Solar Panels Could Pose Dangers to the Environment
Solar Energy is one of the top emerging renewable energy sources that could relieve us of our dependency on dirty energy sources like coal and dangerous energy sources like nuclear. Even with it’s many positives, solar energy has a major drawback that could cause some harm to our environment. Solar energy itself is not dangerous nor is the process of solar panels converting the sun’s light into energy. The biggest problem is in the production and disposal of the solar panels.
As reported Solar panels are currently made with various toxic chemicals including silicon. It is a major component in their construction and is a main reason that both must be carefully manufactured and recycled. The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition recently released a report to encourage the industry to pursue more sustainable materials to build their products to ensure that solar energy is truly as green as advertised. Also, they would like the government to enact policies to prevent a similar situation currently occurring with the electronic industry. If preparations are not properly taken then there can be dire consequences. There have been many deaths and communities destroyed due to the toxic byproducts of using silicon. There are huge amounts of toxic materials that lay in our landfills because of the lack of planning on their parts. The goal of this report is to prevent a situation like from happening with the solar panel industry.
A big problem is that the solar industry has started off on a similar track to that of electronics. There was a report that a small town in China was already polluted with a silicon byproduct. Their lands are filled with waste and left unusable. There are also health risks to the people who have not already been directly affected by the toxins. This cannot continue to keep happening if we want to continue to praise solar energy as being green and a renewable energy source. After reading this article, it makes it really hard to continue to support solar energy, but there are still many reasons to do so. As I said earlier, solar energy itself is renewable, just the products used to making the panels. It’s great to see that the coalition is putting pressure on the solar industry to start researching safe material to be used in their manufacturing process. These changes need to be done now before further damage is done.
There is at least some companies that realize the real dangers associated with the waste that could accumulate from their panel production. First Solar is giving their customer’s a lifetime guarantee that they will recycle the panels they sell. This process ensures that their panels do not end up in a landfill and are properly disposed of. Don’t get me wrong, Solar energy’s benefits far outweigh this one negative. I would choose solar energy in a heartbeat over horrible energy sources like coal and nuclear. We just need to make sure that companies are taking responsibility for their products and have recycling programs like First Solar has to make sure these new renewable sources of energy are as green as everybody suggests.
Shower Calculator Updated
I made a few changes to the Shower Calculator to allow more metrics to be entered as well as a few other enhancements. They include:
- Added a Water Cost field to allows for the entering of the cost of water per 1000 gallons.
- Added an Efficiency field that allows for the entering of the efficiency factor of your particular water heater.
- Added a Water Temperature field to allow you to enter your groundwater temperature. This is the temperature in which water enters your water heater.
- Added a Shower Temperature field to allow for the entering of cold/hot your shower raises.
- Provide how much the entered water heater uses depending on its energy source in the output.
- Provide a breakdown of the total cost of a shower by showing the cost of both water and the water heater.
Please let me know of any additional things you wish me to add to this calculator. Also, if there are any problems with it let me know so I can fix them immediately.
Wood Toys: Safe for Kids and Eco Friendly
With the outrage of many about the high lead content and dangerous plastics our children’s toys are being made out of, why not choose a more safe and environmentally friendly option. Wood toys can be just that, much safer for children and don’t have the environmental impacts that plastic toys do.
History
Wood toys have been used by children for hundreds and even thousands of years dating back to the Egyptians and Ancient Greeks. Wood toys have found their way as a choice for making toys in many societies throughout history. Since then, other types of toys have taken the foreground incluing synthetic materials and plastics. Even with technology changes, wood toy manufacturing has almost been a constant throughout.
Why use Wood?
Environmentally Friendly
On the surface, using wood for toys seems wasteful and harmful to the environment. It is actually quite the contrary. Toys that are made from wood are now often made from renewable sources such as tree farms. Sustainable forestry methods are used to ensure that reforestation is possible while not compromising the quality of the environment. Toys made from plastic and other synthetic materials usually are not biodegradable and can leach chemicals into the environment.
Reusable
The plastic toys that are heavily marketed to our kids these days may seem desirable to them at the time, but usually end up being unused or broke after just a short period of use. These toys are usually poorly made and usually end up in landfills. Some do end up in thrift stores to be either resold or given to other children, but can still be dangerous for other children to play with as I discussed above.
