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Energy Star program relies on government standards that are outdated in some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 lead detector finds over 5000 parts per million of lead in this toy. (Photo by Lisa Ann Pinkerton)
A new federal law is forcing
toy manufacturers to get the lead out
of children’s products. Consumer
advocates are cheering the tougher
guidelines. Julie Grant reports:
Transcript
A new federal law is forcing
toy manufacturers to get the lead out
of children’s products. Consumer
advocates are cheering the tougher
guidelines. Julie Grant reports:
Consumer advocate Ed Mierzwinski says despite what
you’d assume, toys have not been tested for safety.
Mierzwinski is with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.
He says, until now, the government agency in charge – the
Consumer Products Safety Commission – hasn’t been able
to do that.
“It was a rudderless ship. It had no leadership. It had no
money. It had one person testing toys. A guy named bob.
And in 2007 the whole thing just came to a crisis.”
Mierzwinski says 30-million toys were recalled last year.
This new law requires all children’s products meet tougher
new standards for toxic materials. It also gives the
Consumer Product Safety Commission more money, staff,
and authority.
But the law doesn’t take effect until February – so toys for
sale this holiday season could still be a problem.
Steve Mohoney (left), of the Clinton County Soil & Water Conservation
District, gives dairy farmer Dale Tetreault his first look at "Bigfoot". (Photo by David Sommerstein)
Over the last 30 years, plastics
have become indispensable on America’s
farms. They save farmers time and money.
The problem is agricultural plastics are
filling up landfills. In some places,
farmers actually burn the plastic. That
releases dangerous chemicals into the air.
David Sommerstein reports
on a new effort to bale plastics and recycle
them:
Transcript
Over the last 30 years, plastics
have become indispensable on America’s
farms. They save farmers time and money.
The problem is agricultural plastics are
filling up landfills. In some places,
farmers actually burn the plastic. That
releases dangerous chemicals into the air.
David Sommerstein reports
on a new effort to bale plastics and recycle
them:
Farmers must have been paying attention when Dustin Hoffman got that
famous piece of advice in ‘The Graduate’.
“I just want to say one word to you, just one word.”
“Yes, sir?”
“ Are you listening?”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“Plastics.”
Plastics are all over the farm today. Plastic greenhouse covers. White sheets
to wrap hay bales. Black plastic feed troughs.
(sound of moving troughs)
Dale Tetreault shakes a tall pile of the feed troughs on his dairy farm in
northern New York State.
“They’re a hard plastic and they hold molasses and minerals.”
Tetreault says the plastics are handy – essential, really – to keep feed fresh
for his 500 cows. But the material’s hard to re-use because it gets dirty and
tears easily.
So Tetreault’s left with a decision – spend a thousand dollars a year to truck
them to the landfill. Or burn them, polluting the air and water.
“Yeah, exactly, I mean, we’re not talking about some light piece of plastic
here. We’re talking about heavy duty plastic.”
A new machine is giving Tetrault a third alternative. It goes by the name of
Bigfoot.
(sound of motor starting up)
Bigfoot is a portable hydraulic press. It crushes used plastic and ties it up
in bales.
“Quite an interesting contraption, that’s for sure.”
Tetreault’s been saving up used farm plastics for a couple months for this
test run.
“Alright, we ready to try this?”
That’s Steve Mahoney, a farm educator with the local soil and water
conservation district. He bought Bigfoot with a $35,000 state grant.
(sound of engine running)
Mahoney and some farmhands stuff dirty plastic sheets into the baler, then
Bigfoot crushes it down. That makes room for more.
(crushing sound)
“Okay, so go on back up.”
Mahoney teaches the farmhands how to run Bigfoot. With the help of the
local farm extension office, he’s baled plastics at nine farms so far. He
wants all of the area’s farmers to share Bigfoot, to keep plastics out of the
landfill or burn pile.
“It’s an obvious problem on the farms. It’s necessary, but the disposal of it
is a problem.”
The big plan is to recycle the plastic. Mahoney’s coordinating with a
recycling firm in Minnesota to pick up 40,000 pounds of plastic bales. They
could be made into plastic lumber or shingles or road filler.
The thing is, there isn’t much of a market for low-grade, dirty plastic right
now. Lois Levitan directs New York’s Ag Plastics Recycling Project at
Cornell University. She says as fuel costs rise and more farmers bale their
plastic, that might change.
