By now the phrase "retail apocalypse" has entered everyday parlance and everyone knows what it means: Amazon will destroy everything, leaving smoking holes wherever there used to be perfectly nice and harmless retailers.
It'll be just like what Walmart did twenty years ago, except Amazon will do it faster, meaner, and with more clinical detachment.
And when it's all said and done, there'll be a few Chipotles and mani-pedi shops left over--you know: service businesses Amazon hasn't yet learned how to replicate. There will be no other retail survivors.
This unmitigated disaster is the consensus scenario on what Amazon is about to do to the retailing industry. Cheery, huh?
Then again, to borrow a phrase from my old investing career: the consensus is often wrong but never in doubt. And it's generally a terrible idea to allow consensus thinkers to do all our thinking for us. So, could there be another, non-consensus perspective on the secular growth of Amazon and online retailing?
Here's one: it's an unmitigated blessing for the environment. The six bullet points below explain.
1) Stores can revert back to green space and habitat. Most stores simply don't have to be there anymore. Retail space could return to open space, and all those hideous-looking big-box stores, shopping malls and strip malls could go back to being trees, grass and the natural habitat they used to be. Or, perhaps even better, these built-over spaces could be reused for low-cost housing, public parks and playgrounds. Any of these uses would be far more societally beneficial than feeding consumerism.
2) Think about all the pavement. For every 1,000 square feet of retail space, there's another 1,200 additional square feet of paved-over parking space. This is pavement sufficient to park 3-4 cars, roughly. [1] This doesn't even count additional paved-over ground for road access, for truck loading/unloading, for firelane space, for space between parking lanes, etc. Every square foot of decommissioned retail space counts well more than double--possibly more than triple--once you consider accompanying paved areas.
3) Pavement and parking lots are disastrous for the environment. Pavement disrupts the soil's natural role in cleansing, draining and filtering our water. Parking lots and road surfaces also generate pollutant-heavy storm sewer runoff that typically goes directly into local rivers and lakes. Remember decades ago when we used to pollute our environment with industrial waste? Now we do it with pavement runoff. [2]
4) Redundant warehousing and distribution infrastructure eliminated. For every retail store you see, there's a largely invisible network of warehousing and distribution supporting it behind the scenes. This represents still more environmentally disruptive buildings, infrastructure and pavement, most of which are unnecessary. As a recent example of what I mean, consider the failed and now-liquidated retailer Sports Authority. It competed with Dick's Sporting Goods, often placing its stores in the very same malls and neighborhoods. Sports Authority had its own warehouses, storage, distribution hubs, trucks, inventory and systems--an unprofitable, unnecessary and entirely redundant national retailing infrastructure exactly copied by a nearly identical retailer. All totally unnecessary. Imagine all the other carbon-copy retailers in the innumerable subsectors of retail, and then imagine all the additional infrastructure behind the scenes that simply doesn't need to be there.
5) Redundant shipping/trucking/fossil fuel use eliminated. Merchandise doesn't magically travel to store shelves and display cases by itself. It needs to be trucked there. Worse, physical retailers also have to guess what you're going to buy, and in what unit volumes, and then ship it from the docks to warehouses and distribution nodes, and then to the stores themselves. All this inventory (assuming it isn't stolen, broken or damaged en route) is unloaded and set on display in brightly-lit, well-heated and completely wasteful indoor environments designed specifically to tempt you to buy. If the retailer is wrong about what the customers want (they often are), they pack it back up and then ship it all the way back to be dealt with yet again. This is an entire layer of shipping, distribution and display now made largely unnecessary by online/virtual storefronts.
6) Wasteful last mile customer driving reduced significantly. One of the largest single drivers (pun intended) of excess carbon footprint and energy waste occurs when customers drive to and from stores. [3] Most of this last-mile customer driving could and probably should be replaced by UPS, FedEx and the postal system, all of which already have well-scaled distribution systems in place which are far less wasteful and far more efficient than individual cars on individual shopping trips.
