Environment

Breaking news, Wednesday, September 24, 2008 from RenewableEnergyWorld.com: "US Senate Passes Renewable Energy Tax Credits, House Could Pass Bill This Week:"

HelioPower commercial installation for Dos Molson in Poway, CA

The United States Senate on Tuesday voted by an overwhelming majority to extend the Production (PTC) and Investment Tax Credits (ITC). The tax measure was passed by a vote of 93-2. Now it goes back to the U.S. House of Representatives where it could be approved later this week.

Under the legislation, the PTC will be extended for one year and the ITC will be extended for eight years. The extensions would be at least partially paid for by a change in the tax code for the oil and gas industry. The bill also contains removal of the US $2,000 cap for residential solar installations. The US $18 billion package is part of a larger tax bill worth approximately US $148 billion.

By Scott Gordon, Director of Sales, HelioPower

So it seems clear that while recycling is ok and clearly better than tossing refuse into a landfill, it’s not exactly an environmental panacea and may in fact promote the very behavior it’s intended to eliminate – egregious wastefulness. A far superior alternative is Reuse. Why not take something in its present form and reuse it? This concept seems like common sense, but every year billions of pounds of perfectly good stuff ends up in landfills: kitchen cabinets, windows, doors, sinks, tubs, tile, paint, wood beams, countertops, paneling, office furniture & supplies, appliances, ad infinitum. This waste could build thousands of new homes and shelters without the costly energy input of ‘recycling’ it first. It’s this very niche that Materials Matter has carved out for itself, and is why to date Materials Matter has diverted over 75 million pounds of building materials destined for the landfill to construction projects benefiting other non-profits.

Keeping the material away from the landfill or recycling process is important, but equally important is the cost savings beneficiary organizations realize when they use recovered building materials in their construction projects. Unlike recycled products that often cost more than their ‘new’ counterparts, reused materials can often be had for pennies on the dollar thereby significantly reducing construction costs for cash strapped agencies. Often, these materials are reused in the very same communities where they are recovered further reducing the environmental impact.

Even more compelling is the fact that a lot of this recovered material is brand new. That’s right, brand spankin’ new. Let’s say, for example, that you order some custom blinds for your home, but the order is messed up so you send the blinds back. What do you think happens to those blinds you sent back while you wait for the factory to make you new and hopefully correct ones? Landfill? That used to be the case. Fortunately, more companies are teaming up with organizations like Materials Matter to find homes for their unwanted or mis-measured wares. In addition, more homeowners are deconstructing or eco-demoing their remodeling projects as they realize that a charitable tax deduction beats paying a contractor to rip out and throw away perfectly good kitchen cabinets and bathroom sinks.

Without Materials Matter and agencies like it, our society would miss out on a significant opportunity to reduce our collective ecological impact. Reuse trumps recycling at every turn, but we can do even better.

I mentioned earlier that one could make the argument that recycling encourages the wrong behavior, wastefulness, and while it’s good we’re conserving natural resources by recycling them over and over again, we’d be far better off if we recycled less – literally. Less packaging, fewer bottles, fewer bags. Imagine if everyone refilled the same water bottle or coffee cup every day. Imagine if everyone used canvass shopping bags, bought concentrated cleaning products (which use less packaging), cooked whole foods (again less packaging), and generally consumed less. Less consumption equals less recycling. Less recycling equals less waste (energy). Less waste equals less want.

My grandmother used to always tell me when I wouldn’t finish my dinner, “Waste not. Want not.” As we waste, there are multitudes that want. Materials Matter fills a crucial societal role by wanting the waste and wasting not.

This in from Forbes.com writers Joshua Zumbrun and Brian Wingfield, in their piece "Solar's Convention In The Sun":

Beneath the blazing August sun, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took the stage in front of Coors Field's outfield bleachers and said that importing energy "is the principal drag on American capitalism and American prosperity."

The solution to the problem was literally beating down on him. At least that's the message at solar energy's keystone event at the Democratic National Convention. Kennedy, environmental lawyer and son of Robert F. Kennedy Sr., was the keynote speaker at the Solar Energy Industries Association's SunFest 2008.

SEIA's Wednesday afternoon event epitomized just how far and how fast the industry has come. In addition to Kennedy, several congressmen, including House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., spoke at the event.

"People have been saying solar is out in left field, and today we are out in left field of Coors Field," said SEIA President Rhone Resch.

