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The next project on the list for ER’s house is adding attic insulation. The house as is has about 1.5″ of rock wool insulation, and about 5″ of fiberglass above that. So, the attic is insulated to about R-19ish. This is a far cry from the recommended R-50 to R-60!

So, to remedy this situation, I decided it would be best to blow cellulose over the top of the fiberglass. I chose cellulose for a number of reasons. Cellulose is a nice environmentally friendly option for insulation. Installing cellulose is cheaper than fiberglass rolls, and its much easier to install. It also stops airflow much better than fiberglass. In my book cellulose wins hands down.

The first thing that needed to be done was to clean the attic. The previous owners only left a few boxes and carpets in the attic so that went quick. However, the roof on the house was just redone several months ago and the roofers made a horrible mess of the attic. There were tons of nails, wood chips, and more dust than you could ever sneeze at. So, I got out the broom and shop vac and started cleaning things up. To help with the clean up of the nails I got out a large magnet I had laying around. This did pretty well picking them up. This is what it looked like before.

The next step in this process was to seal the attic. This means pulling back the fiberglass and rock wool and filling any holes or gaps that might let air pass easily into the attic. This is easily done with either caulk for small holes and gaps, or expanding foam (Great Stuff) for larger holes and gaps. I recommend finding where all the wiring goes, because they have to drill holes to get the wires through the ceiling. Also, junction boxes can leave huge gaps as well. Seal them up so air doesn’t get through! Here are a couple examples of the work and what I found in my attic.

Its very easy to tell if air is getting pulled into the attic.  Just look for areas of dust accumulation on your insulation.  Its very evident when you pull it all up.

With the attic all sealed up it is now ready for insulation.  Of course there are snags in the plan and some odd areas to get insulation in.  Check back later to see how that goes.

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Image: CarbonNYC

We all love our computers, right? But what happens to them when we stop loving them? There are three big possibilities:

1. The landfill: Like it or not, throwing stuff out is easy. Even though electronics are full of glass, heavy metals, and even precious metals like gold and silver, most of them get kicked to the curb when they reach a certain age, only to rot in a landfill for an eternity.
2. The closet: If you’re like me, you probably have a closet, basement, or garage full of old zip drives and 2x cd burners that you at first thought might be useful again, but now you’re just too lazy to get rid of.
3. The recycling center: Electronics recycling isn’t exactly a booming practice, but little by little manufacturers are beginning to offer return programs and local governments are starting to offer electronics recycling pick points.

We all know what happens to our once-loved computer in options 1 and two, but what about option 3? For years now, electronics recycling has been a rather simple task: you collect old electronics and, by hand, strip out what you want and just throw the rest out. This allows “recyclers” to take whatever useful parts or materials are easily extractable and resell them, but it doesn’t do much about the huge stream of junk filling our landfills.

And that’s where e-Scrap Destruction steps in. Instead of picking through a sea of used electronics looking for gold and throwing the rest out, e-Scrap sends everything through a huge, specially designed shredder that tears the waste to pieces, where electromagnets can remove iron and then rest can be further pulverized and sorted into useful bits.

Because of the company’s zero waste to landfill policy, you can be sure that they’re not just throwing anything out. Everything that comes through their door is torn down and sent out for further processing to eventually be reused in other commercial applications.

Worried about your data? Well, don’t be. Because everything that comes in goes through their custom electronics shredder, nothing is left behind. This has been one of the biggest concerns with electronics recycling, but e-Scrap has done a great job to put down those fears by thoroughly destroying any remnants of salvageable data.

So, what’s going to happen to your next computer when you get tired of it?

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…you find yourself replacing hidden incandescents with CFLs in your friend’s homes. EcoRenovator forum member dremd found himself doing this same thing recently. Here are some pictures of his exploits:

As you can tell, the lucky homeowner will likely not know the difference for many many years. In fact, they may begin to wonder why their incandescent bulbs have lasted so long before the CFLs give up the ghost and the homeowner discovers what’s happened.

Most of us probably encourage good environmental practices in our friends and family, but have anyone else gone this far? Let us know in the comments.

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Image: currybet

Besides the incandescent lightbulb, the plastic bag is the number one target of environmentalists as flagrant wastefulness. Not only do plastic bags usually end up in the trash, but they do so in large quantities and are made out of virtually non-biodegradable plastic. On top of this is the fact that they are rarely necessary. Most of the time you use a plastic bag you could easily have brought some of your own bags instead (I tend to leave a few in my car just in case I ever forget).

That’s why New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg is looking to actively fight plastic bag usage by adding a 6 cent charge for each bag used. This plan mimics similar policies in place in Ireland and Australia that charge consumers for the bags they use. In Ireland, the tax (which is more than NYC’s proposed tax at 33 cents) has reduced plastic bag usage 94%.

However, this brings up the age-old debate: Which is better, taxation or prohibition? Obviously we want people to use less plastic bags, but how should we encourage consumers to be more environmentally friendly? Let’s look at some of the pros and cons:

Taxation

• Pro: High taxes reduce consumption greatly
• Pro: If you really need a bag, you can still get one
• Con: Tax revenue disappears quickly as customers change their behavior
• Con: Low taxes may not reduce plastic use enough

Prohibition

• Pro: No one will be using any bags
• Pro: Consumers won’t face additional taxation
• Con: If you forget a bag or make an impluse purchase, you may be out of luck
• Con: Popular support for this option may be low since nobody likes losing choice

What do you think? Is this a good plan for NYC? Should the tax be higher or should there be no tax and a total ban? Let us know in the comments!

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Image: BohPhoto

I would be hard for anyone to deny at this point that the election of soon-to-be-President Obama is anything other than a historic choice. We may not have all voted for him, but our country will soon be moving in a new direction. Burdened though he is with war, global financial crisis, and the other responsibilities that face him as the next President of the United States, he has already begun talking with other nations about amending our broken environmental policy. For everyone that thought Obama was all talk, this should be a clear sign that that is not the case.

That is all a preface to the discussion of how Obama will look at the issues of environmental protection and climate change. I recently found this quote of Obama’s on a post at Treehugger:

I don’t consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, ‘You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.’ So when Brian Williams is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that's green], and I say, you know, ‘Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, ‘I’m talking about personal.’ What I’m thinking in my head is, ‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f—ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective’.

This was in reference to his getting ready to be questioned by a reporter about his personal environmental actions.

So what does this mean? What kind of environmentalist will President Obama be? I don’t think this quote means that Obama doesn’t care about CFLs or consumer choice. I’m sure he already has all CFLs in his home and has done many other things to reduce his personal environmental impact, but, like Al Gore, Obama realizes that global warming is a worldwide problem and can only be dealt with through international cooperation.

That doesn’t mean that we, as individuals, can forget about reducing our energy consumption. What it means is that, like Obama, we need focus on those actions are part of a bigger, collective movement to reduce energy usage and transform the sources from which we draw our energy. In this sense, CFLs are a distraction from the main issues for many people. If Obama were asked about energy issues and answered “yeah, I installed CFLs and put on solar panels” my response would be “but what about legislation banning the construction of new coal plants and mandating increased solar production and installation?”

Obama isn’t the President yet, but when he enters office he will be calling upon everyone in the U.S. and the world to join together to solve this problem. We need to be ready to answer as a group, calling for change and then following through with that change ourselves.

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