Startup Toolbox

Jay Parkhill January 9th, 2008

The government of China just announced a ban on the “production, sale and use” of plastic shopping bags- the “standard” kind that get used once and then pile up in landfills and kitchen drawers everywhere. Shops are permitted to sell them, but not allowed to fold the price into the cost of goods- i.e. mark everything up slightly in order to give the bags away free. This sounds like a tricky piece to enforce and it is noted that implementing regulations are being worked out.

Even more interesting is the prohibition on “use”. The government’s statement says the bags are not allowed in “passenger trains, vessels, buses, planes, stations, airports and scenic spots”. Does this mean that citizens aren’t allowed to carry them at all or just that vendors aren’t allowed to hand them out?  It’s unclear.

Either way, there’s a great business proposition for messenger/urban professional bag maker Timbuk2. That company developed a process for partially melting thin plastic bags to make thick messenger style ones, only to get slapped with a cease-and-desist letter from Target for using its logo without authorization.

It isn’t like there’s any lack of plastic bag stock, but if Timbuk2 ever needed to find a ready source of trademark-worry-free bags, I’m pretty sure China’s new rules will give them more raw material than they could ever figure out what to do with.

• green

Jay Parkhill November 27th, 2007

I installed the TED Model 1000 in my house last week and the results have been interesting, if not revelatory. The device hooks into my circuit breaker panel and has a separate display that plugs into any outlet in the house. When set up, it shows exactly how much electricity we consume, updated every second. I can add the rates I pay and see how much I am spending on a per-second basis as well. It is fascinating to see the difference when we turn on/off a single light.

I have a couple of observations from a week of using the thing:

1) We have a usage “baseline”, or several actually. In the middle of the night (grr, insomnia) with all the lights out and everything closed down, we have an ambient drain of about 0.15 kwh. During the day, even with all the lights off, it is higher- more like 0.6 kwh. I haven’t figured out why this is exactly. I’m starting to suspect that the refrigerator works harder in daytime when it gets opened and closed regularly.

2) Savings will come from a few big changes like trying to use the dishwasher less (or maybe not at all), and a lot of small ones. I tend to leave lights (or music) on in a room if I leave, but know I’ll reenter in a couple of minutes. I can now quantify exactly how much that costs me and I’m inclined to do it less.

I also have a wish: the device has a USB port, but apparently it isn’t functional. I’d really love to work through the data in greater detail on my computer, so I wish the TED’s makers would turn on the port and build some software to let me analyze consumption patterns.

I’d also like more granularity, but that isn’t realistic. I’d like to see the data measured on a per-outlet basis so I could figure out *exactly* how much energy each electrical device I own draws. That’s beyond the scope of the TED, though.

The TED cost $150, plus a few dollars to have an electrician hook it up. It was a pretty nominal cost for some very interesting data. People say they made up the cost pretty quickly with the money saved on electrical bills. We’ll see how long that takes.

• Cleantech , green

Jay Parkhill August 18th, 2007

I became a lawyer in part because I love words and writing and analyzing how people use language. That’s why I am inaugurating a new occasional series on this blog devoted to “neologisms”- clever turns of phrase that capture an idea especially well. Here are the first two entries:

Duke Energy’s Chairman and CEO James Rogers talks about energy issues as in need of “cathedral thinking“- just like Europe’s great cathedrals took centuries to build, weaning the world off carbon-based fuels is likely to take a similar amount of time. It is a brilliant phrase- though I don’t know if Rogers coined it- because it evokes grandeur, an epic scale, enduring structures and also a long time frame for planning, development and construction. As head of a company built on carbon-based fuels that probably sees the end of its lifeblood somewhere in the distant, but foreseeable future, it works perfectly to capture the pace at which Duke is comfortable working on the issues as well.

Meanwhile, on Terrapass’s blog Adam Stein talks about “magic pony thinking“- where some environmentalists reject certain proposed solutions because they aren’t sweeping enough and put forward an idea like “dismantling the suburbs and trading cars for light rail and bicycles”, in Adam’s words. Adam gives full credit for the term to the John and Belle blog, and ultimately a Calvin and Hobbes strip.

