Who says going electronic necessarily is going green?

[thibaulthalpern]

There is an often used argument in the digital realm that going digital and thus replacing certain material products such as paper, books, magazines, CDs and so forth necessarily translates to the reduction of waste.

Unfortunately that argument is a bit simplistic. At the root of the problem is really the problem of excess consumption and thus leaving a much bigger footprint (or footprints) in the world than is necessary. Electronic gadgets don't solve this problem. The problem of the environment isn't one about digital/virtual versus material. It's the problem of excess consumption.

New York Times has an article today entitled "Global Gadget Habit a Threat to Efficiency?" This begins to speak to the problem of excess consumption and linking that human behaviour to electronic goods which for a while now have been shielded from that connection, as if that connection was only to be made to other material goods such as paper, books, magazines, and so forth.

[Sweetpea]

"going green" is today's buzzword... If you're not "going green" you're doing something wrong, so you just say you are (even if you aren't!) just to go with the flow.

At least, that's how I see it...

Example: cars.

Now you have this very "environmentally safe" car (goes on electricity all the way! Mostly suitable for in-town traffic. Now, I happen to know an even more environmentally safe way of transportation: the bike. As that car is mostly for town traffic anyway, why use a car in the first place? But because it's a "green" car, you should use it...

[GeoffC]

It is all really very relative - just which process is more environmentally friendly can be argued until eternity.

[ruskie]

All this green **** is annoying. The biggest problem is that people have this insistent urge to upgrade to latest and greatest all the time.

Take away incentives to do so and you solve the hyperproduction/hyperconsumption that plagues this world today.

And no going electronic isn't green. But being smart about what you want/need is. Considering the book publishing business with tons of book that then need to get recycled if not sold instead of not making that many initially is a waste.

The world needs to change from hyper to sustainable. And nobody says that sustainable needs to mean not being able to get the same things. Or that prices would increase and so on.


What we need is research that would put us into a post-scarcity future in the fastest amount of time. What does that mean...

Being able to feed every man, woman, child, animal, etc. Being able to educate them all. Being able to produce any physical item on demand see Iain M. Banks The Cultore novels for more of this.

This is what we should be striving for... Not bigger bottom lines and such pointless things.

<brain disconnect>

[moz]

ruskie, we can already feed everyone and then some. But "we" choose to use a lot of that food to fatten meat animals instead. "we" because those doing the choosing are a tiny fraction of the population. It's getting worse, now we're using food to ensure fat people can still drive everywhere they go.

"green consumerism" annoys me, but it's still a useful step for many people. I belong to a group that have been doing DIY-style green tech for 30-odd years now (I've only been a member for 10) and we're getting increasing invites to "green" home shows and so on where the green consumer message is being used to sell stuff, We go along as part of the "community group" section with Greenpeace and so on, pushing our "you don't have to spend the earth to be green" message. We get quite a bit of interest, especially for some of our DIY magazine stuff after people have seen the prices for the professional products.

But things are changing, slowly but surely. Over here we have water shortages to drive the message home - they're slowly getting worse and the proportion of people who tired of waiting and are doing things themselves is growing dramatically. Our politicians continue to talk about how serious the problem is while making it worse, but people are buying rainwater tanks and putting in water-saving stuff on their own. Which is good.

now, if we can just see some global warming... or people can make the connection between the drought, the bad bushfires and and warming... maybe we'll get lucky there too.

[moz]

Oh, gadget rush... buy stuff that lasts, buy it second hand if you can (I'm using an ex-corporate laptop right now), only buy stuff you will use a lot. Freecycle what you don't use.

[ruskie]

I don't consider global warming part in this. Infact I doubt it is man-caused.

And yeah I get tons of second hand kit which I reuse. Either free or for a nominal fee. I purchased 5 computers in the last 15 years. They all still work and I haven't trashed any of it. Infact one I've sold on one I've used for a while but now will probably stop as it's not the best in energy efficiency. I also have no qualms about giving this to others who might need them mostly I keep them around as backup machines. Though I do run 3 machines 24/7.

Firewall(an old ibm desktop), server(my previous desktop) and media box(and old laptop with a broken screen hooked to the 10 yrs old TV) but shutdown everything else.

Some might say this isn't the best use of energy and so on but overall my energy use has been more or less the same no matter what hardware I've put in or took out for the last 5 years or so.

I prefer to walk or bike anywhere I go or if I need to drive I'll generally be atleast me and another passenger with stuff to do so it's not two trips but one.

The one thing I would love to see fail are biofuels from crop directly.

I have no problem with refining used cooking oils and so on but to grow crops just to then burn them up.

The same is with always faster, bigger, better crap... Why can't chip makers and similar instead of trying to squeeze more oomph from the chips instead make them more energy efficient.

I every so often look at some laptops though I don't like them. And I see options for cpus...

Basic cpu 35W
one step higher 25W
one more 35W
and then it's just 35W or higher...

Frankly am not impressed.

I've got an eeepc701 it uses cpu and all 20W of power. Why can't a full blown laptop do it. Why do I need a 1TB drive in my laptop when a 20GB ssd would suffice for OS and a LOT of basic storage and use other flash storage to supplement it.

Another thing is gas consumption. A lot could be done with improving the gas available but most rather sell the same old same old...

I pump at gas stations that sell 98 and 100 marked fuels The 100 one is bit more expensive but I assume it means I burn less to travel the same distance.

Or why not make more efficient engines that would overall burn less.


As for green consumerism... **** it responsible consumerism is the way forward. And not only that. More regulation of corporations and companies to make them behave in such a way as to work toward sustainability.

sorry if I'm incoherent it's friday and nearly end of the work day...

