Green water

My husband and I are in desperate need of a new water heater, but we have been procrastinating due to the lack of reliable information on what truly is the greener alternative. Here I was, thinking that making such a seemingly small decision would be easy, especially considering all the work I have done on eco-labels, and green products. Man, was I wrong. Probably close to two years ago (yes, we have really needed a new water heater for that long), I started doing some research on different products, talking to plumbers, contractors, and environmental experts. No one really seemed to know, except for a generic “on-demand is better” from the green camp and “conventional is better” from the plumbers. What we have found, is that there are lots of factors to consider when buying a new water heater, including the temperature of your groundwater, your usage, and the number of major appliances you have. In our case, it’s just the two of us and every appliance we have, including faucets and shower heads are low flow. We have restrictors in all our faucets, and we never run the washer and dishwasher at the same time (our only two major water-using appliances). Generally, we are a very low-flow household. Despite that, the overwhelming recommendation is to not buy a 4 gallon-per-minute (GPM) or smaller water heater. We did the math (adding up all our uses in GPM, and considering that we never use 100% hot water), and it seems 4 GPM, for us, should be plenty. But I am inclined to listen to the professionals, even though I think there is a certain fear of anything new and unconventional. Additionally, on-demand water heaters are more expensive and come with major installation costs, but I am willing to make the “green” investment. And there is that $250 tax credit. Here’s a summary of what we learned:

1. Certain on-demand water heaters cannot be operated where groundwater temperatures get below 60 degrees.
2. Electric on-demand water heaters require a large amount of amps (we have 100 amp service and would need to upgrade at least to 200, which is a significant expense).
3. Gas on-demand water heaters are not nearly as efficient as electric, but still more energy efficient than conventional water heaters.
4. Finding a plumber in Muncie to install an on-demand water heater is tricky, but can be done.
5. On-demand water heaters last much longer than conventional. A conventional water heater seems to last 3-5 years at a maximum in Muncie due to our hard water, just based on conversations with other homeowners. So the up-front and installations costs of conventional heaters should probably be doubled or tripled, because they have to be replaced more often.
6. Installation of gas water heaters require special venting, and the purchase of a $350 venting kit. Vents must be a minimum of 4”, which can be an issue in some homes, especially one that is 100 years old, like ours.

Check out this spreadsheet that I put together just for a simple comparison.

In my opinion, you also shouldn’t consider installing an on-demand water heater before you have made sure that your water consumption is at its minimum. We have spent the last five years minimizing our water consumption by our practices (turn off the faucet while you brush your teeth…), installing water-efficient appliances (including a dual-flush toilet, which doesn’t use hot water, but is very neat…), and installing restrictors in faucets and showers (and getting used to them!).

Wish us luck! I hope this info may prove helpful to you, too. Later.