Concluding thoughts
Retail is entering a period of much-needed and long-overdue rationalization as we replace an old, outmoded way of selling things with a more efficient and less environmentally harmful way. We are vastly overstored in the USA, and for every unnecessary store, there's still more pavement, warehousing, distribution, trucking and redundant infrastructure behind it all.
Maybe the retail apocalypse isn't so bad after all.
Resources/for further reading:
[1] See this intriguing 1950's era parking/planning report giving standard assumptions for parking space/retail space ratios. Today, ratios probably run meaningfully higher still. Also note this gem of a quote: "We know of no existing [shopping] center that has too much parking."
[2] Scientific American on stormwater pavement runoff and its environmental impact.
[3] Intriguingly, the extraordinary wastefulness of last-mile driving is also one of the most compelling arguments against the local food movement. For more on this, see the readable and counterintuitive book The Locavore's Dilemma by Hiroko Shimizu and Pierre Desrochers.
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Showing posts with label environment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label environment. Show all posts
Are You An Al Gore Environmentalist?
Al Gore Environmentalist: noun; Someone who tells everybody else how to save the environment from his air-conditioned 10,000 square foot mansion.
*************************
Over the past few months I've been paying closer attention to virtue signalling behavior. And in the domain of environmentalism we see lots and lots of it.
There are studies for example, that show that people make green purchases primarily to signal their status and "morality" to others. Or worse, when people feel they're being observed, they are significantly more likely to buy an environmentally-friendly or green product, but when not watched they default to a standard product. And worse still, they make their environmentally wasteful and consumerism-based purchases quietly, at home, online, where nobody can see.
True virtue is practiced in private, out of sight of others. Virtue practiced in public is always compromised, at least to some extent, by the fact that you get credit and status by your "virtue" being seen. And of course this becomes pure pseudo-virtue if you practice contrary behaviors when you think no one's looking.
Al Gore's problem lay in the fact that it's awfully tough to conceal a gigantic mansion. Or the fact that at one point he had the single highest residential electric and gas bill in the entire state of Tennessee, at some $30,000 a year in power usage. Practicing pseudo-virtue at this level is extremely risky: eventually someone's going to discover the inconvenient truth and point out the yawning chasm between what you preach and what you practice.
Al Gore-ism is perhaps the worst form of hypocrisy. But even more galling is the implicit truth that some people get to make the rules, but rules that are somehow totally optional for them. Not for us though.
Read Next: Peat Village: A Parable
*************************
Over the past few months I've been paying closer attention to virtue signalling behavior. And in the domain of environmentalism we see lots and lots of it.
There are studies for example, that show that people make green purchases primarily to signal their status and "morality" to others. Or worse, when people feel they're being observed, they are significantly more likely to buy an environmentally-friendly or green product, but when not watched they default to a standard product. And worse still, they make their environmentally wasteful and consumerism-based purchases quietly, at home, online, where nobody can see.
True virtue is practiced in private, out of sight of others. Virtue practiced in public is always compromised, at least to some extent, by the fact that you get credit and status by your "virtue" being seen. And of course this becomes pure pseudo-virtue if you practice contrary behaviors when you think no one's looking.
Al Gore's problem lay in the fact that it's awfully tough to conceal a gigantic mansion. Or the fact that at one point he had the single highest residential electric and gas bill in the entire state of Tennessee, at some $30,000 a year in power usage. Practicing pseudo-virtue at this level is extremely risky: eventually someone's going to discover the inconvenient truth and point out the yawning chasm between what you preach and what you practice.
Al Gore-ism is perhaps the worst form of hypocrisy. But even more galling is the implicit truth that some people get to make the rules, but rules that are somehow totally optional for them. Not for us though.
Read Next: Peat Village: A Parable
What is the Carbon Footprint of the Money Saved by Going Vegetarian?