Safe For Kids
The fact that they are environmentally friendly and reusable are great, but the biggest reason to get wood toys for your children is for their safety. It is a natural item that does not have the dangerous attributes that plastics and other synthetic materials have. Wood also has no leaching properties and the only real danger with it is it’s harder than plastic. Many toys are still made with PVC plastic which is has leaching properties. Even if you child does not put the toy in their mouth, the fact that they could leaching harmful chemicals on their skin is reason enough to not give them these toys. What is scary is that Europe has banned toys being made with this type of plastic for years, but America and Canada continue to have toys made with phthalates in them. At least this upcoming act will ban toy makers from using PVC plastic in children’s toys.
Please do be careful with is that if you buy older wooden toys or make toys yourself though. Be sure to not buy wood that has been treated with any chemicals as it can be extremely dangerous for your child. Also, be careful with wooden toys because lead paint could have been used on them depending on where it was made.
Help Save Homemade Toys
There are a variety of wood toy makers and retailers, but almost all are smaller companies. Many of these companies are pushing for truly safer toys for our children and at the same time being more eco friendly. The upcoming Consumer Protection Safety Improvement Act has caused concerned that many of these companies will not be able to survive because of the high cost to have their toys tested for lead. The Homemade Toy Alliance is urging all people to contact their local Congressional office and ask to change the CPSIA to exclude small toy makers and toys made with cloth from it. It just doesn’t make sense to include either of these in the act as small toy makers cannot afford the expensive tests required and clothing is a different product from wha the act is trying to target.
Make Your Own Toys
I found a great site called Wood Marvels that helps you make you own toys. This allows you to choose the exact wood you would like your child’s toys to be made with. They sell the blueprints for a wide variety of toys and also sell those same toys in a variety of sizes.
Wood Toy Makers
There are tons of wood toy makers out there that make wood toys from small to large. Just make sure to find ones that obtain their wood from sustainble sources or is organic. Here are a few I found:
- Eco Tots – Have large selection of wooden toys that are organic and use environmentally friendly practices.
- Classic Wood Toys – Makes their wood toys from recovered wood.
- Holtziger -Eco-friendly wood toys from Germany.
Wood Toy Sellers
As with the toy makers, there are plenty of wood toy retailers, but be sure that the toys they sell are made from sustainable wood. Here are a few wood toy sellers:
- HazelNut Kids -Has a huge range of wood and cloth toys from manufacturers all over the world.
- Child Trek -One of the top natural toy retailers in the country
- Natural Pod -Nice selection of natural toys made mainly from wood and cloth.
Sundance Film Festival Featuring Environmental Films
The Sundance Film Festival this year will be hosted in Park City, Utah on Thursday January 25th and be featuring 5 environmental films this year out of its total of 31. The committee deciding which films will be displayed at this year’s festival said that over 50 environmental films were submitted this year. This list of environmental films featured this year are:
It’s great to see that more filmmakers are making the environment the primary issue of their documentaries.
If it’s true, as they say, that independent film is a reflection of societal consciousness, then things might just be looking up for the environment.
Let’s hope the above statement is in fact the case and things take a turn for the positive for the environment. If anything, at least these films will allow the public to be more aware of some of the pressing environmental issues we are currently facing.
I have not seen any of these films yet, but I do plan on in the near future. If anybody has seen any of these documentaries, please share your thoughts on it.
Comments Getting Spammed
I have been getting large amounts of spam recently and just wanted to address some of the commentors who have been posting legitimate comments, but getting caught up in spam filters for some reason. If you make a legitimate comment on my site and do not see your comment ever show up, please be sure to contact me and let me know so I can make sure to get your comment out of the spam box. I do the best I can to sort through all of the spam comments to ensure that they are truly spam, but I can sometimes look over good ones. I want to make sure that all those who want to contribute to my site are allowed to do so without being flagged as spam.
New Toy Safety Law Not So Green?
The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) passed late last year will take affect in just under 30 days on February 1oth will dramatically affect how toys are both manufactured and sold. All toy manufacturers, importers and sellers are required to have their tested to ensure that they do contain high levels on lead. The new law will require that all toys sold contain less that 600 ppm of lead. That number will lower in August to 300 ppm. Also, after the February 10th date, certain toys cannot contain more than 0.1% of certain phtalates. This new law seems like it has all good intentions, but could actually cause more harm that good. Small toy retailers and manufacturers could go out of business, even if they are producing high quality or natural toys.
What about Small Businesses?
