Week 4 - "Green" dry cleaning

Planet saver:

Money saver: (about the same whether you do or don't)

Time saver: (about the same whether you do or don't)

I wear a suit to work every day, and I've noticed a chemical smell every once in a while. For example, if a little rain gets on me, I end up walking around with a cloud of chemical stink floating around me. I feel like a bio-hazard. The way I figure, that can't be good for the clothes, for me, or for the environment at large.

In the next city over, there's a dry cleaner called Your Valet that touts itself as Utah's first environmentally responsible cleaner. It uses a silicone-based solvent made by GreenEarth Cleaning that purports to be completely environmentally responsible. According to the website, the solvent essentially cleans using the "same natural sand the earth has been creating for over six billion years." I wonder if the marketing department wrote that?

In truth, I haven't been able to get to the bottom of whether it really is environmentally friendly or not. Conventional dry cleaning has real potential to be harmful - it uses perchloroethylene, which breaks down into several toxic substances in the open air and is also toxic to plants. At high levels of exposure, like what dry-cleaning workers in a poorly maintained shop could be exposed to, it poses a cancer risk. At extremely high levels, however, so does silicone-based solvent. Additionally, because GreenEarth Cleaning is a relatively new product, no one is willing to go out on a limb and confirm or refute its claims of environmental friendliness.

The EPA website won't say whether they trust it or not, but on the page about environmentally responsible dry cleaning, silicone-based solvents aren't discussed. Instead, the page says that some of the most important factors that would qualify cleaners to call themselves "green" are whether they have new machines that stop leaks and keep the chemicals contained, and whether they dispose of their waste products properly. It seems to me that there is potential for harm with GreenEarth cleaners, since if a cleaner thinks the product is safe, they would just pour the solvent down the drain when they finished. If silicone-based solvents really aren't safe, the harm done would be greater than a conventional dry cleaner who disposes of waste properly.

There is no sign in the window at dry cleaners telling you if they're environmentally responsible (and if there is you probably shouldn't trust it), but you can ask the cleaners about the processes they use. Two things the EPA recommends:

1. Ask your cleaner about her/his cleaning methods, safety and maintenance practices, and how s/he handles her/his solvent waste streams.
2. If you smell solvent when you enter a cleaning shop, you might want to consider going somewhere else as solvent odors can indicate improper processing or solvent use.

One process that seems to get positive reviews from all corners is professional wet-cleaning, which uses computerized processes to allow water-based cleaning of dry-clean-only garments. No one offers wet-cleaning around here, but you can look for wet cleaners in your area here.

Findings

I haven't noticed a chemical smell since I went to the new place, and my clothes seem pretty clean, though they didn't get out the carrot stain from my daughter's baby food, even after I pointed it out specifically. The place we had been going seemed a little run down, and I didn't really trust it. I think I'll go back to Your Valet again and see if they do a good job next time. They were comparably priced to the other cleaners.

Week 3 (& 1/2) - Unplugging

Planet saver:

Money saver:

Time saver:

Three weeks in and I'm already behind. I'm still working on my public transportation project, but in the meantime, let's talk about outlets.

I've heard over and over that unplugging your electronics when they're not in use will save something like 10% of your electricity bill. I even remember a while back seeing a TV campaign to convince you to unplug your cell phone charger when not in use. So how much does this "standby power" really cost?

Cost and energy savings

According to the Berkeley National Lab, if I leave the following running after I go to bed tonight:

• 2 cell phone chargers plugged in but not in use (.5 watts)
• 1 desktop computer and one monitor in sleep mode (21.1+1.4 watts)
• computer speakers left on (4.1 watts)
• 1 printer on (4.9 watts)
• 1 wireless router turned on (5.4 watts)
• 1 TV plugged in (3.1 watts)
• 1 DVD player plugged in (1.6 watts)
• 1 microwave plugged in (3.1 watts)
• 1 clock radio (not needed since I'm using my cell phone for an alarm clock) (2 watts)
• 2 phones (3.2 watts)
• 1 answering machine (2.3 watts)

I will be using a total of (wait for it . . .) 52.7 watts per hour, or about .42 kilowatt hours from 10 pm to 6 am. In the month of July, that would save me .42 kwH*$.105*31 days=$1.37. Not too impressive. That's $13 bucks or 230 pounds of CO2 a year (the same as I produce in my little Honda Civic in a 350-mile trip), for a year's worth of reprogramming the answering machine and punching the time back into the microwave.

Findings

If anything, it does seem worth powering down the computer completely, like with a power strip. That's where the lion's share of the electricity is going, and it takes hardly any time. If I forget to turn off one 60-watt light one night, that's burning more energy than all my electronics put together. If the computer doesn't go into sleep mode, though, that will cost something like 74 watts/hour. Oh yeah, and uplugging the cell phone chargers doesn't seem like a campaign worth fighting.

Week 2 - Riding public transportation to the airport

Planet saver:

Money saver:

Time saver:

I'm working on a more comprehensive look at public transportation, but in the meantime, here's a quick look at our trip to the airport this last week. We spent a week visiting Michelle's parents in Georgia and decided to get to the Salt Lake airport via the commuter train and bus. This was more a cost-saving measure than an environment-saving one (economy parking would have cost about $50 for the week), but in the process, we did cut down on carbon emissions.

Energy savings

According to Google Maps, the airport is 37.4 miles from our house, so round trip is 74.8 miles. The family car is averaging about 21 mpg these days, so that would be 3.6 gallons of gasoline. We used about a quart of gas getting to the train station and back, so the total gasoline savings was 3.35 gallons. According to the EPA's website, the average amount of CO2 emitted per gallon of unleaded gasoline is 19.4 pounds. (This figure could probably bear further scrutiny in a later post.) So we emitted about 65 fewer pounds of CO2 than we would have had we driven to the airport.

According to this site, household electricity costs about 1.5 pounds of carbon per kilowatt-hour, so by way of comparison, 65 pounds is about the same as the emissions produced to power my air conditioner for 11 hours or if I left every light in my house on for 24 hours. (More later on emissions from my electric company.) In an average month, we use something like 55 gallons of gas, so taking the train instead of driving cut down on monthly gas by 6%.

Cost savings

At $2.71 a gallon, the trip would have cost $9.75, plus $49 for economy parking. We spent 65 cents on gas, plus $8 on the train (I have a student pass), so we saved 58.75-8.65=$50.10.

Findings

I don't think it was worth the extra time and hassle, though my 2-year-old was in heaven riding a train, bus, and airplane all on the same day. Because we were riding in the middle of the day, both the train and the bus were mostly empty, so there was plenty of room for our luggage. But on the way home (after being up since 2:30 am with aforementioned 2-year-old) we had to wait 25 minutes for the bus, then another 20 minutes for the train. All told, we tacked on an hour and a half each direction to our trip. And getting one large suitcase, three backpacks, a stroller, a car seat, and two kids on the bus was a bit hair-raising too. Next time to save on money, I think we'll ask my brother to drive us to the airport. I think I'll wait for the light rail to the airport before attempting to ride public transportation to the airport again.

Like I said, next week I'll look more closely at public transportation. In this post I assumed that since the train was running whether I was on it or not, our riding it added no carbon emissions to the atmosphere. Next week I look at whether the train is an efficient means of transportation or not.