when everybody was just fine with paying a dollar for what you could get for free out of a drinking fountain or a faucet. Everyone, it seemed, but me. I thought buying bottled water was the dumbest thing you could do.

I got on this hydration kick just about when I graduated high school. I made sure I had water with me everywhere I went. I never once bought a bottle of water, but when I acquired one for free, I would keep it. I would fill and refill it from the sink over and over again until it either melted in the dishwasher or got lost.

In college, I rarely lost my water bottles, because I always carried them in my backpack. Once I graduated and began taking them to work with me, I was continually losing them. No one seemed to understand that though they were designed for disposal, mine were supposed to be kept. Despite my name all over them in big letters, whenever I forgot one in the break room overnight, it would be gone by morning. This frequent loss of my water bottles caused me no end of distress, especially since I had long ago realized the environmental benefits of reuse, and was acutely aware of how much ecological damage I was doing every time I threw a bottle away.

Soon, I discovered the aesthetic appeal of Metro Mint bottles. These little pieces of work were so gorgeous, I would pick them out of the recycling bin and claim them as my own. Once, I even actually bought a brand-new bottle of the stuff, just so I could reuse it.

Around the same time as my Metro Mint Water kick, the bottled water backlash began in earnest. It had been brewing for a couple of years (as an employee of an organization focused on beverage container waste, I may have been more aware of it than the general public), but it really fired up after 2006. Suddenly, bottled water became the enemy, and reusable bottles were selling like hotcakes. (As an employee of a natural foods store, I may have seen a higher spike in bottle consumption than the population as a whole.)

But in spite of all the trends pointing towards fancy-pants bottles, I still carried around my cheap disposables. I didn't start using a reusable bottle until early 2010, and then it was only because my last Metro Mint bottle disappeared and I didn't want to have to buy a new one. Instead, I turned to a bike bottle that I'd been given at a volunteer event the previous spring.

KOR One Special Edition
Hydration Vessel (Say that
one time fast!)

It was ugly. But it was free. I used it faithfully until this year, when suddenly, new water bottles began to rain down on me! Early in the summer, my bottled-water decrying employer #1 held a meeting at which every attendee was given a brand new glass bottle (and a nifty scarf). Then my water-bottle selling employer #2 held an event at which all attendees were given a brand-new, even fancier, reusable glass bottle of their very own! I chose that fancy bottle to be my new sidekick, even after my bottled-water decrying employer #1 sent me an even fancier KOR One Special Edition Hydration Vessel as a reward for helping organize and facilitate a particularly stressful conference.

And I loved my glass bottle. It was my pride and joy. I carried it everywhere with me (except for those occasions when I didn't want to carry around a bottle that weighed a whole pound empty, or I needed one that would withstand a little rough treatment) until a Sunday ago. I took it to my choir concert, and it didn't come back with me. I don't know where it went. I called the church, and the very nice person I talked to said it hadn't been found there.

I sadly gave up all hope of ever seeing it again, and I write this post in its memory. Strangely, its death has catapulted me to new heights! Now I'm using my KOR One. People think it's pretty awesome, and they comment on it all the time. And so, by miraculous twists of fate spanning nearly a decade, I have grown from a weird cheapskate with a bedgraggled Poland Springs bottle at my side, to a trendy, green role model with a bottle the envy of the world!

Of Backs and Baths

I think it's official: I inherited my dad's predisposition for back injuries.

I've noticed that, a lot of the time when I eat too much, my lower back gets stiff. I don't know if this is from holding myself in an odd posture to alleviate stomach discomfort, or if the excess food does something weird to my bones, but it happens. On Friday, I consumed an entire bag of Doritos in a day, and Sunday I noticed the familiar faint ache in my back. I thought little of it, and went about my day as usual, working and stopping for a gulp of water when I felt thirsty. Well, one of my gulps was poorly timed, and part of it ended up in my lungs. I coughed to clear it out, bent down to grab a box, coughed again, and suddenly there was searing pain in my lumbar region.