There was something else that grabbed me about Jason Lusk's recent study on food spending: the allegedly lower carbon footprint of eating vegetarian:
"If a vegetarian spends less on food, what do they do with their remaining income? And do those other purchases have higher or lower carbon impacts? If vegetarian diets have both a lower carbon footprint and a lower price-tag, then one cannot really determine the carbon impact of becoming a vegetarian without accounting for how those food savings are spent. If vegetarians spend 15% less on food but use those savings on a plane flight, then their overall carbon footprint might rise. Indeed, Grabs (2015), who labels this a 'rebound effect', found that half of the carbon footprint reduction attributable to a vegetarian diet actually disappeared after accounting for the carbon effects of the remaining expenditures."
It's an interesting set of questions. And yes, if I save a fifty bucks this month by switching some meals to vegetarian, but then I use those fifty bucks to buy ten thousand plastic bags and set them on fire in my backyard… well, I can't exactly go around smugly virtue-signalling my reduced carbon footprint, can I? So, yes, it's entirely valid to carefully consider any possible second-order effects of money saved from going vegetarian. Especially if you have a plastic bag-burning habit.
But then again, there's an implicit assumption here: It's an assumption an economist[*] would definitely make, but an assumption we frugality geeks don't have to: why assume that money saved has to be spent at all?
After all, a frugal Casual Kitchen reader who read this far would probably think, "Who needs plastic bags? I’m going to save that money, dummy! I’m not going to spend it."
So, what actually is the carbon footprint of money not spent? Pretty low, I'd guess.
Or, to take things even further and consider the question from the standpoint of an early retirement extreme devotee, what's the carbon footprint of money not spent, but rather invested in, say, dividend-paying consumer products stocks funding your retirement, so you don't have to hop in your car and "carbon footprint" your way to work every day?
For Further Reading:
If you're interested in reading more on this topic, see Lusk's post on Environmental Impacts of Vegetarianism.
Finally, if you haven't read Jason Lusk's book The Food Police
or his latest book Unnaturally Delicious,
please RUN to Amazon and get them. Jason is an important and alternative voice in the food debate, and you simply cannot consider yourself a balanced thinker on food industry issues if you haven't read his books.
Footnotes:
[*] Not to pile on and tease economists too much in this week's post, but everybody knows this joke, right?
An engineer, a lawyer and an economist were stranded on a desert island with only a can of beans between them.
The engineer began building a tool to open the can.
The lawyer said, "Let's sue the bastards who made this unopenable can!"
The economist said, "Okay: assume we have a can opener..."
READ NEXT: Attack of the Cheaps! Eight Great (And Temporary) Ideas to Save $500-$700 a Month
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
Easy. Do all your shopping at Amazon.com
via the links on this site! You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.
"If a vegetarian spends less on food, what do they do with their remaining income? And do those other purchases have higher or lower carbon impacts? If vegetarian diets have both a lower carbon footprint and a lower price-tag, then one cannot really determine the carbon impact of becoming a vegetarian without accounting for how those food savings are spent. If vegetarians spend 15% less on food but use those savings on a plane flight, then their overall carbon footprint might rise. Indeed, Grabs (2015), who labels this a 'rebound effect', found that half of the carbon footprint reduction attributable to a vegetarian diet actually disappeared after accounting for the carbon effects of the remaining expenditures."
It's an interesting set of questions. And yes, if I save a fifty bucks this month by switching some meals to vegetarian, but then I use those fifty bucks to buy ten thousand plastic bags and set them on fire in my backyard… well, I can't exactly go around smugly virtue-signalling my reduced carbon footprint, can I? So, yes, it's entirely valid to carefully consider any possible second-order effects of money saved from going vegetarian. Especially if you have a plastic bag-burning habit.
But then again, there's an implicit assumption here: It's an assumption an economist[*] would definitely make, but an assumption we frugality geeks don't have to: why assume that money saved has to be spent at all?