“Markets want to know that there’s a certain quantity of product at a
certain level of quantity and they’re going to become increasingly interested
when they know there’s a steady stream.”
(sound of Bigfoot machine popping out a bale)
“Ok, that’s it, that’s the finished product.”
Steve Mahoney presses a button and out pops a thousand pound bale of
plastic. Farmhand Lennie Merculdi brushes his hands.
“Put it this way, trying to put it in a dumpster, to the barn, and never having
enough room for the garbage, that’s not good either. What’s a few minutes?
You get rid of the plastic, it’s convenient, you tie it up and away it goes.”
For The Environment Report, I’m David Sommerstein.
The Conservation Resource Alliance works with property-owners to repair their rivers from problems such as erosion (Photo courtesy of the Conservation Resource Alliance)
(Photo courtesy of the Conservation Resource Alliance)
American rivers have gone
through a lot in the last century.
Their twists and turns have been
turned into straight channels.
Their banks have been washed away.
And pollution is still flowing off
farm fields and city streets. Fixing
these rivers is a big challenge. A lot
of the land that rivers run through is
privately owned. So that means – to
fix a river, you often have to work with
landowners. Rebecca Williams has the story
of one group that thinks they’ve found
the secret to winning people’s trust:
Transcript
American rivers have gone
through a lot in the last century.
Their twists and turns have been
turned into straight channels.
Their banks have been washed away.
And pollution is still flowing off
farm fields and city streets. Fixing
these rivers is a big challenge. A lot
of the land that rivers run through is
privately owned. So that means – to
fix a river, you often have to work with
landowners. Rebecca Williams has the story
of one group that thinks they’ve found
the secret to winning people’s trust:
(bird sound)
Di Rau is the fourth generation of her family to farm this land in Northern
Michigan. Her grandpa homesteaded the land and set up a sawmill.
“It was the primary industry – I mean there was logging camps just
everywheres you turned.”
Back then the rivers were the only way to get those logs downstream. But
years of rolling logs down the bank into the river were causing serious
erosion. Huge trees were crashing into the water.
Rau says she didn’t know any of her family’s legacy until one day, when a
local group gave her a call. The more she learned about the problems, the
more she felt, well…
“Guilt! (laughs) Because of my ancestors. It’s like practicing medicine. It’s
always evolving and you don’t really know lots of times what you’re doing
wrong until another generation comes along and tells you this is what
you’ve created. Then it’s like okay let’s do something about it.”
So Rau let construction workers on her land. And now, ten years later, she
says it’s beautiful.
“Go down and just listen to creatures. You have deer come splashing
through, we have a bear around here, he likes to visit, couple bobcat.
There’s a lot of wildlife – it’s pretty cool.”
The woman who won Di Rau over is Kim Balke. She’s a biologist with the
group Conservation Resource Alliance. She says working with Di Rau was
pretty easy. But not everyone opens their doors so quickly.
There was the divorced couple who still owned land together, the fighting
brothers, the neighbors who nobody liked.
“Other people have said you know don’t go to their house they’ll greet you
with a shotgun!”
So far, no shotguns. Balke says she’s learned not to listen to what neighbors
say about each other. She approaches each person one by one, and talks to
them about what’s at stake. Her sales pitch? We’re just here to help – and
hey, we’ll pay most of the bill.
“You know a lot of our projects are erosion control, when banks are
completely falling into the stream – landowners, it’s not hard for them to
realize they’re losing property.”
But Balke says, still, you can’t just rush in and tell people what to do. She
says it can take months or even years to warm homeowners up to the
project.
That’s because fixing rivers is serious work. If a riverbank is eroding or an
old bridge is falling into the water, we’re talking about heavy construction
equipment. You have to be willing to have bulldozers and port-a-johns on
your lawn for a long time. And you might have to lose a tree.
“Things can look a little rough when you’re doing construction and some
people are a little worried about change.”
Balke says she just takes her time. She sends letters, sits down for coffee,
lets people think it over.
And it’s not just homeowners who Balke’s group needs to win over. There
are road commissions, tribes, sportfishers, and environmentalists. People
who sometimes just don’t trust each other.
Amy Beyer directs Conservation Resource Alliance. She says her group has
gotten all those people together.
“Yes they have been historically mortal enemies and that doesn’t mean all of
the baggage falls away but I can tell you it feels awfully good to go around
the circle when we complete a project and hear all the different voices and
how they’re celebrating that success.”