Fortunately, it subsided, but not completely. I toughed it out through work, which was probably a bad idea. By the time I left (after 6 more hours of standing at a food prep counter and carrying crates of snacks out to the shopping floor), I was in so much pain I kept getting dizzy, and could only hobble home (unfortunately carrying a rather heavy bag with me) like an old woman, stopping periodically to bend over and stretch my overloaded spinal column.

I pretty much spent today in bed. They say lying around is the worst thing you can do when you have a back injury, but obviously they have no idea what sitting or standing feels like. I figure as long as I change positions frequently and stretch whenever I think about it, I'm doing the best I can do.

And because I felt like a deserved a treat after all that suffering, I topped off the afternoon with a nice hot shower. They say (probably the same "they" that give such terrible back injury advice) that taking a shower uses more water than taking a bath, thus making eco-conscious folks like me feel guilty every single time we shower. Today, I tested the claim, plugging the tub while taking my shower. I took an extra long one, thoroughly washing my face with special exfoliating soap, conditioning my hair, and stopping periodically to enjoy the hot water. When I was done, the water in the tub barely covered my ankles. I don't know about you, but when I take a bath, I definitely fill the tub higher than ankle deep.

So, while my comfort meter is dragging in the dirt, I'm still happy to know that even my most self-indulgent showers are more eco-friendly than I was led to believe. I think the score is even.

Where I'm gonna go when I die

Speaking of things being at the end of their life span...the trusty pocket calculator that I've had since 8th grade (that's 14 years, folks) is starting to randomly display blank diodes. Its time is near...And I'll miss it when it goes!

Last time we talked, I was talking to you about what happens to consumer goods at the end of their life span.

Today, I'd like to talk to you about what happens to consumers at the end of their life span.

In America, a very popular way to dispose of bodies is to dress them up fancy, pump their now-defunct circulatory systems full of chemicals, seal them up in a fancy, expensive box, and then cover them up with a ton of dirt and a fancy, expensive rock. This rather ludicrous practice has its roots in the fear of decomposition (obviously something that we should all be worrying about once we're dead) and has no doubt been encouraged by the funerary industry, which stands to rake in a good bit of profit when corpses are provided with their own cosmeticians.

There are other options. Many people choose cremation, which allows the remains of the dear departed to be scattered romantically across bodies of water or favorite haunts from the time before the dear departed were technically capable of haunting anything. In some cases, cremation also allows the dead body to be stored in a very compact manner so that it can be cherished forever by adoring family members. Cremation is significantly cheaper than its cousin, the extravagant burial, but just think of the carbon dioxide emissions!

Actually, there is no other option that I can think of that's in common use. But obviously neither of those options are satisfactory to a tree-hugging hippie who would rather die than let any of those earth-scarring things be done to her dead body.

Oh.

Well, moving on! There are still other options--even if they're not as popular!

I've heard, if you happen to live in the right third-world countries, you can have your body placed somewhere out in the open so carrion-eaters can have their way with you. Unfortunately, I do not live in one of those countries, and I don't think that practice is ever going to fly in the US.

So, what's a good eco-conscious American citizen to do?

The answer is, find yourself a good green cemetery and do your best to ensure that's where you end up!
They are out there. I don't feel much like writing about it at the moment, because I think I've dripped sarcasm over just about every tradition related to respecting the dead, and if I don't want to join their (highly respectable) ranks, I'd better shut my figurative mouth now.

But here, visit these links:

• http://www.naturalburial.coop/
• http://www.cemeterygroup.org/

The downside to upcycling

Back when my purse collection was in its prime, it filled an entire printer-paper case, with a few extras lying about here and there. This might not seem that huge, but to someone who likes to avoid clutter, it was oppressive. Last summer, I donated a dozen or so purses, and the collection now fits inside a standard milk crate along with some other apparel-related odds and ends. Why am I telling you this?

Well, I'll come back to that.

