Everybody knows that to reduce energy usage at home we should be switching to compact fluorescent lights (CFLs). At the same time, most people are now aware that these bulbs contain small amounts of mercury, a metal that is best not released into the environment, especially inside a home. So what is a planet-friendly consumer to do?

Safer CFL
One option is a CFL made with safer materials; in the case of the ClearLite ArmorLite CFLs that would be amalgam, a safer type of mercury. Even better, they’re also wrapped in a silicone shell that keeps them sealed in the event that the glass should be broken.

LED
Even better than CFL is a newer alternative lighting technology: LED lighting, like the Pharox III, a dimmable 6 watt replacement for 60 watt incandescent bulbs. OK, nothing new about LEDs; they’ve been showing up as the little red, green, amber and more recently blue indicator lights in your electronics for literally decades now. More recently, they’ve gone bright white and turned up in flashlights (torches) and even cars and traffic lights. But now you can also get them in light bulb form factors for use at home.

Currently, they’re even more expensive than CFL technology, but the prices are coming down. And they should last longer than CFL bulbs and don’t have any mercury in them.

As a new dad, I’ve been busy looking at ways to make the process of raising my little boy a little more planet friendly. While he’s not yet ready to be using crayons, I’m sure there will come time when he does enjoy scribbling, and eventually colouring, with them.

I don’t think crayons are particularly bad for the environment (although all that scribbled on paper might not be ideal), but every time I’ve tried using the ones that some restaurants provide for kids to colour their menus, I’ve ended up breaking at least one. All those broken fragments of crayons likely end up in the landfill, which is a terrible waste.

Recycled Crayons
Crazy Crayons have solved this by offering recycled crayons. They have three different shapes to choose from too. My favourite is the simple, double ended stick crayon with the word recycled written down its length.

Better still, you can send your used crayons to Crazy Crayons and have them recycled. They take their own as well as other makes (although there are some limits for crayons that may contain lead or plastics).

Another eco-friendly addition to our house recently was the Shark Professional Steam Pocket Mop. Up until now, we’ve been using the Method Hard Floor Cleaner with one of their o-mops (minus the handle because that broke off very early on) and a couple of microfiber pads (one for the tile floors, and one for the wood floors). While this has worked for us for several years now, keeping the floors clean has always been a lot more work than I would like (I have two iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaners which I run at least weekly to keep the floors free of dust & fluff).

Steam Power
On a recent shopping trip I caught site of the Shark Professional Steam Pocket Mop. Complete with multiple re-usable pads and three different size/shape heads, this mop claimed to both clean and sanitize floors using just steam – no chemicals required. While we’re big users of the Method Cleaning Products around the house, and would recommend them to anybody, not having any chemicals seemed like a better way to go.

In Use
We’ve had the mop for a few weeks now, and it works well on both our tile floors and our hardwood. For the tile, I’ve been sticking with the middle setting (mop), unless there is an area that needs extra cleaning when the scrub setting has worked effortlessly to remove it. On the wood floors I’m sticking with the lowest setting, dust, for now just to be safe.

Having decided that our regular stainless steel frying pan is not practical for quickly frying a single egg in the mornings, we went looking for a small non-stick pan.

Among the collection of pans in the department store’s home goods section, we saw the Cuisinart Green Gourmet range. Unlike all the others, these were packaged in simple brown card and claimed to be “Eco-Friendly Nonstick Cookware.”

Eco-Friendly Cookware?
Was this just another attempt at greenwashing? Well, perhaps since the core of the pan is made from aluminium, hardly the greenest of metals when it comes to production, but there are some other features of the overall product which at least put it ahead of other similar pans:

• PTFE/PFOA-free and petroleum-free non-stick coating;
• 70% recycled steel handle;
• Improved heat conduction (allowing less energy use);
• 100% recycled packaging, printed with soy ink.

It feels well made too, so unlikely to end up in a landfill in a few years because it breaks. Given the choices we had for buying an individual 8″ frying pan, we thought we’d give the green one a try.

Ceramic Non-Stick
The one unknown for me with this pan is the quality of the non-stick coating. Unlike the more common coating, this one is a ceramic-based coating. In addition to the green aspect of not being based on PTFE/PFOA or other oil derived materials, Cuisinart are also claiming that it will make for healthier cooking.

