Saving Money and the Environment

Improving the environment takes all of us evaluating for ourselves what we can each do to reduce our own personal carbon footprint.  What works for me may not work for you and vice versa.

Often my pro-environment techniques come out of a desire to save money.  One simple way to save money and the environment is to stop using paper towels.  I’ve had a paper towel free home for years now.  When my parents would come visit me from Oklahoma they’d always bring a roll of paper towels because they knew I would not have any.  It seems everything they did in the kitchen required a paper towel.

I have a couple dozen basic cloth napkins for use at the table.  These were purchased either on sale or in a thrift store.  They last forever.  When heating, say, a frozen burrito that recommends being wrapped in a paper towel I go for one of these napkins instead.  After having friends over for a meal these just go right to the washing machine for the next load.

I keep dish towels around as well to replace paper towels for uses like wiping off the counter.  Paper towels, of course, replaced cloth items in the kitchen.

If you have raw chicken in your kitchen or other sources where it is important to stop the spread of germs do some investigating before giving up paper towels.  Using a dish towel to wipe up raw chicken juice is fine as long as it goes into the wash immediately (I guess).  I’m a vegetarian so I don’t have this issue.

Friends this weekend said they often have left-overs when eating out so they take their own containers with them. This doesn’t save money but it does cut down on the amount of garbage you have.  As we apprach Earth Day 2009 (April 22nd), what are things you do that both save you money and help the planet?

Dump No Waste Drains To Sound

Protecting water quality must be a community effort. Sometimes it is important to remind people to not pollute.

I spotted the above yesterday in West Seattle area known as Alki Beach (map). Subtle messages can help build a collective community conscience.

Puget Sound is stunning. They want to make sure it stays that way.

I Hadn’t Bought Gas Since January

Yesterday, on July 14th, I filled the gas tank on my recently purchased 2004 Corolla. It was the first time I bought gas since January 20th 2008. Granted for February through April I was in the hospital and certainly in no position to drive.

On January 20th I filled the tank on the scooter for less than three bucks.  Yesterday I spent just shy of forty bucks to fill the Corolla (and it wasn’t empty yet).  So I missed out on seeing gas go up 50% ($2.69 to $3.99) while I was in the hospital.

Recently the Bush administration stopped adding to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve but now calls are coming in to sell some of the oil to relieve price pressures:

Bush initially opposed an earlier call this year to stop shipments to the country’s strategic oil reserves before Congress forced him to take that step. Now, Pelosi is asking him to go even further by drawing down a small portion of that stockpile for commercial consumption “to help reduce the record (gas) prices that are helping push the economy toward recession,” according to a copy of the letter.

“The severe energy price crisis facing millions of Americans compels strong presidential action to assist consumers and strengthen the economy,” the speaker says in her letter to the president.

The two parties are locked in a bitter fight over high gas prices, and congressional leaders have only taken a few superficial steps to reach across the aisle in search of a remedy.

With that in mind, Pelosi’s missive is hardly an olive branch; rather, the speaker points out that the price of a barrel of crude oil has nearly quintupled since Bush took office, with a gallon of gasoline now selling for the average price of $4.11.

In her letter, Pelosi points out that Bush, his father and former President Bill Clinton all tapped into the strategic reserves at one point during their respective presidencies. George H.W. Bush did small test sales in 1990 and again in 1991 right before the initial Gulf war. Clinton released 30 million barrels from the reserves during his final year in the White House to help lower the costs of home heating oil. And Bush himself withdrew 11 million barrels (after offering to withdraw 30 million barrels) in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina damaged refineries and pipelines along the Gulf Coast.   (source: CBS News)

As painful as filling as today’s prices are I think the long term benefits will be real. Those that bought any vehicle regardless of mileage and thought nothing about driving many miles without consideration of the impact will now change their behavior.   Some will take gas costing $7+.

The current gas prices are doing things we could never accomplish before with cheap gas.  Use of mass transit is up, sales of gas sucking trucks & SUVs are way down and people are more mindful about the number of miles they drive on a daily basis.

With my scooter I got into the habit of combining trips and planning my route in advance so as to be able to take care of several errands per trip.  Things like stopping at the store on the way home rather than running back out again.  At the time that was more about saving time as the scooter averaged better than 85 MPG.  So now with the car I think ahead to what I can accomplish while I’m out with the goal being a savings of miles driven.