Beyer says this is not a quick and easy process – it can take years to get
people to actually find some little thing to agree on. But she says you can
fix a river without ever going to court.
Eric Rund raises corn and soy on his Illinois
farm but is experimenting with 'Miscanthus x giganteus',
a hybrid grass that could become a major feedstock for
cellulosic ethanol - if the market ever matures.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
Stephen John is an agronomist with the Agricultural
Watershed Institute, which is helping the area around Decatur, Illinois cut down on soil erosion and fertilizer pollution; he
believes perennial grasses such as miscanthus may be part of
the solution.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
Gary Letterly dips his hand into a hopper of miscanthus
pellets in the furnace room of his University of Illinois Extension
Service office in Taylorville, Illinois.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
These pellets were produced from miscanthus grown in
Illinois; they're fed into a modified corn furnace to heat office space.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
This furnace was originally built to burn pelletized corn, but
Gary Letterly had an Illinois manufacturer modify it to burn miscanthus
pellets; corn and grass (miscanthus and other grasses such as switchgrass)
produce different amounts of ash when burned.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
The US is in the middle of an
ethanol revolution, or at least it’s
supposed to be. Scientists want to
develop ethanol that doesn’t use corn
– so food prices won’t go up. They’ve
found a tall grass called miscanthus that
can produce loads of ethanol – but they
haven’t perfected it yet. Shawn Allee reports some are trying to grow
miscanthus before the ethanol revolution
arrives:
Transcript
The US is in the middle of an
ethanol revolution, or at least it’s
supposed to be. Scientists want to
develop ethanol that doesn’t use corn
– so food prices won’t go up. They’ve
found a tall grass called miscanthus that
can produce loads of ethanol – but they
haven’t perfected it yet. Shawn Allee reports some are trying to grow
miscanthus before the ethanol revolution
arrives:
You won’t find much miscanthus near Decatur, Illinois.
Nope. Corn is crop number one.
But all this corn-growing has a downside.
Agronomist Stephen John offers to show it to me.
Shawn Allee: “Where are we?”
Stephan John: “Well, we’re near the upper end of Lake Decatur, looking across at
the city’s dredge. Right now that dredge that is sucking up sediment from the lake
bottom.”
John says corn can leave ground bare, and rain washes dirt and fertilizer pollution into
this lake.
“Some of that nitrogen gets into streams and ditches into Lake Decatur, which had
to develop a facility to protect drinking water.”
John wants farmers to protect soil from erosion and use less fertilizer.
One option is to grow grasses that hold soil and use less nitrogen. One candidate is that
miscanthus grass the ethanol industry’s interested in.
Problem is, no one buys miscanthus yet.
“So, the trick is how do you make it economically viable to get those grasses onto the
land, how do you make that attractive?”
John says people are working on that problem.
Farmer Eric Rund stands near a patch of miscanthus grass. He’s a pretty tall guy, but the
grass is even taller.
Shawn Allee: “I’m putting my hand through here.”
Eric Rund: “It’s like a jungle in there, it’s like bamboo growth or something.”
Rund says corn farmers get kinda freaked out by miscanthus. It doesn’t grow from seed,
and unlike corn, it takes years to produce.
He says farmers need to experiment with it.
“And if we do that now, when ethanol production comes along, we will then have a
reliable source of biomass for the ethanol plant.”
Rund says some farmers would grow miscanthus just to protect water and soil. But to
make it mainstream, it’s gotta be profitable.
“That’s the key. No farmer’s going to plant much of it unless there’s a market for it
and there’s no market for it unless there’s a steady supply of it, so the two are going
to have to grow together.”
But what if that takes a while for the ethanol industry to come knocking? Who would use
Rund’s miscanthus?
I meet a guy who’s working on a solution.
Gary Letterly: “What would you like to do, where would you like to start?”
Shawn Allee: “I want to see your furnace.”
I’m with Gary Letterly. He works with the University of Illinois.
He says in corn country, some people heat their homes with corn pellets.
That gave him an idea on how to heat his office.
“And what you see here, it was a corn furnace, and we thought it would be just
great if we could use that furnace and burn grass pellets.
Right next to the modified furnace, there’s a plastic hopper full of miscanthus pellets.
They look like rabbit or hamster food, and they smell like grass.
“Look at high energy costs. This was very competitive with natural gas, and the very
nice thing is being able to keep this value very close to home. The grass was
produced within fifteen miles, the furnaces were produced within five miles, and the
grass was processed into a pellet within 30 miles.”