A huge component of this new act is to ensure that all toy manufacturers get all of their toys tested for lead before they can be sold to the public. The biggest problem with this piece of the law is that many small toy manufacturers and toy stores do not make huge profits on many of their toys they manufacturer and are often homemade. It would just cost way too much money for them to have every one of their products inspected. The cost to have a toy inspected can range anywhere from a few hundred dollars to as much as $4000. I would hope that the intention of this bill is not to put small toy manufacturers out of business just because they can’t afford to pay for inspections on their toys. Usually smaller toy manufacturers use more quality products and to require that they products go through these types of restrictions just seems ridiculous.
High Penalties
A huge complaint that many have with this new law is the high penalties associated with not complying with it. Any violation of this new law can result in a penalty as high as $100,000 and/or 5 years in prison. Those are some stiff penalties considering that offenses involving cruelty towards animals and polluting the environment don’t seem to be anywhere near as severe. The intention of this Act seems to be in the right place, but it just seems way to harsh, especially towards smaller business and toy manufacturer’s.
Thrift And Consignment Shops
There are provisions in the new law that state that resellers of toys such as thrift and consignment shops will not have to have toys tested like others, but still face the same penalties if toys are sold with levels of lead higher than the required threshold. This part of the bill just seems crazy to me. Why would you still impose the same restrictions to resellers when they do not know exactly how high the lead content is in all of the toys sold in their stores? Imagine if a thrift store makes a mistake and accidently sells a toy that is just over the limit. It would most likely put their store out of business.
On first look of this bill, it seems like a wonderful idea to reduce the amount of lead and use of PVC in our childrens’ toys, but at what cost? Many small businesses that are already struggling to make it in this tough economy are going to have to jump over another hurdle. Even though the original intention of this bill was to be focused at large manufacturer’s of toys, there is nothing in this bill protecting small toy companies. The sad part of this entire thing is that many of the small toy companies are aimed at providing either quality toys or toys made from organic and natural products. It’s is horrible that the lawmakers only seem to care about the positive press that they will receive from “fighting back against dangerous lead” and “protecting our children”.
Please share your thougts on this new law and if you are at all affected by it.
Fresh Produce Hard to Find During Winter
One of the more difficult tasks that arises once my local farmer’s markets close down in the Winter is trying to find fresh produce. If you live in some of the warmer parts of America, then you may not face the same problem as I do. The growing season for the Northeast only exists until about October and only starts to pick up again in April/May. In search for ways to find fresh produce during the winter, I was able to find several ways that can help you make it during this tough time of the year.
Hoarding During the Summer
Why not try hoarding food just as many animals do during the winter months. When a particular fruit or vegetable is in growing season, try buying bulk quantities from a local farm or you can grow your own. Whatever you don’t use you can either jar/can or freeze. Either method will allow you to have you quality harvest during the winter months. The only problem with this method is that you cannot have any of them raw. Well, you can, but they are just not as appetizing as they were when you first bought or grew them.
Buying Frozen/Canned
You can always buy your fruits and vegetables frozen or canned instead of having do go through the process of buying them fresh and doing it yourself. You have to be really careful when you buy them this way. Just make sure you know where they were grown and anything used in preserving them. If they were grown in another country, then there is little chance you know how it was grown and that is just generating more greenhouse gases than necessary.
Markets
Farmer’s Markets
This may seem like a strange choice considering I just said that it’s almost impossible to find fresh produce locally during the Winter in may parts of the country. In some parts of the country, farmers are still growing some fruits and vegetables despite the cold temperatures. They are able to still grow some root vegetables like potatoes and grow vegetables in greenhouses. The farmers that choose to grow in greenhouses tend to choose easier vegetables to grow like greens. This seems like a great way to still buy locally if you are able to find a farm or market in your area that still is growing. It is still probably far cheaper and much more fresh than at a grocery store.
Organic Markets
Organic markets are probably the best choice to finding many of the regular fruits and vegetables during the winter. They will usually have fresh produce and try to find produce that are locally grown. Be careful though as not everything is local and could be the same as you would find any a typical grocery store.
I recommend using Local Harvest to find a local farm, market or organic grocery store.
Grow Them
This is probably a difficult task for most during the winter, but it is possible to grow some limited items. One way to get a lot of fresh vegetables is to grow sprouts. They are quick and easy to grow and you can have sprouts in the matter of days. Also, there are many varieties to choose from including broccoli, bean and alfalfa. All are nutritious and go great in many dishes. You can also grow many different varities of herbs in pots right next to a window during the winter. It’s probably hard to get all of the produce you need from just sprouts and herbs, but this reduce the amount of produce you need to buy.
Please share what you are doing to get your fresh produce during the long winter months.