“Magic pony” is a powerful turn of phrase. It is an incredibly derisive way to lambast another viewpoint as failing to address (perceived) real world facts. It’s a gem of a phrase, but also a double-edged weapon that seems as likely to lead to a flame war as a thoughtful comparison of viewpoints. Maybe sensing this, Adam offers up “distraction theory” as well, a slightly less perjorative way of saying the same thing. Fighting words, all the same.

• Cleantech , green , neologisms

Jay Parkhill August 13th, 2007

Brad Feld quotes an article by Freeman Dyson that talks about how little we really understand about how the climate works, and how we need to study things more before we can diagnose the problems accurately. Dyson also says that exaggerated concern about the environment takes attention and resources away from other pressing concerns, like poverty and disease. These two arguments set up false choices that drive me crazy.

Dyson is completely correct that no one understands climate perfectly. No one understand cancer perfectly, either, but that has never stopped doctors from trying to treat it. Research and action have gone hand-in-hand in medicine and just about every other discipline humans have ever studied, and every problem humans have tried to solve. To say that we need to study the climate more before can hope to act just sounds like inertia to me- we have so much momentum in one direction currently that it’s just too hard to stop.

Study or act is a false choice. We’ve never done that before, There’s no reason to act differently now.

The “we need to solve other problems first” is another one. There have always been more pressing problems that we can deal with at once, but still we chip away at all of them to the best of our ability. Saying we shouldn’t think about climate change until we have solved poverty and disease is absurd. Taken to the extreme, this argument means we would have to focus every dollar on eradicating AIDS before we touch malaria, or cancer or any other disease.

Brad’s point is that contrarian viewpoints are valuable because they can lead us to think in new ways. I agree with that heartily. If Dyson’s arguments challenge anyone to think through their beliefs, then great. They did that to me, and what I come up with is that he has his head in the sand.

• green

Jay Parkhill August 11th, 2007

Update: Terrapass’s blog talks about a UK study that found lamb grown in New Zealand and flown to the UK produces less carbon than the domestically-raised variety. More to my point that even the “food miles” analysis is incredibly fine-grained. It seems almost impossible to make any assumptions without digging back to the source of every physical and energy component of everything society produces. Yikes.

I read several interesting pieces recently that made me think about how hard it is to tease apart the interwoven strands of modern life- at least from an environmental perspective. Barbeque is a good example.

A cursory glance at the thick smoke coming out of a charcoal grill tells me that gas is greener and cleaner. The conventional wisdom seemed to agree: charcoal is made in a messy, chemical-filled process that produces lots of emissions itself. Burning the briquettes then sends out more particulates and CO2, not to mention deforestation and transport of the wood starting product (though charcoal in the developed world is mostly made from waste wood- no trees were cut just for charcoal production).

The flip side is that propane comes from fossil fuels- i.e. long dead, long-”sequestered” carbon. The CO2 emitted by burning charcoal was in the atmosphere more recently, so perhaps the net addition to the atmosphere is less. Not all CO2 molecules are equal in this analysis.

Finally, the article above notes that grilling in total results in about 0.003% of US carbon emissions annually. Brad Feld points to this article positing that the real issue is meat production. A gas grill may produce 5.6 pounds of CO2 per hour and a charcoal grill 11, but 2.2 pounds of beef on it likely resulted in nearly 80 pounds emitted before the meat hit the grill at all. Vegetables, unless very locally grown, may not be much better.

So where does this leave me? Still grilling meat on gas, and a bit worried about digging deeper. Cereals and pulses (beans and peas) may be the best environmental choice, but where do they come from and how can I cook them “green”?

I’m afraid that if I keep digging any deeper I’ll end up convinced the only foods I can eat with enviromental conscience will be grown in my San Francisco back yard and eaten raw- and that won’t leave many options!

• green