In a difficult market, more newspapers are choosing an online-only format. This means demand for pulp and paper products has gone down. (Photo by Erin Kelly)
Newspapers across the nation are either closing, shifting to a web-only presence or reducing the number of print editions they put out each week. Lester Graham reports that means a lot less newsprint is needed:
Transcript
Newspapers across the nation are either closing, shifting to a web-only presence or reducing the number of print editions they put out each week. Lester Graham reports that means a lot less newsprint is needed:
It takes a whole lot of trees to make newspapers. According to the National Geographic’s documentary “Human Footprint”, it takes 191-million trees to make all of the U.S. newspapers each year. Well, you can cut that back– a lot. Martine Hamel is with the Pulp and Paper Products Council. She says daily newspapers closing or cutting back has meant a lot less demand for newsprint.
“We’re just getting worse and worse month after month. We just released the February figures earlier this week and demand in North America was down 33-percent for the month. So it’s really, absolutely huge.”
And more newspapers are on the brink. Newsprint usually contains a fair amount of recycled paper. With less demand, markets for recycled paper will suffer further.
Insulating your home is one of the things the Alliance to Save Energy says you can do to save energy and earn up to 1,500 dollars in tax credits. (Photo courtesy of the EPA)
Tax credits have been extended and expanded for people who want to make their homes more energy efficient. Lester Graham spoke with Ronnie Kweller about that. She’s with the Alliance to Save Energy:
Transcript
Tax credits have been extended and expanded for people who want to make their homes more energy efficient. Lester Graham spoke with Ronnie Kweller about that. She’s with the Alliance to Save Energy:
Lester Graham: Ronnie, this stimulus package offers people a chance to save some money if they decide to insulate their home, or replace their heating or cooling system. How much is available?
Ronnie Kweller: Right now, up to $1500 – which is three times the amount that was available under earlier legislation. They also expand the percentage of the cost that can be covered, from 10% in the case of some of the items under the old law to 30%. The other good thing is that the tax credits have been extended through 2010. Originally, they were only for this calendar year. So I think that gives folks some opportunity to save and budget for some of these higher-ticket items, and get them in place between now and 2010, and still get that $1500 off their taxes.
Graham: Now, let’s say I want to replace my old water heater. How much could I get back in tax credit next year?
Kweller: 30%, up to $1500 – that’s if the water heater cost $5000, which probably it’s not that expensive.
Graham: This is a tax credit, not a tax deduction. What’s the difference?
Kweller: That is correct. A tax deduction means you take the amount off your taxable income and then you’re taxed on a lower amount of income. A tax credit is worth more, because once you have calculated the tax that you owe, it’s a dollar for dollar reduction in that tax bill.
Graham: What kind of energy efficiencies make the most sense for a home? If I’m looking at my house, where should I start making changes first?
Kweller: The thing that we usually recommend as the first step is to seal and tighten up the house with sufficient insulation for your climate region. And then sealing leaks and cracks around doors and windows with sealing product, such as caulking, weather-stripping, and foam sealants. And the good news is that all those types of products are now eligible for these tax credits. Again, assuming that they meet the standards that are in the law.
Graham: We tend to think of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program as an assurance we’re buying an energy efficient product, but I understand not all Energy Star labeled products qualify for these tax credits.
Kweller: That’s correct. The one change that makes life a little bit more complicated for consumers is that under the old law, all energy star windows qualified for a tax credit. Now, there are certain additional requirements for the windows, as well as for the heating and cooling equipment. So, you can’t just go buy the Energy Star label, you really have to look at the very specific energy efficiency levels that these products must meet.
Graham: So, if I need details on that kind of requirement, where’s the best place to find them?
Kweller: One of the best places would be the Alliance Energy’s website at ase.org/taxcredits. We’ve made a great effort to have a user-friendly website that spells out the criteria in very clear language. The Energy Star website at energystar.gov is always very helpful in general on energy efficiency, as is the Department of Energy’s Energy Saver’s Booklet, which is at energysavers.gov.
Graham: Alright, thanks for joining us.
Kweller: Thank you.
Graham: Ronnie Kweller is with the Alliance to Save Energy. I’m Lester Graham.
All that energy goes into making the plastic bottles, treating the water, and, of course, shipping - sometimes from as far away as the South Pacific. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Bottled water burns up a lot of energy.
Rebecca Williams reports on a new study
that figured out how much:
Transcript
Bottled water burns up a lot of energy.
Rebecca Williams reports on a new study
that figured out how much:
Bottled water burns up a lot of energy.
Rebecca Williams reports on a new study
that figured out how much:
We Americans love our bottled water, for a lot of reasons. We actually drink more bottled water than beer.
And that bottled water uses lots of energy. As much as 2000 times more than tap water.
That’s from a new study in the journal Environmental Research Letters.
All that energy goes into making the plastic bottles, treating the water, and of course shipping. Sometimes from as far away as the South Pacific.
Peter Gleick is an author of the study. He says if you want to use less energy, tap water is the clear winner.