One of the current trends in the waste-reduction world is to take old stuff that would ordinarily get thrown away and transform it into something new. They call this "upcycling." Something like adding postconsumer plastic to paving materials would be called "downcycling," because once the plastic has hit the road, it's really reached the end of the road. There's not a lot that can be done to further reuse or recycle that plastic, once it's been mixed with gravel and fused to the ground. And being used for driving on is not what every bottle aspires to. Plastic lumber is another example of downcycled material. If you know a tackier building material than plastic lumber, you let me know. Upcycling, on the other hand, is repurposing material into something of a greater value than the original.

The media is just all aglow with stories of great stuff being made out of not-so-great stuff. People are making jewelry from just about every reclaimed object under the sun. Terracycle fashions cute tote bags from old food wrappers—among many other clever products. And clothes made with cigarette butts? Yes, we've got those too.

But let's not get too excited about it, now. The point I was trying to make with my purse story was that we just don't need that many purses. Or light switch covers, or sandals, or trivets. There's only a finite number of things we can make with would-be junk, and our consumption of the disposable items is pretty much guaranteed to exceed that number.

In some ways, I would go so far as to say that upcycling is a euphemism for downcycling. Higher-quality does not necessarily mean more environmentally friendly, and while upcycled products might look a lot prettier than they did in their original form, they aren't any more recyclable than they were. At the end of the day, your wallet made from tires is still going to end up in a landfill.

I'm not saying that upcycling is bad. But the existence of a use (even if it's a one-time use) for old packaging materials gives manufacturers an incentive to not find greener packaging material in the first place. Wouldn't it be nice if we didn't have to invent creative things to do with our single-use products after we'd used them—because we didn't have single-use products to start with?

Well, we do have single-use products. But as consumers, we have the power to change that. The next time you're shopping, consider the full life cycle of whatever it is you're buying. If you're buying snack chips, you can buy the ones in petroleum based plastic, or you can buy the ones in the compostable bag (way to go, Sunchips!). While a purse made from potato chip bags is greener than a similar purse made from virgin PVC, the earth would be better off if you chose a purse made from cotton canvas—which, at the end of its life, will degrade neatly back into the dust from whence it came. That's closing the loop.

While upcycled goods are a nifty way to make use of the oft-wasted material cluttering our world, ultimately, I hope we learn to focus on eliminating the oft-wasted material at the source, making upcycling obsolete.

Consider the Environment

You probably know me as your friendly tree-hugging hippie who just can't shut up about reducing, reusing, recycling, cutting emissions, and conserving energy. And for good reason—I am more than happy to talk about the ridiculous lengths to which we can go to save the earth.

For example, take a look at my headphones. They're not the only ones I've got, but I keep using them because I just can't stop!

These headphones are a chintzy piece of junk that I think I got free when I bought a tape recorder—if that tells you anything about how old they are. When the foam pads wore out and fell off, I glued on replacement bits of foam that I repurposed from some cell phone packaging.

Whenever someone visits and looks at my headphones, they immediately tell me I need a new pair. They even offer to give me a new pair! But I tell them, no, these ones are still working and it would be wasteful to throw them away!

But I didn't come here today to talk about my headphones. (Even though I do want to remind you that when your headphones wear out to the point where they can't be saved even with new foam padding, you should not throw them out, but take them to an electronics recycling dropoff, such as at Best Buy.)

No, today I came here to talk about an environmental trend that I think is stupid!

Have you ever gotten an email, and down at the bottom, it had this slogan, "Consider the environment before printing this email?" It probably even had a cute webdings picture of a stream meandering through some trees!

That's stupid! Email works like this: You read it, you delete it. How many people in this world actually print their emails? Do you? Do you keep a paper file of every message you ever got? Perhaps even keep a duplicate file, organized by sender address, for cross-reference purposes? No one does that! Sane people will only print an email if it's absolutely necessary—like, because it has driving directions on it or something. And sane people do not like to have their intelligence insulted by insipid reminders to consider the environment before doing something that's absolutely necessary.

So, if you ever receive an email that tells you to consider the environment before printing it, go ahead and laugh! I, the tree-huggingest hippie around, give you leave to do so. And if, perchance, you are one of those people who has that slogan in your signature, consider your audience instead. Don't you think the people you email have enough sense to decide for themselves when to hit print? And if you were possibly planning on printing an email...well...consider the environment, and print on the backside of another sheet.