We will post an update on here with our experiences with this new non-stick coating once we’ve been using the pan for a while.

The question about whether nuclear power makes a good green option has always been a fought one to answer, and the recent tragedy in Japan certainly doesn’t make it any easier for those on the pro side of the argument. But even without disasters, which thankfully have been few in number, there are still some serious environmental issues that need to be examined.

It’s Not All About Emissions
The first argument that is usually brought up in favour of nuclear power generation is that it is essentially emission-free. At the time of generation, that is clearly true, and the technology has reached the point where containment of anything radioactive is pretty sound too. Bear in mind what it took to damage the facility in Japan, and the age of that technology. The engineering of these plants is undeniably impressive.

While reducing the emissions from power generation is certainly a positive thing for the environment, the fact remains that these nuclear reactors still generate waste, and extremely hazardous waste at that. Some of it can be reprocessed, but eventually there are sealed canisters of nuclear waste that will remain highly radioactive for many years, and needs to be stored somewhere.

Continuing to ignore the nuclear waste issue is essentially trading the immediate emissions problem for what could potentially be a much more serious radioactive waste issue in the future. Our children and grandchildren will need to clean up our mess.

Safety and Security
Inevitably, a disaster like the one in Japan will call into question the safety of nuclear power plants. But the issue is much broader than natural disasters. Even when the risk of earthquakes and/or tsunami is lower, there is often the potential for other kinds of extreme conditions like tornadoes. While good engineering can reduce the risks, the one-in-a-thousand event, like the massive tsunami in Japan, is always a possibility.

In addition to natural disasters, nuclear plants can also fail because of human error (Chernobyl) or be subject to attack by terrorists or during times of war. An attack on a conventional power station disrupts life for those depending on the electricity, and, depending on the fuel, might have short term impact on the air quality, but the longer term effects to the environment are not that serious. The same cannot be said for nuclear power stations. The area around the Chernobyl reactor is still contaminated today, 25 years after the accident.

Alternatives
It is easy to talk about not using nuclear energy, but the fact is that it is a very efficient source of electricity in terms of power per square foot of land. Greener alternatives, such as solar, wind or wave energy need much more space devoted to them today to get anything like the same power. The output from a nuclear power station is also more controllable. It can be increased or decreased to match demand, and it can operate 24/7, and in most weather conditions.

Perhaps the answer to alternative energy sources is to think outside the box a little. Move away from the conventional producer-consumer model where we have a small number of generating facilities feeding a grid that a large number of consumers pull from. We have large areas that we can turn into dual use facilities.

In addition to the environmental benefits, having the power generation distributed so widely also adds protection against disruption from natural disasters, accidents or attacks.

Solar Parking Lots

One of the best ideas I have seen is to add large solar arrays over open air parking lots, or on the roof levels of multi-story parking structures. These large open spaces are ideal for collecting sunlight, and the panels actually provide shade for the parked cars, helping to keep them cool as well as protecting them from the sun’s damaging UV rays. The photo on the right is an installation at Kyocera’s San Diego facility, from EnvisionSolar.

Buildings
Large warehouses, office complexes and even shopping malls could easily house solar arrays on their roofs. High rise towers could incorporate solar panels into their outer glass coverings. New buildings, whether commercial or domestic, should be required to include solar panels where there is sufficient sunlight for this to make sense.

Wind & Wave
Much harder to distribute are wind and wave generation systems. While small wind turbines for use in urban environments have been created, there is still much work to do here before it is practical to have one on every house, or even on every commercial building. Perhaps a chimney mounted wind turbine could become a new use for the chimney on homes in places like California where having a fire is increasingly restricted to protect air quality.

Wave power could be utilized on docks and piers to try to harvest some of the energy from the sea. Obviously, the number of locations for this is much more limited than even those for wind power.

Power Stations
Distributing the generation does not mean we cannot also build larger power generation facilities, like the large solar facilities being built in desert spaces of California and northern Africa. Or wind farms on the hilltops, sharing the land with cattle or crops.