In Denver, at least, the solar industry is feeling loved, seizing on the twin issues of energy and the environment to boost its profile. "It's great to be wanted at a convention," Resch remarked. "By Tuesday, I'd lost my voice talking to people. It's a fundamentally different convention than in the past."

Click here for the complete story.

Editor's note:  HelioPower's Steve LoRusso reported from the scene after his performance, "It was hot.  It was exciting and it was very gratifying to see the kind of support the industry garnered here today!"  See HelioBlog post dated August 22 for more info.

By Scott Gordon, Director of Sales, HelioPower

Every Monday morning I hear the procession of truck engines and hydraulic arms working their way through my neighborhood. One truck comes for my trash, a second for my green waste (lawn clippings and such), and the last picks up my recycling. The trash is eventually buried, the green waste composted, and the recycling, well, recycled. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and all that jazz, but have you ever wondered what happens to all that recycled stuff we throw away? That’s right – throw away. Just because the bin’s a different color doesn’t change the significance of this wasteful action. One could argue that while recycling has its virtues, it actually goes a long way toward encouraging waste. We throw our recycling in the blue or green bin, and a trash truck (I mean recycling truck) hauls it out of sight and out of mind. We hope these materials are eventually refashioned into something useful once again, but is the process of recycling itself really green? Sure it’s better than the alternative (burying it), but how green is recycling? I guess it depends. In an attempt to answer this question, let’s take a look at the afterlife of a discarded plastic bottle.

After you’ve enjoyed that cold bottle of water and tossed it in the recycling bin a lengthy chain of events kicks off to convert that plastic bottle into something new and exciting, right? Well, 80% of the time, your bottle winds up in the landfill anyway regardless of your intentions. For the 20% that make the journey to resurrection, it’s a long arduous road.

Your bottle is tossed into a container marked for recycling. Once a week, a large diesel fueled truck rumbles through your neighborhood and collects these relics and hauls them off to a sorting center. There your bottle is separated from the riffraff and joins ranks with millions of bottles just like it and is compacted into large cubes or shredded and baled. From here, your bottle is placed onto another diesel truck or train and usually exported to China for use in manufacturing plastic stuff. After arriving in China via container ship, your bottle is loaded on another diesel truck where it is transported to a facility that processes the bales into plastic pellets. These pellets are the primary ingredient used in molded and extruded plastic. The pellets are eventually shipped to a factory where they are molded into something you might find useful again, packaged, and loaded onto a diesel truck; taken to the port; loaded onto a container ship; sent across the Pacific, loaded onto another diesel truck, taken to a distribution center, loaded onto another truck, delivered to the store, purchased by you, brought home in your SUV, used for a brief time, and finally re-recycled.

The amount of energy consumed to recycle your bottle is immense. So immense in fact, that the earth would’ve been significantly better off if you drank that water out of the tap from a glass rather than from a bottle. More on this later.

When one of our HelioPower clients is working on a noteworthy "Planet friendly" event, it is our pleasure to pass along the information. In this case, Derric Swinfard, Owner of Monster Media, is part of the Sea Shephard Art Show in Riverside, CA, July 12. Derric outfitted both his home and business with HelioPower installed solar energy systems. In fact, his Monster Media facility was the first commercial project to qualify under the new Riverside Utility Solar Power Rebate program. This time Derric is turning his attention to the plight of endangered species in the Ocean.

How do the presidential candidates compare on our country's energy policy? The Wall Street Journal took an indepth look at the policies of McCain and Obama in its recent article, "In Energy Policy, McCain, Obama Differ on Role of Government" by Stephen Power.

Arizona Republican John McCain and Illinois Democrat Barack Obama say a lot of the same things about energy and environmental policy: Both want to reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil and fight global warming. Both want binding caps on greenhouse-gas emissions. Both see a stepped-up role for nuclear power.

So does that mean that America will get the same energy strategy no matter which candidate wins? Not by a long shot.

Sen. McCain's and Sen. Obama's goals may sound similar, but the candidates would pursue drastically different paths to achieve them.

See the complete article, click here: Different Paths to Cleaner Energy.

The Hebrew Academy in Huntington Beach, CA has gone green…

“It’s a move to show students the importance of conserving energy, respect for the environment,” said Rabbi Yitzchok Newman, dean of the school which educates 350 students from preschool through twelfth grade. It’s a mitzvah to conserve resources, he said, and it helps illustrate the power of the sun’s rays."