Boos and Woohoos: Or, a Set of Reviews

I get really excited about some things, and I want to share them with the world. And some things make me really grumpy, and I want to gripe about them. But I never seem quite sure how to address them in my blog--not enough to talk about, too much of a downer...there's always something holding me back.

But not any more! I am going to write about them in the contrasting viewpoints format that is so popular among publications. You know, like thumbs-up/thumbs-down? Or like rants/raves? Except that, if you somehow managed not to read the title of this post, these are called "Boos and Woohoos!" Today's reviews are on a few topics related to environmental friendliness.

Boo

You know those yellowish envelopes you send interoffice memos in? Oh, you don't send interoffice memos any more? Well, you know those yellowish envelopes that you can buy to send your mail in? The ones that usually have a metal brad or a little doohicky with a string that you use to help hold them shut?

I always thought those envelopes were pretty cool, because thanks to the attached doohickies, you could use them multiple times. What's not cool about them is they are apparently unrecyclable! Yes, according to at least a few sources, this "goldenrod" paper is saturated with dyes that can't be removed--meaning the paper can't be recycled. Apparently this is true of any dark-colored paper. Well, I checked on my city's recycling website, and it did not prohibit goldenrod envelopes--but (and here's a point you should remember) just because the city accepts something for recycling, that doesn't mean it actually gets recycled!

So, just to be on the safe side... Next time you buy envelopes, don't choose any that are mustard or dark in color!

Woohoo

On a different recycling-related note, the last time I was at Payless Shoes, the cashier asked me if I wanted to keep the boxes. I said no, and asked her if they recycle them. It turns out they actually do one better: they return the boxes to the manufacturer for reuse! Way to go, Payless! Not only did you hook me up with an awesome, comfy pair of shoes that everyone compliments me on for just 10 dollars, but you also have shown a commitment to packaging reduction! If I didn't love you before for your great prices and irresistible BOGO sales (which I did), I definitely do now for your sustainable ways! Keep it up!

Going green with Greenie

A year ago in November, my bicycle (Greenie, in case you were curious about its name) was in an accident that scratched its paint job, ripped a small hole in its seat, and disconnected its front brake line. I was content to leave the cosmetic damage as-is (though, now that I think about it, I should probably cover up the holes in the paint before they rust...), and, not being a hardcore biker, I was also content to let the front brake line flap in the breeze. The back brakes worked fine, and I just never could work up the motivation to take it to a shop!

Then everything changed! I joined this biking promotion thingy which I'll tell you about in a minute, and then I received a coupon for 20% off any REI product, and I thought, "Now is the time to take advantage of this coupon to buy a new brake cable, so I can ride my bike more and better to make the best use of my biking promotion thingy!"

So today I grabbed my REI card and my purse and a pair of pliers, and pulled Greenie out of the shed so that I could take off the old, broken brake cable to bring to REI as a guide for buying a new one. Upon some examination, I realized the brake cable wasn't actually broken at all--part of it had just slipped out of its notch. It took me 10 seconds to put it back together.

Oops. I spent a year and a half riding a bike with no front brake when I could have fixed it in 10 seconds. Well, the good thing is my coupon for 20% ended up saving me 100%! What a bargain!

Now, are you curious about this mysterious biking promotion thingy?

Consider this. 40% of urban travel is within 2 miles, and 90% of those trips are by car! 25% of the US carbon dioxide emissions come from motor vehicles! I had no clue about these statistics until I lifted them from the promotion thingy website – and I will probably forget them tomorrow, since numbers go in one of my eyes and out the other – but I can comprehend this little equation:
 
More bike travel + less car travel = happier planet!  See? -->

So how do we achieve this end? By riding our bikes instead of driving on our day-to-day travels? You betcha! And there's a certain biking promotion thingy that will make it easy and fun and will not only make the earth smile, but will also support your favorite bike-related nonprofit!