There are some forms of green energy that make more sense in a centralized location than distributed too. Hydro-electric and geo-thermal being two examples that need to be located near the natural resource they depend on.

Conclusions
While nuclear power looks like a quick fix to the emissions problem that coal, oil and even to some extent, gas power stations suffer from, the long term impact of spent fuel and the building materials themselves when the reactor needs to be decommissioned, make any claims for it being a planet-friendly solution hard to believe.

Contrary to what pro-nuclear power generating companies would have people believe, the alternative energy sources are viable. They just need to be integrated into our society in a different, distributed way.

Via our Twitter feed we keep track of all the green news we see that we think might be of interest to our readers. You can always see our latest tweets and retweets in the right sidebar on our home page, even if you miss them in your Twitter app.

Periodically, we’ll try to pull some of the highlights from the articles we’ve retweeted and post them in something we’re calling Green Shorts. Welcome to the first edition of Green Shorts.

Animal Protein & Diabetes
Researchers from Harvard University found that some low-carb dieters were more likely to have type 2 diabetes. Men following a low-carb diet high in animal protein and fat were 75 percent more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than those who ate moderately, and men eating low-carb while eating vegetable protein and fat were not at a higher risk. Read more at vegnews.com.

Floating Wind and Wave Power
A new Oregon company, Floating Power Inc, is announcing plans to build a floating power plant that generates electricity from both waves and wind. Read more at Sustainable Business Oregon.

Renault Twizy
Renault’s tiny electric two seater (one behind the other) was put to the test by UK based Autocar – you can see the video review of this fun little electric city car.

Kindle vs Books
Treehugger is reporting on a posting at TerraPass about the break-even point, from a carbon footprint perspective, of the Kindle reader. In the case of the post’s author, her break-even point was at around 3 years of use and she classified herself as an above average reader (in terms of number of books, not ability). The twist is that she uses her library to borrow most of the books she reads, or buys used ones (both good ways of sharing the carbon footprint of the physical book between more people).

Eco-Datacenter
Close to our hearts here at Vertography since our servers are running in a 100% solar powered data center, BendBroadband, in Oregon, has opened its own eco-friendly data center. Green features include solar panels, porous cement pavement and a special Kyoto cooling system that uses the outside air to cool the servers 80% of the time. Read more at KTVZ.

Over at TreeHugger, Sami Grover asks “Can Meat Eaters Like Fake Meat?”

Interesting question. He also makes a distinction between fake meats and other vegetable proteins, such as tofu, which are ingredients in their own right, and are used in both vegetarian and meat dishes in some cultures. Of course, vegetarians eating out at any Asian restaurant will frequently find something they can eat in the tofu section of the menu (just be sure to ask whether there is any meat or seafood added as well).

Among the fake meats, there are an increasing number of options available. Some better than others, but I think there are only a couple that are good enough to stand alone, like tofu, as an ingredient that would be acceptable to a regular meat eater. Here’s a summary of the ones I’ve tried personally, and would recommend (or not).

Quorn
Quorn has been a long time favourite of mine since before moving out to California. When I left the UK in the late 90s, Quorn was already well established there and offered both the plain form for use in your own recipes and an ever increasing range of ready meals and breaded products.

The big differentiator for me with quorn is the texture, although even now it is relatively hard to find in supermarkets (here in California at least, Safeway stocks some Quorn products and, as expected, Whole Foods carries a lot of their products).

Quorn has been the subject of a controversy since it arrived in the US, with attempts to block it’s sale from a number of fronts. An article at Slate does a better job of explaining the nonsense in this. I’ve been eating Quorn since it launched in the UK, and have known lots of other people (vegetarian and not) who have eaten it, and I can’t remember a single problem.

Field Roast Grain Co
This was a new discovery in the Safeway veggie meats area, and one I agree with Sami about: this is less of a meat replacement and more of a product in its own right. Their sausages are now a regular fixture in my fridge (and I have more in the freezer). And the roasts, which are basically the same product in a larger form, make an excellent choice for a conventional “meat & two veg” type plate, or sliced in a sandwich.