The Corolla is proving to be as thirsty as promised.  The sellers had filled the tank right before I bought it so I know my MPG for the last few weeks – just over 31 mpg in mostly city driving with the A/C on most of the time.   Next month I’m driving back to Oklahoma City to visit family and I hope to get at least 40mpg on that trip.

One member of congress is revisiting the fuel savings achieved by the old national 55mph speed limit.  Virginia Senator John Warner, a Republican,  is talking about real conservatism:

Sen. John Warner, R-Virginia, asked Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to look into what speed limit would provide optimum gasoline efficiency given current technology. He said he wants to know if the administration might support efforts in Congress to require a lower speed limit.

Congress in 1974 set a national 55 mph speed limit because of energy shortages caused by the Arab oil embargo. The speed limit was repealed in 1995 when crude oil dipped to $17 a barrel and gasoline cost $1.10 a gallon. (source: AP via CNN)

I think a lower speed limit would help save fuel and save people money.  Averaging 55 mph rather than 65 mph on my 500 mile drive to Oklahoma City will add over an hour to my travel time — just shy of a 20% increase. A real savings in fuel is worth a little of my time.But perhaps my car would do better at 60 mph?  Like Sammy Hagar, I can’t drive 55.  60 I can do.  70 is out of the question.

One of the new applications I’ve downloaded for my first generation iPhone is a mileage tracker.  It will be interesting tracking my mileage and fuel expenses.  It show the MPG on the last fill-up as well as an average.

I’m also finding other drivers frustrating.  I know that Jack Rabbit starts are good at wasting gas but so is taking forever to go when the light does turn green.  If that 6th car back misses the light and has to sit through another cycle they are just wasting gas.  Someday more cars will have to technology to shut off the engine at such stops but in the meantime we all need to pay attention and get through the lights. We don’t have to race to the next signal but we shouldn’t take forever either.  Getting the lights timed better would also help.

These gas prices are here to stay.  They are not high at all, just higher than what we’ve grown used to.   They will go higher too.  Interesting times ahead as the general public grapples with this new reality.

Forestry Dept Begins Long-Overdue Street Tree Maintenance on Washington Ave

A few days ago I did a post on the deferred maintenance along a stretch of Washington Ave (posted at 2:43pm on Wednesday). The main issue was the fact that nine out of 41 trees (over 20%) had been cut down and not replaced between 14th and 18th. Of course I had a picture of each and every stump to illustrate the point that maintenance was lacking on a street that underwent a massive (and costly) streetscape makeover just over five years ago.

Earlier today employees from the city’s Forestry Dept ground out one of the nine stumps. Eight remain. Still I was encouraged (and a bit surprised) to see the crew out doing this work on a Saturday morning. Perhaps today was just a test to see how long each might take? Also they’ll need to ban on-street parking in the remaining areas to get their equipment into place.

Above, getting the grinder into position required blocking the crosswalk for a few moments.

By 10:30am one offending stump was gone.

The crew cleaned up the mess and left. Hopefully this Fall we’ll see a newly planted tree in this spot and the eight others.

On a related note New York Magazine last year had an interesting article on the worth of street trees:

The standard formula says a dwelling with a tree in front is worth .88 percent more than a home without one.

That is $880 per $100K. The ability to clean the air, create shade and absorb water runoff is all part of the value. The loss of nine street trees in a distance of four blocks thus devalues the whole area.

The St Louis Region Over The Next 50 Years

The last 50 years saw our region (and most regions nationally) flee the inner city, and eventually inner ring ‘streetcar’ suburbs for the newly developing auto-centric sprawl of suburbia. The coming 50 years will be radically different. The following are my thoughts on the changes we’ll see by the close of the first half of the 21st Century.

We already know that by 2050 the U.S. is expected to grow by a third, going from 300 million to 400 million. We have no reason to believe the desires and values of the 1950s will be the same in the 2050s, the 1950s were certainly different than the 1850s.

The decision makers in 1950 were likely born around 1900. The cities of their youth were a polluted places. Many cities in the first half of the 20th century could be as dark as night due to think smoke from coal fired furnaces. Cities were literally dirty places. All the jobs & retail were in the city so one had little choice but to go to the city.  That generation changed everything to get themselves away from the city center.
The American dream of the single family detached home surrounded by a lush lawn and two cars in the garage will cease to be the dream for most Americans by 2050. The further we get into the period of high energy costs the more people will realize the folly of hoping in the car to head 3 miles to a big box supermarket, or anywhere for that matter. Of course in the future that big box supermarket may not exist.

