What is the frakin' point of using compact florescent bulbs - when Industry (helped by Government) maintains this kind of excess:
Friday is 'Flier Day' via our Canada Post delivery here in Wareham. This is what we got in our box on Friday, December 3:
Store - Size - Location - Distance
No Frills - 3 sheets - Shelburne - 25 minutes
Foodland - 4 sheets - Dundalk - 15 minutes (our local)
Foodland - 4 sheets - Dundalk - 15 minutes - DUPLICATE ABOVE
Wallmart - 6 sheets (glossy) - Orangeville - 45 minutes
Wallmart - 3 sheets - (glossy) Orangeville - 45 minutes
Food Town - 2.5 sheets - Markdale - 25 minutes
Food Basics - 3 sheets - Shelburne - 25 minutes
Staples - 4 sheets - Orangeville - 45 minutes
Staples - 8 sheets (glossy) - Orangeville - 45 minutes
Marks - 8 sheets (glossy) - Orangeville - 45 minutes
Sears - 5 sheets (glossy) - Orangeville - 45 minutes (catalogue)
Sears - 5 sheets (glossy) - Orangeville - 45 minutes (catalogue)
Sears Sears - 1 sheet (glossy) - Orangeville - 45 minutes (catalogue)
Sears - 3 sheets (glossy) - Orangeville - 45 minutes (catalogue)
Sears - 8 sheets (glossy) - Orangeville - 45 minutes (catalogue)
Canada Post wrapper (24 x 24 blank heavy newsprint)
Which is not being counted, as I save these for drawing around the shop.
There was also ONE piece of addressed letter mail, which itself turned out to be (useless) advertising.
The total weight off all that junk was 410 gms - almost a full pound.
For each household.
According to 'Standard Carbon Resources'
( http://www.standardcarbon.com/resources/?p=66 )
the carbon footprint for a single piece of 8 1/2 x 11 copy paper is .0092 lbs CO2, so each of the 'sheets' above represents approximately 8.35 gms of C02.
There are 67.5 sheets total, so that makes approximately 126 gms of CO2 total.
Thats just the physical material itself.
Printing?
Transport?
Now, I did spend a good half hour on the web, trying to find ANYTHING else which might clearly give me some numbers on the associated environmental impact. Not a hope. Lots of hype - no NUMBERS. I am very sure that the printing and especially the transport aspects strongly overwhelm the mere paper material in contribution to global warming.
Given our location in the wilds of Central Ontario, the cost of trucking collected paper for recycling is sure to greatly exceed the value returned via that process. I did see something that suggested that when placed in land fill, 90% of the material proportion (at least) remains locked up in the ground.
We normally burn our waste paper. We have electric heat here (baseboards), which when we bought the place over 20 years ago seemed the best option. (Thats how the house came, oil and propane furnaces would be the other methods possible here.) Our wood stove reduces (significantly) our electric heating. That power comes essentially from Bruce Nuclear. (Which I'm a big supporter of, ok?)
Recycle all that paper? Or burn it and reduce (slightly) our fire wood consumption? I say that sitting in a room that has daytime thermostat set at 16, night time at 12.
Maybe just a hell of lot less junk mail produced and delivered in the first place!
Monday, December 06, 2010
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2 comments:
Yep burn the paper. Recycling of paper often does not work on an economic or even carbon POV. The concept is good but doesn't work in all cases. At least burning the paper is very low carbon or even carbon neutral since part of it came from trees which are carbon sinks.
Bruce Power is one of my clients. Up your way you will wind turbine power too from the Bruce area.
You can ask Canada Post to remove your mail box from the flyer distribution (not that it prevents the damn things from getting printed). They legally have to do this if you ask. Election crap still gets through.
I also have a large sign on my fence with a picture of a duck that says "NO flyers please!" That takes cares of the newspaper boy and lends my property a slight air of "crazy person lives here".
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