Letterly says miscanthus offers enough local economic and environmental benefits that
people should look into it now.
It already has potential to be a kind of super-star plant, with or without help from an
ethanol industry may never come.
imothy D. Sands, at left, director of Purdue's Birck Nanotechnology Center in Discovery Park, and graduate student Mark Oliver, operate a "reactor" in work aimed at perfecting solid-state lighting, a technology that could cut electricity consumption by 10 percent if widely adopted. Purdue researchers have overcome a major obstacle in reducing the cost of the lighting technology, called light-emitting diodes. (Photo by David Umberger, courtesy of Purdue News Service)
Unless you like to live by candlelight,
you have to buy lightbulbs. But the options
out there aren’t that great. Jessi Ziegler reports how all that might change soon:
Transcript
Unless you like to live by candlelight,
you have to buy lightbulbs. But the options
out there aren’t that great. Jessi Ziegler reports how all that might change soon:
Plain-old incandescent lightbulbs are not efficient. That’s
old news.
And fluorescents? The color is funny and they have toxic
mercury in them.
So, what option is left?
LED lights. They’re as efficient as compact flourescents
minus the mercury.
The problem? They’re one-hundred-dollars-a-bulb
expensive.
But scientists at Purdue have been working on a way to
cut that cost.
Researcher Timothy Sands says in about 5 years, LEDs could
cost the same as the other bulbs.
“So, the nice thing about it is you can save energy, and
actually save money over the long haul – even though the
initial cost is very high right now, without changing what
you’re used to, or without lowering your standards for
lighting.”
And Sands says another big advantage of LEDs is you’d only
have to change the bulbs every 15 years.
For The Environment Report, this is Jessi Ziegler.
An endangered holiday darter. Darters are among the most threatened Southeastern fish; they have been likened to aquatic canaries. (Photo by Noel Burkhead, courtesy of USGS)
A new study shows things are getting
worse for fish in North America. Lester
Graham reports water pollution is the problem:
Transcript
A new study shows things are getting
worse for fish in North America. Lester
Graham reports water pollution is the problem:
The U.S. Geological Survey finds nearly twice as many kinds of fish are now listed
as imperiled today than just 20 years ago. 61 types of fish have gone extinct.
Howard Jelks is the lead author of the study.
He says the decline in fish is because most streams, rivers, and lakes are in worse
shape because of sprawling development, farmers’ chemicals, and pollution washed
off parking lots and streets.
Even if you don’t go fishing, or really even care about the fish, Jelks says there’s a
reason you should care.
“You know, at a certain point, it’s a quality of life issue. If it’s not good enough for
some of these fish, it’s probably not good enough for your kids to swim in.”
And the experts say that means we all have to think about what’s going down the
drain and what chemicals we’re putting on lawns, and on farms.
The Adopt-A-Watt program allows people to sponsor clean energy (Photo courtesy of Adopt-A-Watt)
A new program gets businesses and
groups to pay towns to switch to alternative
energy. Lester Graham reports it’s a
little like an “Adopt-A-Highway” program:
Transcript
A new program gets businesses and
groups to pay towns to switch to alternative
energy. Lester Graham reports it’s a
little like an “Adopt-A-Highway” program:
Imagine seeing a bank of solar panels that power nearby street lights, and a sign
underneath which recognizes the company that sponsored the project.
Thomas Wither is the founder of the National Adopt-A-Watt program.
“Our program mimics the very successful “Adopt-A-Highway” program. Only instead
of giving supporters community recognition for picking up litter alongside the road,
we have come up with a means of giving community recognition for supporting clean
energy and the funding for alternative fuels.”
Wither says several airports are among the first to use the “adopt-a-watt” program.
Sponsors get the benefit of being connected to clean energy – like solar power – and
airports, towns, and other government entities get the cost of using clean energy
subsidized by those sponsors.
For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.
The Honda Insight Concept (Photo courtesy of Honda)
Next spring car buyers will have
another choice if they’re looking for a
hybrid car. Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Next spring car buyers will have
another choice if they’re looking for a
hybrid car. Lester Graham reports:
The very first electric-gas hybrid car to hit the dealership showroom was the Honda
Insight back in 2000. But the small two-seater never took off like the bigger Toyota
Prius.
Now a re-designed Insight will be on exhibit at next month’s Paris Auto Show.