“Tap water may require a thousandth of the energy that it takes to bottle water. And the tap water in the United States is typically of very, very high quality, as high or higher than most of our bottled waters.”
He says buying local bottled water saves energy. So he says try to buy as close to home as you can.
A 42-inch flatscreen TV can use as much energy as a refrigerator. (Photo by Sol Grundy, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
College basketball’s big Final Four tournament is approaching, and television sales will no doubt spike, as they do with most major sporting events. These days, almost every TV sold is a flat panel. And, as Tamara Keith reports, most use more energy than the old cathode ray tube TVs:
Transcript
College basketball’s big Final Four tournament is approaching, and television sales will no doubt spike, as they do with most major sporting events.
These days, almost every TV sold is a flat panel. And, as Tamara Keith reports, most use more energy than the old cathode ray tube TVs:
Talking to Arshad Mansoor can leave a person feeling guilty. He’s vice president of the Electric Power Research Institute. It’s a non-profit study group.
Mansoor’s organization studies how much power different electronic devices use. Those flat screen TV’s everyone is buying– they’re at the top of his hit list.
“As we started bringing in flat screen, and as flat screen prices started coming down, television is one of the largest growth segments in terms of electricity use.”
And get this– a 42-inch flat screen TV can use as much electricity as a refrigerator. Talking to Mansoor got me thinking about my own power use. So, I asked him a hypothetical question that, let’s say, isn’t nearly as hypothetical as it sounds.
“So if I go through my house and replace every light bulb with a compact fluorescent and then I go buy a flat screen TV?”
“You almost wiped out all your savings with one plasma TV and one set-top box that you gained with replacing all your light bulbs with compact florescent.”
So, I guess I’m not as green as I thought! Part of the issue, he says, is that people don’t replace their 25-inch TV’s with 25-inch flat screens. They go bigger. But Mansoor isn’t saying that environmentally minded consumers should steer clear of flat panel TVs. He’s just saying they should shop smart.
For instance, LCD models use less energy than plasmas. Doug Johnson is senior director of technology policy for the Consumer Electronics Association. He insists not all flat screen TVs are energy hogs:
“The key thing really is how efficient are those new televisions and what we have in place now and what we’ve had in place since November 1st of last year is a new energy star specification at the national level that is encouraging a competition in the marketplace for energy efficient televisions.”
New energy star TVs are up to 30-percent more efficient than the last generation of energy stars. And there are now nearly 500 models on the market that meet the standard.
Katherine Kaplan leads Energy Star product development for the US Environmental Protection Agency. She says in the past the program only looked at how much power a TV used when it was turned off.
“Really, it was time to take our energy efficiency requirements to the next level and to focus for the first time on active power.”
At a Washington DC Best Buy, flat screens line an entire wall and half of another one. Richard Glenn can’t seem to take his eyes off of Kung Foo Panda playing on a big plasma TV:
“I have an old fashioned big and clunky TV.”
“And what’s making you shop?”
“Envy. I covet my neighbor’s flat screen.”
And Glenn knows that if he buys a new TV it will use more energy than his old one.
“This very nice plasma I’m looking at here like uses as much energy as a hair drier or something like that. It’s really really bad.”
But he just can’t resist. I ask store manager John Zittraur to point out the energy star TVs:
“Ahh. I think it would be harder to show you the ones that aren’t ’cause all of the ones that we’ve been getting in, I’d say for the past 6 months or so, have all had the energy star logo on it.”
Zittraur has plenty of energy-saving advice for people like Richard Glenn. First, don’t buy more TV than you need. Keep the TV’s brightness settings toned down. Plug the TV, the DVD, and all the other electronics into a surge protector.
For The Environment Report, I’m Tamara Keith.
The Energy Star Program is "a joint program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy helping us all save money and protect the environment through energy efficient products and practices" (Photo courtesy of Energy Star)
The federal government’s Energy
Star program is supposed to highlight
products that save you energy and money.
Rebecca Williams reports some independent
testers found Energy Star might be falling
a bit short:
Transcript
The federal government’s Energy
Star program is supposed to highlight
products that save you energy and money.
Rebecca Williams reports some independent
testers found Energy Star might be falling
a bit short:
The magazine Consumer Reports tests all kinds of products to see how they
stack up. They were testing refrigerators when they stumbled on something
odd.
Steven Saltzman is a Deputy Editor with Consumer Reports. He says the
Energy Star program relies on government standards that are outdated in some
cases. For example, one standard is to test a refrigerator’s energy use with the
icemaker off.
“But we found that when you turn the icemaker on – the refrigerator actually
used twice as much energy as it would with the icemaker off.”
Saltzman is not saying you can’t trust the Energy Star label. But he says the
tests need updating. And there’s a dark Energy Star secret, manufacturers get
to do their own testing in most cases – so there’s not a whole lot of third party
checking going on.