[Steve Jordan]

This article and "report" leaves out so many details... such as the equivalent displacement of paper-based documents for each device, and the environmental cost of producing that amount of paper, in tree-felling (mostly in non-sustainable forests, no matter what the paper industry tells you), drag-shipping (and ground damage), the huge amounts of electricity, water and chemicals used to produce the paper, final product shipping (and more energy), printing costs (and more electricity), more shipping (and more energy)... those elements alone make it clear that an electronic gadget such as a PC or PDA (or e-book reader) is much more efficient than the equivalent paper products.

If they want to single out individual products like Plasma TVs, which are incredibly energy wasteful compared to other TV technology, and IMO probably ought to be banned for that reason alone, that's fine. But condemning all electronic devices because of their sheer number is so simplistic and obviously self-serving (The International Energy Agency put out that report, not an environmental agency), it's laughable.

[DixieGal]

My mom's motto was "live below your means." It meant to pay cash, stay out of debt, and think about something before purchasing. Tim and I follow that path quite happily. We don't have everything they sell in Walmart, like the rest of America, but we have financial freedom.

To me, a lot of the problem could be solved if a truly effective method of dealing with trash were invented. Recycling is cute, and it makes the recycler feel better, but in reality, most of that ends up trashed anyway. Recycled paper seems to be the most obvious product of recycling, but what about everything else?

Plastics can't be recycled into new food containers. Why not? Why on earth isn't anyone inventing a process that purifies the used plastics so that it can be recycled? Tim goes through enough milk jugs in a week to keep them in business!

HOWEVER.... I'm still angry that they made my Aquafina bottles with 50% less plastic, and now the bottle squishes in your hand when you unscrew the cap.

@thiebald, please ask a mod to add the "serious" header to this thread.

[Steve Jordan]

Originally Posted by DixieGal

To me, a lot of the problem could be solved if a truly effective method of dealing with trash were invented.

That's true: Most recycling actually ends up being specific types of trash rerouted to specialized facilities that still just discard them.

And while we're on the subject, working out better ways of recycling electronics trash is one of the largest priorities we have.

[DixieGal]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

That's true: Most recycling actually ends up being specific types of trash rerouted to specialized facilities that still just discard them.

And while we're on the subject, working out better ways of recycling electronics trash is one of the largest priorities we have.

Tell me about it. My house is becoming a computer junkyard, just for the fact that we aren't sure how to dispose of those old clunkers. And if Tim goes to one more surplus auction and brings back a truckload of assorted bits, I'm gonna recycle HIM!

[kwjones]

Originally Posted by ruskie

I pump at gas stations that sell 98 and 100 marked fuels The 100 one is bit more expensive but I assume it means I burn less to travel the same distance.

I ride a motorcycle, and have seen quite a few discussions about gasoline/octane. Thought this might help:

If your car doesn't require high octane gas, don't use it. Yes, your car will work with it, but it's a waste of money and gas. The higher the octane, the slower gas burns. Unless you have a high compression engine that needs high octane, you're left with unburned gas residue in your pistons.

If you have a high compression engine that needs high octane, don't use the lower octane becuase, that's right, lower octane burns faster, which throws your timing off and starts to produce engine knock. The high compression is what converts the slower burning fuel into energy.

There are other ways to save gas.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by ruskie

The same is with always faster, bigger, better crap... Why can't chip makers and similar instead of trying to squeeze more oomph from the chips instead make them more energy efficient.

I every so often look at some laptops though I don't like them. And I see options for cpus...

Basic cpu 35W
one step higher 25W
one more 35W
and then it's just 35W or higher...

Huh? Iirc, for laptops, Intel has an ultra-low-voltage line with 10W TDP. Also, while advertised TDP for desktop processors might be 35W or higher, actual power consumption, particularly while idle, is much lower. I measured power consumption for a PC when I upgraded the CPU to an E5200 TDP 65W from Celeron 430 TDP 35W. Surprisingly, it used less power with the dual-core E5200 than with the single-core Celeron 430.


275W Flex-ATX PSU
ECS 945GCT-M/1333
Core 2 Duo E5200
2x1GB DDR2 667
ATI Radeon HD4550
Western Digital 320GB (7200RPM)
Idle: 55W, Load: 65W (system power consumption measured at the wall via a Kill-A-Watt, yep that's the whole computer, not just the CPU)

Originally Posted by ruskie

I've got an eeepc701 it uses cpu and all 20W of power. Why can't a full blown laptop do it. Why do I need a 1TB drive in my laptop when a 20GB ssd would suffice for OS and a LOT of basic storage and use other flash storage to supplement it.

True, but for some people an Atom and 20GB of storage doesn't cut it, albeit, I have yet to see more mainstream notebooks with 1TB drives. I remember reading an article saying there were places where netbooks had a 30% return rate, most likely because people expected more power from them. True, a lot of this is mostly because society's been trained with "I want" instead of "I need", but it's hard to change a lifetime's worth of training overnight.

[kwjones]

I just want my incandescent light bulbs back. At least you don't have to call a hazmat team when one breaks. http://www.ct.gov/dph/lib/dph/cfl_fact_sheet_final.pdf

[yekim54]

Originally Posted by kwjones

I just want my incandescent light bulbs back. At least you don't have to call a hazmat team when one breaks. http://www.ct.gov/dph/lib/dph/cfl_fact_sheet_final.pdf

Here is a picture of a CFL bulb that burned out in my house last night. I noticed it flickering but thought it was the thunderstorm we were having at the time. Then I smelled an "electrical fire" type odor. Then it stopped working. I hope I didn't breathe in any mercury vapor.