It's the Clif 2-Mile Challenge! If you have a bike, I encourage you to register and join a team (I'm on the Gold Team)! If you don't have a bike, they even have a tool that will help you custom-make one of your own! Get cracking now! It will encourage me not to get distracted by other things. Later on, when I don't have a vacation to get ready for (and assuming I don't get distracted with other things), I might even send you a challenge.

It will be fun!

I'd like to call this post "Talking Trash," but that gimmick has been recycled too many times.

Remember when I mentioned my "list of things to blog about?"

Lately, I've been looking through it and all I can find are notes about ecological sustainability--mainly regarding the topic of consumer waste.

Yes, I know I'm a tree hugger, but I used to have a fairly varied repertoire of things that I thought worth writing about--lately, I do not. Lately, all I can think about (other than broken hearts, but we all saw how well that went over...) is whether I can find a scrap dealer that would like my broken office chair, what to do with my broken toaster oven, what to do with the rags that are too unwearable to sell at a thrift store, and whether it's better to buy leather shoes that will kill a cow but last a long time and ultimately biodegrade or pleather shoes that are not directly responsible for any animal deaths but will fall apart after a year and perhaps contribute microscopic bits of themselves to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch after the bulk of them has been relegated to a landfill where they'll languish, wasting valuable space and resources until the time eons in the future when humanity is long gone and some silicon-based organism has become the new dominant life-form on Earth.

I could write blogs and blogs on these topics. I come up with a new environmental conundrum every couple of days! However, I fear that by doing that, I will transmogrify Val's Galorious Galaxy into something that is not necessarily worse, but is not what it was intended to be--primarily a source of entertainment for you, and secondarily an outlet for me when I want to gripe about something. I think it would be delightful if some legitimate publication would take me on to write about the environment so my Galaxy can remain star-spangled, sparkly, and essentially frivolous.

Until that time, though, I just can't resist broaching the interesting topic of "plasphalt."
Plasphalt is a trademarked term for paving materials incorporating recycled plastic--which I heard about for the first time just a few days ago. While it sounds really exciting, producing paving material that's more resilient and lighter to transport, it makes me worry. Whenever we hear about a new earth-saving technology, people always get really excited, go overboard in trying to implement it, then later on discover it might not be so great for the planet after all (e.g. ethanol, which requires so much corn input that the food industry suffers, or bioplastic bottles, which can't be composted at home, produce greenhouse gases when composted commercially, and contaminate recycling when recycled in large quantities). What kinds of problems are plastic-infused roadways going to present for our planet? Let's think about this now, before we do something we regret!

Green Goodness (aka Conspicuous Consumption)

This is my fourth year volunteering at the Green Festival, and I have to say, it's been my favorite year yet. Not necessarily because the festival was better--just because I had a better time.

The volunteering was good. I spent 5 hours working on Friday morning doing what I do best: organizing things. We started by folding and stacking T-shirts in same-color piles, to be sold during the festival. When that was done, we moved on to consolidating all excess T-shirts into boxes. I also had my first experience with zip ties--oh, so gratifying! And after the 5 hours, free admission for the duration of the festival!

I went alone this year, which was an infinite improvement over the first two years, both of which I spent in the company of at least one person who moped and sulked the whole time we were there, and last year, when, due to icky weather and depression, I decided not to go at all. So this year I was free to browse at my own pace and spend annoying amounts of time deciding whether or not to buy various combinations of items. And buy I did. Even though I make a point of avoiding having too many possessions, there are times when I just want to gloat over my material acquisitions. This is one of those times.

I went there with the goal of finding a new winter shirt, a pair of earrings, and possibly some shoes. When I got there, I realized I didn't like the winter shirts very much, it was silly to buy new earrings when I have plans to make some in the near future, and the shoes were way out of my price range. So instead, I left with a skirt and a pair of gloves. They were frivolous buys totaling 65 dollars, but oh-so worth it! The skirt is khaki color, pure hemp and cotton, and has a scene of clouds and birds printed on it! The gloves are fuschia, alpaca wool and outrageously long, which means I can keep my arms warm and still wear short sleeves! And best of all, they were for a good cause!

