Wall Street Journal Offers Energy Options

While there are many expensive technological fixes to choose from when going green, a special Energy section in the February 9th Wall Street Journal offers a number of lower cost options for retrofitting your home with their payback times. Another article looks at finding ways to get utilities to promote energy efficiency. According to author, Rebecca Smith, "It isn't easy to get utilities to promote energy efficiency, and for good reason: When people use less electricity, utilities usually lose revenue." Governor Granholm spoke of this paradox in her State of the State Address last week. One solution being looked at is called decoupling. According to Smith's article, "States let the utilities make up some of the lost revenue if consumers use less power. For instance, states might let utilities raise rates if their revenue falls below a certain point, or charge a flat monthly fee to cover some of their costs." Perhaps some possibilities worth considering as climate change continues to come to a head. Check out the links for more information.

Library Raises Awareness about Bottled Water

During Sustainability Month in October library visitors might have noticed empty water bottles cropping up all over the library. We collected 118 in all. We were raising awareness about the waste brought about by pumping, packaging, and transporting bottled water to faraway places where perfectly healthy tap water is accessible. 30 million plastic water bottles (made from oil) are thrown away every day. The question lingers--is it time for an expanded bottle bill to place deposits on water bottles? You decide. But for those who missed our brochure here are some facts:

2 liters of water go into manufacturing every liter of bottled water.

The energy used each year making the bottles for bottled water in the U.S. is equivalent to more than 17 million barrels of oil.

If water and soft drink bottlers had used 10% recycled materials in their plastic bottles in 2004, they would have saved 72 million gallons of gasoline.

Dennis Muchmore, Michigan United Conservation Clubs Executive Director says, “Although our citizens now return 97 percent of the 5 and a half- billion bottles and cans for which they pay a deposit, they recycle only 20 percent of the bottled water containers because no deposit is required. Eighty percent of those empty containers end up in landfills or critical wildlife habitats. It’s a terrible waste.”