A new report says energy efficiency is often overlooked (Source: Jdorwin at Wikimedia Commons)
A new study suggests we could reduce our
energy use by 15% a decade. But Lisa Ann
Pinkerton reports many people don’t realize it’s
an option:
Transcript
A new study suggests we could reduce our
energy use by 15% a decade. But Lisa Ann
Pinkerton reports many people don’t realize it’s
an option:
Experts call energy efficiency the invisible powerhouse. They say people and policy
makers don’t notice efficiency as an energy solution, because its impacts aren’t
tracked. Plus, it’s an option that’s built into things like energy efficient windows and
appliances.
“Energy efficiency is imbedded in all of the products that we use every day that we don’t
generally see it.”
That’s Karon Ehrhart-Martinez, co-author of a new report from the American
Council for an Energy Efficient Economy.
She compiled data from 2004, the most recent available, and found 300 billion
dollars of investment saved the same amount of energy that 40 power plants could
generate in a year. Ehrhart-Martinez says that’s just a fraction of the energy we
could save, if we chose more energy efficient options when we buy.
For The Environment Report, I’m Lisa Ann Pinkerton.
A conservation group and an industry coalition have come
to an agreement on one of the stickiest issues hanging up a regional water use agreement. The question is whether bottled water exports are considered a diversion of Great Lakes water. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports:
Transcript
A conservation group and an industry coalition have come to an agreement on one of the stickiest issues hanging up a regional water use agreement. The question is whether bottled water exports are considered a diversion of Great Lakes water. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports:
Officials from the Great Lakes states and provinces are trying to hammer out a regional water use agreement known as Annex 2001. They’ve been trying to come to a deal for the last four years. So the National Wildlife Federation and the Council of Great Lakes Industries agreed on some of the most contentious issues.
One of those is bottled water. The groups recommended that bottled water exports be allowed in the agreement, but that states be allowed to enact their own limits or bans. But some environmental groups are unhappy about the proposal. David Holtz is Michigan director of Clean Water Action.
“We don’t care how water leaves the basin. What’s the difference if it leaves in twelve-ounce bottles or a pipe? I mean, it’s still gone.”
The Council of Great Lakes Governors has a December deadline to agree on a plan.
A growing number of electricity customers in Ontario are
using so-called smart meters, which will charge more for electricity
used during peak hours of the day. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Karen Kelly reports:
Transcript
A growing number of electricity customers in Ontario are using so-called smart
meters, which
will charge more for electricity used during peak hours of the day. The Great Lakes
Radio
Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports:
Right now, electricity customers in Ontario pay the same amount to run their
dishwasher at 6 p.m.
– during peak hours – as they do at ten in the morning. But it costs the province
more to produce
that power during peak times.
The heavy demand is a strain on Ontario’s aging electricity plants. So, the
province plans to
install smart electricity meters in every home and business over the next five years.
Ted Gruetzner is with the Ontario Ministry of Energy.
“It allows people to track their energy use depending on the time of day and monitor
when they’re
using power so they can turn their lights off at certain times or use their ovens or
dryers at
different times of day.”
That’s because electricity used during peak hours will cost consumers more. Ontario
is the first
jurisdiction in North America to use this system.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is considering
extending the use of a pesticide that the agency once decided was
not safe around children. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is considering extending the use of a
pesticide that
the agency once decided was not safe around children. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s
Lester Graham reports:
The pesticide Dursban is sprayed on the ground during construction to protect new
homes from
termites. Four years ago, the EPA and Dow had agreed to phase out that use of the
pesticide by
the end of this year. Exposure to children was considered risky. Now, the EPA is
reportedly
considering lifting the ban. Jay Feldman heads up the environmental group Beyond
Pesticides.
Feldman says this would be like testing the safety of Dursban on humans without their
knowledge…
“They really should stop production, then stop use, do all the studies they want to
do with full
public disclosure and then revisit the issue. Not retain the use, allow people
unknowingly to be
exposed and then obviously put children at serious risk.”
In a report in The Washington Post, a Dow spokesperson indicated using new EPA
computer modeling, Dursban now “falls within an acceptable range” of federal
guidelines.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
One of the first genetically modified foods to reach the grocery store was a tomato. (Photo by Rainer Berg)
According to a new report, Americans’ opinions about genetically modified foods haven’t changed much in three years. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:
Transcript
According to a new report, Americans’ opinions about genetically modified foods haven’t changed much in three years. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:
The report says about a third of Americans think genetically modified foods are basically safe. Roughly another third think they’re basically unsafe, and most of the rest say they don’t know enough to form an opinion.
That’s about the same as three years ago.
Mike Rodemeyer is Executive Director of the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology. The group conducted the opinion polling. Rodemeyer says from the perspective of those who support genetically modified foods, the lack of firm convictions isn’t necessarily bad.
“It could be if there doesn’t appear to be consumer problems with accepting this technology perhaps it makes sense just to let things lie where they are.”
Regardless of whether they support GM foods, most Americans want a strong regulatory system to oversee their development and use. About half the corn and soybeans grown in the U.S. are genetically modified varieties.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tracy Samilton.
In a difficult market, more newspapers are choosing an online-only format. This means demand for pulp and paper products has gone down. (Photo by Erin Kelly)