Agribusiness, I believe, will collapse as the cost to produce and ship food great distances will cripple their business plan. Food will become more local out of fiscal necessity.

As we transition from a world a cheap energy to one where energy is very costly much will change.  Wal-Mart too will collapse as they struggle to offer consumers cheap goods shipped from halfway around the world.  Their vast parking lots in suburbia will be increasingly empty, just like their shelves.

Alternatively I think by 2050 we’ll see the 200,000sf Wal-Mart Supercenter break up and be replaced with the Wal-Mart main street. One walkable street connected to adjacent residential and lined with a number of Wal-Mart specialty stores such as pharmacy, grocery, clothing, electronics and so on.    This won’t happen in some corn field but along an arterial currently lined with fast food shacks and cinder block & dryvit strip centers.   Municipalities will see this as the only way to create main street type retail to serve their residents.  It may be Wal-Mart or it might be whatever retailers come along after they crash & burn.
Rolling blackouts to deal with demand for electricity will shape generations being born now.  They will also be shaped by the high price of gas.  Just as the generation from 1900 looked with envy at the wealthy who had large homes in places just outside the city like Webster Groves the generation being born now but raised in car required sprawl will be envious of those with the option to walk a few blocks to work, or to get daily goods & services.  Indeed it will be the wealthy who will first place themselves in the new emerging urban enclaves.
Over the next half century manufacturing will return to the U.S. As transportation costs mount we will begin to see that the cheap item made in China or the head of lettuce grown in Southern California will be more costly than the same thing made or grown closer to home.

As a future Urban Planner this is an exciting time. The next decade or so will be rough but beyond that we’ll see the re-urbanization of the St Louis region and in regions across the country. I’m not suggesting the entire population of the region will live & work with the boundaries of the City of St Louis. What I am suggesting is that in addition to the city our inner-ring suburbs and a few after that will add population and will take on new forms to reflect the market demand for “walkable urbanism.” The single-family detached homes may remain but the commercial arterial roads, now littered with fast food joints, will get mixed-use urban form buildings.

The large vinyl-clad McMansions of suburbia may get reconfigured to house more than one single family.  Lawns will become vegetable gardens.  Those places farthest away from a main street and/or transit (ie: requiring a drive to get there) will be unwanted.   Children raised in these conditions will long for urbanism when they seek places on their own.
The municipality of Dardene Prairie in St Charles County is already taking the right steps to stay relevant.  They are in the process of creating a walkable downtown on vacant commercial land between existing cul-de-sac subdivisions.  When built out in say 20 years that will serve to connect now disconnected subdivisions.  Creve Coeur is also working on a downtown plan.  Much of what Urban Planners will be doing over the next few decades is retrofitting sprawl with mass transit and walkable urbanism.  These places won’t have 10+ story buildings for blocks but they will have 2-5 story buildings opening directly to the street.
Future road projects will not center on how much traffic volume can be accommodated but how to make stretches of road more hospitable to pedestrians and cyclists, the opposite of today’s big projects like I-64.

In 2050 I will turn 83 years old.  Thus I may only see the start of this transformation.  Hopefully I will play a role in the process from suburbia to urbanism.  In 2050 my great-niece will be 52 and her younger brother will be 46.  Their adult lives won’t be about driving everywhere.   They may never need a car.

The problem is that today’s leadership is stuck on fulfilling the dreams of their grandparents generation, only making it bigger and more sprawling.  The mounting energy crisis is going to test everyone’s idea of the ideal built environment.  Those municipalities that embrace the increasing demand for urbanism will fare better than those that don’t.  As a region our growth will depend upon the actions within tons of small municipalities on both sides of the river.  How we are perceived by those outside our region will become important as we try to get manufacturing jobs that return stateside.

The City of St Louis divorced itself from St Louis County in 1876 and in the coming decades that may prove to benefit the city.  If, in the coming decades, we rebuild much of our now-vacant areas in a dense urban model we can repopulate the city and attract great new jobs.   Not being part of a county will give the city the freedom to go its own direction while ignoring potential sprawl holdouts in the balance of the region.  Of course I’m afraid the pro-sprawl holdouts may still be in charge in city government.

As we face an uncertain future regarding energy I’m nonetheless optimistic about the future and the role I may play in shaping cities over the next 40 years or so.