Morningstar Farms
Another permanent fixture in my freezer for almost as long as I’ve been here in the US are the Morningstar Farms products. Over time, I think I’ve tried most of their range. The prime grillers (basically a burger replacement, as opposed to the Gardenburger type of veggie burger), the buffalo wings and the breaded “chicken” patties are my most common purchases. The breakfast links are also great, though with all the other sausage options now I find I buy less frozen ones.

In the burger replacement space, I do also buy the Boca burgers sometimes, but the Morningstar ones win my award for burger replacement. I do think the Boca ones grill better though.

Yves & Smart Sausages
Another pair of providers for alternative sausages that I buy frequently are Yves and Smart Sausages from Lightlife. The Italian style are my favourites, sliced and sautéed with some fresh veggies for addition to a nice pasta sauce.

The Yves range also includes sliced deli meat replacements that are good (though my award in that category goes to Tofurkey). Both also have ground meat replacements that are good.

Tofurkey
Not a big fan of their roast product (for that segment I tend to use the Quorn roast), but I do love Tofurkey‘s sliced deli style products for my sandwiches. I wish I could find a deli that would offer them in their sandwiches as an option in place of sliced meats.

Gardenburger
I am including Gardenburger here, even though I do not consider them to be strictly a meat replacement. I think they are a product in their own right, and a delicious one at that, and since I mentioned the Morningstar and Boca burger replacements, I thought it only fair to mention Gardenburger. Like the Boca burgers, Gardenburgers also grill well, but nobody will ever mistake one for a meat patty!

Not Recommended
I’ve tried all kinds of vegetarian protein products, and while most are fine, there are a few i just don’t recommend.

• Any of the fake meat products in Asian supermarkets! They always taste strange to me, and no matter how I cook them, that taste persists. Many times I’ll find the texture a little odd as well.
• Tofu as a meat replacement. I find it is hard to do anything with tofu that would make it work as a meat replacement. As itself, if you like it, tofu is fine, but it doesn’t work well in everything, and especially not in western dishes. The closest I could get was the marinaded baked tofu available in the refrigerated section of most supermarkets, but the products above are all berthed choices.

Over the next few months you’ll probably be seeing more baby related posts here, though I will try to maintain a balance. This morning’s mission for us though was to decide on the mattress (and the crib) for the baby we’re expecting soon.

Organic or Not?
We’ve tried to get as much as possible made from organic cotton, but the mattress was a challenge. Although there are several mattresses using organic cotton on the market, none of them are pure organic. There are two layers that it seems just cannot be organic/chemical free:

• The fire barrier (legally required for the US);
• The waterproofing layer.

So, while they’re not really fully organic, the goal was to get as close as possible within a reasonable budget.

We ended up with the L A Baby Organic Cotton 2 in One Orthopedic Crib Mattress as our favourite, and wanted to do some more research into its organic claims.

Online, we found a post at the WindsorSpeak forums where somebody had kindly pasted in the statement from L A Baby about the organic content of the mattress, and also the chemical they use for the fire barrier (boric acid). Here’s the statement about the organic content (apologies for the caps, it was how it was in the source):

ON THE 5260 ORGANIC MATTRESS SPECIFICALLY THE CORRECT PERCENT OF ORGANIC COTTON MATERIAL THAT IS IN THE MATTRESS IS 59% THIS INFORMATION IS ON EVERY LAW TAG THAT IS ON EACH MATTRESS. WE HAVE TWO LAYERS OF ORGANIC COTTON.
THE THIRD LAYER IS 85% COTTON AND 15% POLY FIBER – THIS IS THE FIRE BARRIER THAT WE HAVE TO USE TO MEET THE STATE AND FEDERAL FLAME TESTING REGULATIONS.

Lower down in the text they also give lots of additional information about boron and boric acid that was interesting reading.

We’ll post a follow up on here to let you know more about the mattress once it arrives.

I have mixed feelings about Earth Day. On the one hand, I think it is worth reminding people to think more about whether they are doing all they can to avoid wasting our planet’s precious, and limited, resources. On the other hand, every day should be Earth day. We shouldn’t a special day to do the right thing for our planet, and one day a year isn’t even close to sufficient anyway.