After all, a frugal Casual Kitchen reader who read this far would probably think, "Who needs plastic bags? I’m going to save that money, dummy! I’m not going to spend it."
So, what actually is the carbon footprint of money not spent? Pretty low, I'd guess.
Or, to take things even further and consider the question from the standpoint of an early retirement extreme devotee, what's the carbon footprint of money not spent, but rather invested in, say, dividend-paying consumer products stocks funding your retirement, so you don't have to hop in your car and "carbon footprint" your way to work every day?
For Further Reading:
If you're interested in reading more on this topic, see Lusk's post on Environmental Impacts of Vegetarianism.
Finally, if you haven't read Jason Lusk's book The Food Police
or his latest book Unnaturally Delicious,
please RUN to Amazon and get them. Jason is an important and alternative voice in the food debate, and you simply cannot consider yourself a balanced thinker on food industry issues if you haven't read his books. Footnotes:
[*] Not to pile on and tease economists too much in this week's post, but everybody knows this joke, right?
An engineer, a lawyer and an economist were stranded on a desert island with only a can of beans between them.
The engineer began building a tool to open the can.
The lawyer said, "Let's sue the bastards who made this unopenable can!"
The economist said, "Okay: assume we have a can opener..."
READ NEXT: Attack of the Cheaps! Eight Great (And Temporary) Ideas to Save $500-$700 a Month
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
Easy. Do all your shopping at Amazon.com
via the links on this site! You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.
Hypermiling: Improve Your Car’s Gas Mileage and Save $ on Gas
Readers, are you looking for a few simple ways to save money on gas? This post shares ideas on how to "hypermile" with your car.
*************************
What is hypermiling? It's simply a collection of techniques to optimize and maximize your car's fuel efficiency. If you can build a habit of using even just a few of the fundamental hypermiling tips shared in this post, you could easily save 10%--and perhaps as much as 30%--on gasoline.
Two caveats: this is by no means an exhaustive list of hypermiling tips, and at least one of the tips below could be dangerous if used inappropriately. As always, please feel free to share your own favorite hypermiling techniques in the comments.
1) Know your car's optimal highway speed
In your car's owner's manual you can find your car's optimal fuel efficiency speed. This speed depends on your car's transmission, gearing ratios and aerodynamic profile, but for most automobiles, it's going to be in the neighborhood of 50-55 mph. Whenever you can do so safely, try to drive at this speed on the highway.
Note that in the current era of 65, 70 and even 75 mph speed limits here in the USA, this presents a problem: your driving speed must be reasonable relative to other cars on the road. If your car's optimal efficiency speed is 55 miles per hour, yet you're in a 70 mph zone (which really means everyone's driving 75-80), you risk getting mowed down just to save a few bucks on gas. Find a safe midpoint here and drive with the general flow of traffic.
2) Acceleration techniques
We all have an inner teenager inside us, dying to get a jump on green lights and race ahead of everyone else. I do this too, more than I ought to admit. However, rapid acceleration is just a fast way to waste fuel. It's far more mileage-friendly to accelerate gently and gradually from a standing start.
Your acceleration techniques on the open highway will affect your fuel efficiency too. For example, if accelerating from, say, 60 mph to 70 mph, resist the urge to floor it. Restrain that inner teenager! Remember: you're not impressing the ladies, you're just wasting gas.
3) Braking/Coasting Techniques
Your car uses gasoline to produce forward kinetic energy, which means any time you brake you waste gas. Coasting, on the other hand, conserves that kinetic energy. Therefore, your braking and coasting techniques have a significant impact your car's fuel efficiency.
You can use a wide range of coasting techniques to optimize forward movement with little to no gas. A few ideas:
* Use road terrain to your advantage. Many major highways have hills that are steep, gradual and long enough that you can put your car in neutral and coast for miles at or close to your desired speed.