Making room for sustainability in your life

Sustainable living is a complex science. The conscious consumer is faced every day with green dilemmas that at first glance may seem impossibly hard. The most important part to leading a more sustainable life, in my opinion, is to make decisions that work for you. If asked to make major life alterations in a short period of time even the most the most committed environmentalist will eventually throw in the towel. That’s why adopting small changes incrementally over time and making sustainability work for you is usually the best way to go. However, when faced with difficult decisions about our consumption habits, such as choosing between organic food grown far away or local food produced using pesticides or other chemicals, we can approach it several different ways. We can simply choose the product that boasts features that are most important to us, such as organic food for our own personal health versus supporting a local food system in our community. The issue you feel stronger about is the right choice. Luckily many local producers who are part of our local food system believe in sustainable agriculture and produce food without pesticides. The other option is to turn to environmental scientists. There are internationally accepted methods for determining the sustainability of a product or food item, such as Lifecycle Assessment (LCA) or the concept of food miles. These tools allow us to look at a more comprehensive picture of the environmental burden of the product from a “cradle to grave” perspective. In the case of food miles, food is tracked literally from its origin to your table based either on weight or calories provided. These and other methods often provide the basis for product labeling, called eco-labels. The use of eco-labels is typically an attempt by various nations’ governments to avoid what is often called “green washing”; a company’s claim that their product is greener than the next without any science to substantiate those claims. “Green” has become the newest trend and everywhere you turn companies, products and services are all touted to be “green”, “environmentally friendly”, or “natural”. But without standards for these claims, the words are meaningless. It’s really just about marketing. You need to look for credible labels, or do a substantial amount of research yourself. A good place to start learning about eco-labels is at eco-labels.org. This domain is now owned by Consumer Reports, but it’s a well-managed project that is now hosted at greenerchoices.org. While we all certainly need a minimum amount of food and goods to survive, of increasing significance are our consumption habits. The idea of curbing our consumption, not just doing without, but by also substituting quality over quantity, is equally or more important than making the choice between for example, local and organic. It’s of course not a new idea, denying what some would claim is an intrinsic drive for consumption can be traced to the voluntary simplicity movement, Quakers, the origins of several major religions including Christianity and Buddhism, and the Spartans to name a few. The bottom line though, is avoiding the crappy quality goods that don’t last and that you probably don’t need, sold by Wal-Mart and its likes. Consider whether you should be buying before you consider what to buy.

Blogging on smart living?

Ah, the joy of blogging. Honestly, I haven’t really tried it before and I am not really a blog follower either, so I have no idea what the expectations are. But ever since we started the Smart Living Project, people have been asking us “do you have a blog”? Now the answer is definitely yes, but what kind of content were our members and followers really expecting? For me, at least, this blog will serve as a series of anecdotes on the journey to sustainability, trying to weave in some tips, ideas and advise for what it’s worth along the way. This time of year, all I can think about is gardening. In fact, it will completely consume me if I let it. I find tremendous happiness from growing things, whether it be food or flowers, even grass. It’s true; a couple of weeks ago I started growing grass indoors. Maybe just to have something to grow and something green around the house, but the purpose, I told everyone, was to grow “oats for cats” for my friends’ cats. Turned out they didn’t like it so much, but it was a fun project that satisfied my gardening craze for a while. About the same time, I bought my first sprouter. Funny you think, someone who has been gardening as much as I have never made sprouts? The fact is I didn’t think I liked them. But if you make them yourself, they taste a whole lot better. So in a round-about way, that’s what I wanted to come to. Growing things yourself. It’s very sustainable. Why? First of all, it’s tremendously local. Even if you buy seeds and supplies over the Internet, there is still a lot less transportation involved. And that’s one of the core things that I like to look for when I judge if something is sustainable. How far did this item have to be shipped? The bigger and heavier it is, the more gas was used, too. The second thing I look for, and this is my personal choice really, is the input of chemicals, especially when it comes to food. This is for health reasons of course, why eat unnatural materials when you don’t have to? But it’s also fundamentally unsustainable to produce, transport and release toxic chemicals into the environment. Even if they are deemed safe for human consumption, or their manufacturer proudly proclaims that they biodegrade within five days, they are by definition poisons. That’s what they were designed to do. So why do it if you don’t need to? It’s been proven over and over again that organic agriculture is equally or more productive per acre than conventional agriculture. Most recently, a study at the University of Minnesota came to this conclusion, but there are others. This brings me back to the third item I look for. Anything that is unnecessary. I have never really heard this argument in a sustainability conversation, but think about it. For example, when I buy paper towels I refuse to buy the printed ones. Not only do I think they are pretty dumb, but why waste the ink, the energy that goes into the machine and the extra packaging that states “cute motifs” when you don’t need it? That’s an extra burden on the environment that makes no sense to me. Maybe this is something that stuck with me when I studied lifecycle assessment in college, but for some reason I like to look at products and compare them based on which is simpler. Fewer ingredients, fewer hard-to-pronounce ingredients, and less industrial input in general are things to me that make a product sustainable. I loosely base my decisions on what I know about lifecycle assessment, industrial ecology, and eco-labeling principles. So far it works well for me. Later!