So what should we do every day? Here’s a few of my tips – feel free to add more in the comments.

No Bottled Water
If you must carry a personal supply of water with you, buy a nice stainless steel water bottle and fill it from a tap. If you’re not sure about drinking the tap water directly, buy a filter jug (or have a more permanent one fitted to your house plumbing) and fill your bottle from that.

Aside from saving all those plastic bottles, you’ll also save money and your water will stay cool longer as well. We took a polished stainless bottle to Hawaii, and found the water in that stayed cool all day, even when left in the parked car.

No Paper Cups
Like that Starbucks latté in the morning? Me too. But how about bringing your own mug rather than taking it in the paper cup? Each cup you save means one less cup, plastic lid and heat sleeve will be used. Plus you get to use your own mug. Choose an insulated one and your coffee will stay hot longer. And, as if hot coffee from your own mug wasn’t enough, many cafés will give you a discount for using your own cup; Starbucks will knock off 10¢ in the US. If you need the cup rinsed out from your first cup, they’ll be happy to do that for you too.

Sitting down for coffee rather than taking it to go? Ask if they have china mugs you can use. Outside the US, this is common, but I’ve started to see places here doing it too.

By the way, Starbucks is also doing a free brewed coffee or tea promotion for Earth day this year. More information on their blog.

Take Public Transit
Not just on Earth day, but as often as possible. Believe me, I know it is not as comfortable as your nice car, but it has other advantages. Here’s a few of the things I get by taking a ferry and a train to work that I wouldn’t get by driving:

• Interesting, and often thought provoking, conversation from a group of people I would never have met otherwise.
• The chance to read my email & even respond to some of it, before I get in to the office. The days I have to drive, I really miss this.
• Free daily exercise from walking between home & the ferry terminal, and from the train station to my office.

Sure, it’s not all roses (don’t get me started on BART again), but it is generally less stressful than rush hour driving, and it means I get to keep driving my car for pleasure (not to mention keeping the miles down – I’m under 5K per year now).

Reuse and Recycle
Most people have worked out the recycling thing now, but how many are reusing things? Don’t waste money on disposable plastic containers for keeping your leftovers in, use the ones you bought with things like cheese, salsa, dips or yoghurt in them instead. Same for those glass jars your pasta sauce came in.

How about the back of the print outs you accidentally forgot to do double sided? Use them for note pads around the house, before recycling them.

Running the data centres that provide the Internet’s content is a power hungry business. Between the power to keep the servers and their associated storage and networking equipment running, and the power to keep them all cool, a lot of energy goes into a reasonable sized data centre.

Unlike your home computer, the servers running in the cloud need to be online 24/7, and running at full speed. You don’t want to have to wait for somebody to boot the server every time you try to access you favourite web site!

With all those racks of computers running at full power all the time, extracting heat and keeping the servers at safe temperatures is one of the biggest problems a data centre faces. Typical data centres run redundant HVAC systems. In the same way that a server that fails needs a backup that can take over transparently, the cooling system in the building needs to have a backup. All that cooling takes energy.

Liquid Cooling
Liquid cooling systems for home PCs, typically aimed at the hard core gaming community, have been around for a while. They are typically replacement heat sinks for the CPU, and sometimes the graphics card, that have cooled water pumped through them. Not ideal for use in a large data centre environment with thousands of rack mounted PCs.

A new idea though changes the cooling fluid to a non-conductive mineral oil, and completely submerge the rack in it. The efficiency of the liquid at removing heat from the systems is much better than cooled air over the fins of a heat sink. Green Revolution Cooling claims their GreenDEF™ based system can save over 90% on cooling energy usage, and 50% on total energy usage (cooler running servers are also more efficient).

Better still, it is much easier to recover the heat energy from a liquid like mineral oil than it is with a conventional air cooling system. So that energy you want out of the data centre’s computer rooms can be used to keep the operator’s control room and any office spaces comfortable when it gets cold outside.

Downsides?
The most obvious problem with submerging your rack, or even individual slices, in mineral oil has to be the added complexity of making any changes to the hardware, or replacing it when it fails. Hopefully, for the operators at least, the more even cooling will help extend the life of the components enough that replacements are rare.