* Don't approach a long downhill at higher than your desired speed because you'll end up braking the entire way down, wasting fuel, forward momentum--and your brakepads.
* Finally, if you have a habit of racing up to a red light and then hitting the brakes, you're doing it wrong.
4) Vents, not windows
When I was a kid growing up in the 1970s, our family car had "60-WRD Air Conditioning": drive 60 with the windows rolled down. If we'd only known the truth: it's more fuel-efficient to roll up your windows and use your car's interior vents instead. Driving with the windows down is fun and all, but it increases your car's wind resistance and drag. Note that at low speeds or in local driving, this tip won't make a noticeable difference in your mileage--the effect is far more meaningful at highway speeds.
5) High speeds = exponentially more waste
As any math geek will tell you, your car's air resistance (or drag) is a function of your driving velocity squared. In actual English, this means as your driving speed increases, you waste more and more of your fuel on wind resistance. At high speeds, your car burns fuel--a lot of fuel--just pushing air out of the way.
I'll throw some numbers at you: you can generally assume that driving at 70 mph is about 15% less efficient than driving at 60 mph. And driving at 85 mph is about 25% less efficient. Speed not only kills, it wastes money too.
6) Eliminate bad mileage habits
We've already covered a few important mileage-murdering habits like rapid acceleration, driving at high speeds, and so on. But there are several others. For example: do you let your car idle for long periods? Do you overuse your car's air conditioning when using the vents would be good enough? During highway driving, do you repeatedly accelerate and decelerate rather than driving at a steady speed?
Don't worry, no one's saying you can't use the A/C: only the hardest of hard-core hypermilers are willing to swelter in a hot car to save a few bucks on gas. But I will say this: if you do have the habit of repeatedly accelerating and decelerating on the highway you're not just wasting fuel. You should also know the internet has created a rather unflattering term for you. :)
7) Keep your car in good repair
This is the easiest tip of all to follow. Check your oil levels periodically, change your oil when required, keep your wheels properly aligned, and keep your tires balanced and properly inflated. These are basic auto maintenance steps that will help improve your car's fuel efficiency.
8) Avoid ethanol
We've written here at CK about the deeply irresponsible policy behind ethanol fuel mandates. Let's set aside for now the depressing truth that producing ethanol wastes more fossil fuels than it replaces. The real problem hypermilers have with ethanol is this: ethanol burns so poorly that it makes your car less fuel efficient. In fact, at ethanol/gasoline proportions above 10%, ethanol can even disrupt proper functioning of your engine.
The EPA claims that at 10% concentrations, ethanol will cause your vehicle to lose about 3% in fuel efficiency. However, many drivers have found far more significant efficiency losses with ethanol-blended fuels. Bottom line: if you want to improve your gas mileage, keep ethanol out of your car.
Sadly, however, many states mandate that gas stations sell 10% ethanol blend. Our politicians may not understand the laws of thermodynamics, but we--as environmentally concerned drivers--can try to avoid these fuels as much as we possibly can.
9) Drafting
Here's the one fuel efficiency tactic I'm hesitant to share. Why? Because it can be dangerous if misused. But I'll offer it anyway, with caveats, simply because it's the single most powerful hypermiling technique.
Depending on where you get your facts (and depending on your driving speed) wind resistance can reduce your car's fuel efficiency by up to 50%. If you ever look up and see a flock of geese flying in formation, or if you've ever seen riders at the Tour de France draft off of each other, you can see how enormously helpful it is to have someone else take the brunt of the wind for you.
In the context of hypermiling, then, drafting is essentially following a larger vehicle at a safe but fairly close distance, and using that vehicle as a wind break. A typical example is to follow a semi truck that happens to be traveling at your desired speed.
If you follow a large truck at a moderate distance (say, at a 2-3 second following distance) you'll feel a surprising amount of turbulence as your car passes through the same air the truck passed through moments before. Note however, that if you creep up closer to this truck, the turbulence drops significantly--to the point where you can actually start to feel your car being pulled along in the truck's vacuum. All of a sudden you don't need to use as much pressure on the gas pedal to maintain speed.
