Marketplace

Climate-friendly investing... with nuclear?

As I've been trying to be green in my investments (and mostly failing), this morning's Marketplace Money story by Sarah Gardner felt very familiar. Then... I noticed the recently familiar question about whether nuclear power is green popped up - and that in this article, Paul Hilton suggested a qualified no. A quick Google (or Green Maven) search illustrates the avid debate within the environmental community about this, and that long-time environmental leaders are coming down on both sides.

Heck, the topic is so loaded, that the two Wikipedia articles (one and two) I glanced at in hopes of finding something less biased warned that "The neutrality of this article is disputed."

Personally, I'm not sure which side is the greenwash - decrying eco-friendly funds that include nuclear energy, or declaring nuclear is green.

I've got a short list of compelling pro arguments:

1. A carbon footprint that's on par with other renewables
2. Reliable electricity

And, a longer list of con arguments:

1. Higher cost than the alternatives
2. Solutions for waste are totally lacking
3. A host of security problems, including terrorism and accidents
4. Planning, permitting, and building a plant takes an eternity, which means no quick response to more and more pressing climate changes
5. Centralized generation exacerbates problems we already have in getting electricity from where it's created to where we need it, and don't support distributed generation that would create more resilient infrastructure
6. Mining fuel is environmentally destructive
7. Uranium (and other nuclear fuels) are not infinite... will we someday find ourselves at "peak uranium" if we grow dependent upon it for our power generation?

My gut says "bad idea," my head says "I don't like it, but I'm not sure." Brigadiers, readers - your thoughts? Can an eco-fund include nuclear power?

• March 2, 2008 by Janne K. Flisrand
• 8 comments

• tags: nuclear power

Green homes - speedy sales in a slow market?

For a year, I've been trying to convince Minnesota's affordable home builders concerned about a slowing market what Greg Pinn, a San Jose home-builder, already knows. "When a buyer has a choice between a home that isn't energy-efficient and...one that [is], the choice will be very easy."

In his Orchard Heights subdivision, seven of nine available green homes sold the first weekend they were available. He added that it only works when you're comparing apples to apples - homes that buyers can afford, with good layouts, in the right location.

While the marketability of green homes seems like a gimme this year, the details of the story raise several questions:

Can 3,600 square foot homes be green? I argue "no." Bigger homes take more energy to heat and cool, tend to house more continuously electricity-sipping gadgets, and lots more stuff. 3,600 is more like "huge."

Is Orchard Heights, the focus of this article, green? Who knows! There is no evidence that the homes achieve LEED standards. The marketing materials lack mention of LEED or any other verifiable benchmark, and the touted energy efficiency features (see page 10, PDF) list the super-basic: programmable setback thermostat, full weatherstripping on exterior doors, and code-mandated dual pane windows and water-saving shower heads. My Greenwash Alert is howling.

Does it matter if there are multiple green home programs in a single housing market? Within reason, it's fine. Different programs reach different home buyers. Nationally, LEED, with its relatively costly process, targets top performers. Green Communities has affordable housing covered. There's a gap in the middle which is either filled by local programs or still up for grabs. (The National Association of Home Builders is trying). All help educate the market and expand capacity for building green.

Do buyers have the choice to buy green? In most locations, no. There are individual green homes scattered about and a few green projects, but in my dense, popular, environmentally aware neighborhood, I can't find anything that meets both my location and sustainability expectations.

Why does solar installer Aaron Nitzkin of OCR Solar & Roofing predict the percent of a household's electricity their system will provide? Ok - so I asked this one as an excuse to share a really cool chart. Habits and choices make a big difference in how much electricity people use, so when Nitzkin says that the Orchard Heights systems will "meet 40 to 60 percent of a homeowner's electricity needs," he hides the importance of individual choices. Each bar in the chart on the left (data from the Sacramento Municipal Utility District) shows electricity usage in one of the 11 homes in a different subdivision. All of the homes are identical with the same photo voltaic arrays. The only difference is the occupants. As a result of how families live in these homes, some homes produce power and get checks from SMUD... and others pay $100 a month.

• March 12, 2008 by Janne K. Flisrand
• 5 comments

• tags: green building LEED real estate

Ecopods are burying the greenwash

Did you ever hear that joke -- that the quickest way to significantly reduce your environmental footprint is to die?