Csaba Csere is the editor-in-chief of Car and Driver magazine. He says the new
Insight will seat four or five.
“The profile looks very much like the current Prius, but it’s going to be a less
expensive car. It’s probably going to start at about $19,000, still get nearly 50-miles
per gallon, and it’s going to go on sale on Earth Day next spring.”
The Honda Insight will get to the dealers’ lots more than a year before a next
generation Toyota Prius and GM’s Chevy Volt are expected to go on sale.
For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.
Ken Brunswick at the Limberlost marsh (Photo by Sam Hendren)
The Limberlost marsh was written about by Gene Stratton-Porter, a
popular novelist in the early 1900s. Stratton-
Porter was best known for her fictional accounts
set in and around an the swamp. (Photo by Sam Hendren)
A red-winged blackbird at the Limberlost marsh (Photo by Sam Hendren)
Biologists say we’ve lost about half
of the number of songbirds we had just 50 years
ago. Part of the reason is the loss of habitat.
Many birds need wetlands. Sam Hendren has the
story of one man’s love of those birds and his
work to save their home:
Transcript
Biologists say we’ve lost about half
of the number of songbirds we had just 50 years
ago. Part of the reason is the loss of habitat.
Many birds need wetlands. Sam Hendren has the
story of one man’s love of those birds and his
work to save their home:
When Ken Brunswick was a kid, he wanted
to study birds. Brunswick grew up near the
western Ohio town of St. Henry in the 1950s. He
says it didn’t take long to read all the books
about birds in the local library.
“I knew exactly where all the bird books were
because at that time that’s what I had my heart
set on, being an ornithologist,” Brunswick says.
One of the books that inspired Brunswick
was written by Gene Stratton-Porter. She was a
popular novelist in the early 1900s. Stratton-
Porter was best known for her fictional accounts
set in and around an Indiana swamp called the
Limberlost. She was also an amateur naturalist
and wrote several books about birds.
“I was in the eighth grade in that little two-room
schoolhouse reading ‘What I Have Done With
Birds’ by Gene Stratton-Porter, and the teacher
walked up to see what book I was reading, and
looked at it and the teacher said, ‘You know that
place isn’t very far from here.’ And I didn’t know
what she was talking about.”
The Limberlost actually was only a few miles
west across the state line. Stratton-Porter
moved to the area in 1888. But to the locals, the
trees were valuable lumber and the swamp was
a waste of land. Stratton-Porter wrote that
commerce attacked the Limberlost and began,
she said, its usual process of devastation. By
1910, two decades of destruction were
complete.
“This Loblolly Marsh was what I consider the
heart of the Limberlost area and this marsh was
actually the last thing that was drained in this
area so the farmers could start farming it,” says
Brunswick.
Brunswick became a farmer himself. He
started a dairy only a mile from the old Loblolly
Marsh. Through the years he learned more about
the swamp and the birds that lived there.
Later he formed the Limberlost
Remembered project. The group’s mission: to
bring Loblolly Marsh back to life. And they’ve
made a lot of headway.
Brunswick, who’s 63, is retried from farming.
He’s now an ecologist for the Indiana
Department of Natural Resources. He oversees
the Limberlost restoration.
We take a look at the changes aboard his ATV.
He’s maneuvering along a path near the edge of
the marsh. It’s thick with prairie cord grass,
switch grass and blue stem. Some of the grasses
have been planted here; other plant seeds have
lain dormant for decades and are now reclaiming
the ground on their own.
Out in the marsh the water is a gentle sea of
green and wildflowers abound around the edges.
But Brunswick’s love of the birds has not gone
away. And he’s thrilled to see them returning to
their marsh home.
“This is the area where we see American Bittern
once in a while. There’s been Virginia Rail, we
hear Sora Rail in here also. Sora is just a real
little bird that has just the dandiest sound when
it makes its call,” Brunswick says.
These birds and others like them are in
trouble. Most of the wetlands and prairies where
birds once thrived have disappeared.
Brunswick’s dream of becoming an
ornithologist never happened. But his work to
save the Limberlost has been his way of doing
something for the birds he loves.
“Actually when I think about this work I’m doing
it takes me back to that dream I had when I was
a kid in that two room schoolhouse. That dream
of being an ornithologist was taken away and
here, about 30 years later, seeing this land
flooding, I’m seeing birds that, some of them, I
never saw before.”
And the work of an old farmer has restored
the wetlands and natural areas that farmers
before him destroyed.
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)
