Doing My Bit for The Environment

. Though everyone ought to be conscious of how their daily life affects the environment, those among us who are lucky to have a scientific background have a special responsibility. On the face of it, environmental decisions are easy: if you have a gas-guzzler car, you should trade it in for a small hybrid. Or should you? There is a minor complication; if it isn't such a big gas-guzzler as all that, and you don't really drive it much, maybe you should keep it. Especially if it is about to be trashed, and you hardly need to drive it at all, you may be saving the planet from a half-ton of scrap metal. On the other hand, if the engine is so shot that you burn oil all the time, and you spew toxic fumes from your exhaust continually, maybe you should trash it. On the other hand, if some kid buys it for cheap, he or she might drive the car around a lot more than you do, spewing ever more noxious fumes around the county. This is a tricky decision. Refrigerators are among the trickiest. Unlike cars, they're not easy to sell, since most people want a brand new fridge. Should you get that super-efficient refrigerator and trash your antique Frigidaire? At least, we know, they're supposed to recover the refrigerant (the Freon, or whatever it is these days; probably a kind of coca cola) before they toss the thing, but one wonders whether they actually do it. (At our school, for instance, we learned that the janitorial staff was simply trashing all the aluminum cans we were so conscientiously putting in special recycling bins. I think we made them stop.) At any rate, once the refrigerant is sucked out, the shell will be trashed, but of course it contains a ton of plastics and paint that will probably pollute the landfill; I don't know. Paints often have toxic components. I have read somewhere that magazines were printed with inks that were at least mildly toxic at one time. Perhaps this is not presently the case... MOST IMPORTANTLY, incandescent bulbs, as you know, not only use up electricity, they heat up the rooms. In the winter this is probably fine, but in the Summer, it makes no sense to heat your house with the lights, and then cool it with your AC. A possible solution to this problem, even if less than perfect, is the fluorescent bulbs. These come with screw-in bases, so they can be put right where the old 75-watters used to be. They use up only a tiny fraction of the wattage of a regular incandescent bulb. [Added later: "Bright idea makes a big comeback: Conservation" is an article from back in 2006 that makes even more sense today.] Now another consideration cuts in. If you keep turning off your fluorescent bulbs as you leave the room, they burn out faster. But if you keep them burning, they last longer, but eat up electricity. If you keep turning them off, they have to be replaced more frequently. What to do? In one case, you're using up energy, and bleeding a tiny bit of heat into your home all the time. In the other case, you're spending money, using up the energy it takes to manufacture a bulb each time you toss one out, and putting a fluorescent bulb in the landfill. I'm not absolutely sure, but I think the phosphors inside the bulbs contain tiny bits of heavy metals which are not good for the landfills. So it appears that, particularly if you have installed a very low-wattage bulb (e.g. a 13-watt fluorescent bulb is as bright as a 60-watt incandescent bulb, even if not as warm-colored) it may be better to simply leave it on permanently. I have done this, and a bulb has lasted for around two years. Furthermore, fluorescent bulbs gradually get brighter as they warm up, so it pays to keep them on. My front and back porches have 13-watt (fluorescent) bulbs that burn 24 hours a day. The lobby light at the top of the stairs, and the light on the piano, too, are left on continuously, and are 27 watts, and 9 watts respectively. (One of these days, they'll make household lights out of LEDs, and we'll have to learn all about how to use them.) Disposing of used batteries and engine oil properly, alone, can make a huge difference in the degree to which you're personally burdening the environment. Similarly with used paint. So though none of us are perfect, it seems the right thing to make one more choice carefully each time you think of the environment. Arch