This is the drafting sweet spot: not so close to the truck that you risk rear-ending it, not so far back that you're sitting in the truck’s worst turbulence. Here's where you can dramatically increase your car's fuel efficiency.
Once again, I offer this specific tip hesitantly and with disclaimers. To return to the Tour de France example, always keep in mind that when the lead guy suddenly stops, all forty of the other guys in the peloton crash right into him. And that's the problem with drafting: it's riskier--and probably not worth it just to save a few bucks on gas. However, if you choose to do it, make sure you stay alert, drive safely and maintain proper following distance at all times.
10) How to manage heavy traffic
The amount of fuel wasted in traffic jams is enormous and probably unmeasurable. As with idling, if your car is running and you're not moving, your gas mileage will be… a big fat 0 mpg. Thus it makes sense as much as possible to avoid traveling during rush hour--and to especially avoid rush hour in major urban centers known for bad traffic.
Sadly, there's no foolproof way to always avoid traffic, so if you are stuck in a jam, you can use certain anticipatory acceleration and braking techniques to limit the gas mileage damage. For example: don't accelerate rapidly to catch up with the car in front of you and then hit the brakes as you approach. Instead, accelerate gently and then coast. Further, keep your eyes on what's happening several cars ahead of you, and try to anticipate and match the general movement of traffic with as little braking as possible. If you see nothing but brake lights a quarter mile ahead of you, there's even less reason to race up to the bumper of the car ahead of you.
Wait a second: does all this hypermiling stuff really work?
Yes, it actually works. Readers, about a year ago, on a long road trip from New Jersey to Texas, I did a control test: I drove normally for one full tank of gas, and drove a separate full tank's worth of gas using as many hypermiling techniques as I could from the list above.
I'll admit up front: I was cynical about the value of these hypermiling techniques. I didn't think I'd see that big a difference. And yet the improvement I was able to get in gas mileage was substantial--far greater than I expected. Normally, my car (a 2009 Pontiac Vibe) gets about 30-32 miles per gallon in highway driving. Using hypermiling techniques, however, I was able to get my fuel efficiency up to nearly 40 miles per gallon. That's a 25-30% improvement, and it translates directly into a 25-30% savings on gasoline costs.
Yes, this was just one trial, and yes, it was neither exact nor scientific, and yes, your mileage may vary (heh), but I encourage you to try some of these techniques yourself and see if you can see a difference. I'm guessing you will.
One final thought. Individually, many of these tips won’t have much of a noticeable impact on your gas mileage. But use a few--or all--of them and collectively they’ll be significant. It’s not that difficult, for example, to draft off the occasional truck here and there, build better acceleration and braking habits, and drive at a consistent and moderate speed. Just doing these things could improve your mileage by 10-20% with minimal effort. Try it--and reap the savings!
Readers, what do you think? What’s your favorite fuel saving technique?
For Further Reading:
1) MPG for Speed: a simple one-page site that walks though some of the mileage/fuel efficiency losses your car experiences at higher speeds.
2) What increased speed and air resistance does to your car’s fuel efficiency.
3) For the serious math geek: an article that looks at a several different ways to calculate energy loss at high driving speeds.
4) Top Ten Ways To Waste Gas.
5) How Does Ethanol Impact Fuel Efficiency?
6) Interesting and somewhat technical discussion thread on ethanol and fuel efficiency at the Eng-Tips Forum.
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
Easy. Do all your shopping at Amazon.com via the links on this site! You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.
*************************
What is hypermiling? It's simply a collection of techniques to optimize and maximize your car's fuel efficiency. If you can build a habit of using even just a few of the fundamental hypermiling tips shared in this post, you could easily save 10%--and perhaps as much as 30%--on gasoline.