However, while death is a natural part of ecosystems, with dead organisms consumed by other organisms (waste equals food), dead humans are typically embalmed with a toxic cocktail of chemicals and then entombed in nesting boxes of concrete, plastic, and precious hardwoods.

Marketplace ran a story about an 'eco-friendly' coffin producer in the UK who is producing recycled paper coffins to reduce the environmental impact of funerals. While the coffin is indeed part of the story, shipping a $3,000 (recycled) coffin 5,000+ miles to reduce a burial's environmental impact feels a bit like selecting the rapidly-renewable bamboo trim package to reduce the environmental impact of your hummer.

The embalming fluid is the elephant in the room. It is estimated that over 800,000 gallons of formaldehyde-containing embalming fluid are buried each year in the US.

Green Burials, or Natural Burials, offer the opportunity of preparing the body without toxic embalming fluids. Refrigeration is typically substituted to slow the decomposition process, with the body then buried in a biodegradable casket or simple shroud, and typically interred in a natural burial site serving as a wildlife preserve. Home funerals, which often use dry ice to preserve the body for viewing, offer an opportunity to further reduce impacts and personalize the experience.

The Green Burial Council has developed standards for Conservation Burial Grounds and Natural Burial Grounds, as well as a directory of green burial providers and resources about the environmental impacts of burials.

• March 19, 2008 by Jim Nicolow
• 9 comments

• tags: burials footprint

Baking soda is all you need to make your own green cleaning products

I attended a green cleaning party today with a group of voluble, smart women as part of a national Safe Cleaning Products Initiative sponsored by Women's Voices for the Earth .The campaign provided mixing directions, labels and green cleaning party kits free of charge . Last July Marketplace aired a story about WVE's rising voice against the effect of toxic chemicals on women in particular.

The lines are always the same: no way to find out what's in it (you can if the company doesn't claim all components as trade secrets) and that consumer safety is "our highest priority" as Procter & Gamble states. Well, if consumer safety was the priority of these manufacturers, then perhaps there wouldn't be 200 ingredients in a household cleaner-- the longer the list, the bigger trouble you are in. It also struck me as "odd" that the reason ingredients aren't listed is because the law doesn't require it. What are they hiding then?

WVE's web site reveals that American women's breast milk is so fully laced with synthetic chemicals that if bottled, most of it would not pass FDA regulations. Check out the Collaborative on Health and the Environment and Breast Cancer Fund if you really want to get riled up.

After getting a house tour of how to clean, we paired up with newly found friends and large containers of baking soda, distilled white vinegar, olive oil, castile soap, essential oils, borax and hydrogen peroxide. In minutes we made a family of cleaning products containing perhaps four ingredients max-- not the 20 (or 200) in your synthetic products-- using mainly salad dressing ingredients and baking soda. I tested one as soon as I got home and our windows were never cleaner. Corporate cage fight: Clorox versus Church & Dwight Co, Inc., owners of the Arm & Hammer baking soda empire.

Companies continue to make consumer products that are not tested for safety, will never be tested for safety, and don't have to be tested for safety. Oh, I almost forgot-- they also don't have to label the products fully and the constituents are often protected by trade secret claims your tax dollars pay to protect.

Truthful and accurate labeling should be the currency of democracy. The Consumer Product Safety Commission only regulates and requires labeling for household cleaners based on these hazard categories: toxic, flammable, caustic, irritant, sensitizer, carcinogen, nerve or reproductive toxin. The big but is there are thousands of chemicals that have other human health effects, plus the law doesn't cover "fragrance" which can itself contains tens and sometimes hundreds of toxic chemicals... so basically the law is meaningless since it left the back door wide open... really wide.

I had boatloads of fun in this spring cleaning protest against corporations and their failure to protect human health, label products clearly and honestly address the core of what's at play in toys, personal care products and cleaning chemicals:

We are engaged in a very dangerous, long-term experiment with our health and economy in a post-WWII love affair with synthetic chemicals that humans and other parts of nature are simply not designed to deal with -- period.

I hate to sound so naive but I can't reach any conclusion other than that quarterly earnings trump virtually every other value under consideration, including your health. Because if it was otherwise, you would be able to read a label, understand it, and feel good about what's inside.

• March 23, 2008 by Heidi Siegelbaum
• 10 comments

• tags: cleaning products