OK, I realize no one is as excited about my new possessions as I am, so I'll refrain from telling you all about the stuff I got for free, which includes brochures from a number of worthy organizations I'm glad to have discovered, and -- oh, wait, I'm refraining. But I just can't refrain from sharing the thrift store success I had on Monday. After all, pre-owned stuff? Very green.

That day, I went to the thrift store with a donation of purses (purged in order to avoid having too many possessions--oh, the irony!) and went home with two new tops and three sets of hair clips for a total of thirteen dollars! The hair clips were an especially amazing find, because I've been searching forever for little jaw clips that are metal (not plastic, because those always break after a few uses). Sometimes I find them, but there are never enough in a set to hold up a bun, which is how I use them. But at the thrift store on Monday, they were selling sets of 2 each of black, silver, and copper metal clips for just 79¢ each! I was able to purchase three sets (6 clips in each color) for less than the cost of one similar set at the store! Victory at last! I also got a cute new blue-and-white striped summer blouse (I justify this purchase because my collection of oversized solid colored t-shirts is starting to depress me), and a black blazer. The blazer was the perfect buy, because with a blazer, you can turn any outfit into a professional outfit -- infinite versatility for just six dollars!

All right! Enough of that! I vow not to buy any more stuff until I put away all my summer clothes and realize that I still need that winter shirt I didn't buy.

Oh, the terrible burden

In case you were wondering, I did give in to my newfound sense of guilt and rename all my dance music from "techno" to just plain "dance." Now the task is to come up with subgenres that are accurate.

The store where I work has a great reputation (at least to me) for being overly zealous and trying to comply with laws that don't exist.

I remember the hassle that I went through last spring when all members of management were convinced that it was state law for all employees to take a break. Being a workaholic (OK, just someone who believes in getting paid for my time, not dallying around on an unpaid break that's too short to allow me to accomplish anything non-work-related), I was naturally distressed by the sudden implementation of a mandatory break policy. I argued with the managers every time they asked me to take a break. I begged to start my 1/2-hour break 1/2 hour before I was scheduled to leave. I tried to make myself invisible whenever business was slow. Finally I spent several hours on all the Department of Labor websites for the United States, Maryland, Virginia, and DC, gathering information to prove that none of these governments required workers to take breaks. In fact, they did not even require employers to offer breaks. I wrote a long, pleading, never-sent letter to the owner to present my evidence and beg my case. Fortunately, all the managers were getting fired around that time, and before I was forced to share my findings, the break policy became no longer the topic of such rigorous enforcement.

However, all that is, as usual, a long digression from the actual topic, which is our store's compliance with what is, to my understanding, an actual law, found in part 172.102 of Section 49 of the Code of Federal Regulations, under Special Provision 130 (Go on, you know you wanna read it. With all those numbers in it, it must be good!).

We recently received a memo stating that, because of a new regulation by the US Department of Transportation, all batteries brought in for recycling would have to be taped on one end to prevent fires during shipping. This didn't seem like a big deal to me, but after several months of trying to enforce the policy, I see that it is. People come in with huge Ziplocks full of used batteries. "Have you taped them?" I ask. If they have not, I explain our battery policy. I show them the tape we have at the customer service desk and tell them they're welcome to use it right here.

Many of these customers stalk off in disgust. They don't have the time for that nonsense. Some of them give me the bag of batteries and tell me to throw it away. Others tell me they'll throw it away at home, with an obvious tone of accusation, as if it's our fault the batteries are going into the landfill. I don't quite comprehend how their laziness is our fault. I also don't quite see how five minutes of their time is worth more than saving countless ecosystems, plus their own water supply, from impending doom, but I let them have their feeling of superiority. I wonder how hard it is to just slap a strip of Scotch on a battery when one is finished with it. I wonder how the customers amass such a huge collection of batteries in the first place. I might recycle 15 batteries per year, and some of those are the ones I find in the street or take from other people who would otherwise throw them away. Surely if you use batteries at a reasonable rate, it would never be an undue hardship to put tape on all of them before recycling them. Really, people. Spare us the martyr act.