Two caveats: this is by no means an exhaustive list of hypermiling tips, and at least one of the tips below could be dangerous if used inappropriately. As always, please feel free to share your own favorite hypermiling techniques in the comments.
1) Know your car's optimal highway speed
In your car's owner's manual you can find your car's optimal fuel efficiency speed. This speed depends on your car's transmission, gearing ratios and aerodynamic profile, but for most automobiles, it's going to be in the neighborhood of 50-55 mph. Whenever you can do so safely, try to drive at this speed on the highway.
Note that in the current era of 65, 70 and even 75 mph speed limits here in the USA, this presents a problem: your driving speed must be reasonable relative to other cars on the road. If your car's optimal efficiency speed is 55 miles per hour, yet you're in a 70 mph zone (which really means everyone's driving 75-80), you risk getting mowed down just to save a few bucks on gas. Find a safe midpoint here and drive with the general flow of traffic.
2) Acceleration techniques
We all have an inner teenager inside us, dying to get a jump on green lights and race ahead of everyone else. I do this too, more than I ought to admit. However, rapid acceleration is just a fast way to waste fuel. It's far more mileage-friendly to accelerate gently and gradually from a standing start.
Your acceleration techniques on the open highway will affect your fuel efficiency too. For example, if accelerating from, say, 60 mph to 70 mph, resist the urge to floor it. Restrain that inner teenager! Remember: you're not impressing the ladies, you're just wasting gas.
3) Braking/Coasting Techniques
Your car uses gasoline to produce forward kinetic energy, which means any time you brake you waste gas. Coasting, on the other hand, conserves that kinetic energy. Therefore, your braking and coasting techniques have a significant impact your car's fuel efficiency.
You can use a wide range of coasting techniques to optimize forward movement with little to no gas. A few ideas:
* Use road terrain to your advantage. Many major highways have hills that are steep, gradual and long enough that you can put your car in neutral and coast for miles at or close to your desired speed.
* Don't approach a long downhill at higher than your desired speed because you'll end up braking the entire way down, wasting fuel, forward momentum--and your brakepads.
* Finally, if you have a habit of racing up to a red light and then hitting the brakes, you're doing it wrong.
4) Vents, not windows
When I was a kid growing up in the 1970s, our family car had "60-WRD Air Conditioning": drive 60 with the windows rolled down. If we'd only known the truth: it's more fuel-efficient to roll up your windows and use your car's interior vents instead. Driving with the windows down is fun and all, but it increases your car's wind resistance and drag. Note that at low speeds or in local driving, this tip won't make a noticeable difference in your mileage--the effect is far more meaningful at highway speeds.
5) High speeds = exponentially more waste
As any math geek will tell you, your car's air resistance (or drag) is a function of your driving velocity squared. In actual English, this means as your driving speed increases, you waste more and more of your fuel on wind resistance. At high speeds, your car burns fuel--a lot of fuel--just pushing air out of the way.
I'll throw some numbers at you: you can generally assume that driving at 70 mph is about 15% less efficient than driving at 60 mph. And driving at 85 mph is about 25% less efficient. Speed not only kills, it wastes money too.
6) Eliminate bad mileage habits
We've already covered a few important mileage-murdering habits like rapid acceleration, driving at high speeds, and so on. But there are several others. For example: do you let your car idle for long periods? Do you overuse your car's air conditioning when using the vents would be good enough? During highway driving, do you repeatedly accelerate and decelerate rather than driving at a steady speed?
Don't worry, no one's saying you can't use the A/C: only the hardest of hard-core hypermilers are willing to swelter in a hot car to save a few bucks on gas. But I will say this: if you do have the habit of repeatedly accelerating and decelerating on the highway you're not just wasting fuel. You should also know the internet has created a rather unflattering term for you. :)
7) Keep your car in good repair
This is the easiest tip of all to follow. Check your oil levels periodically, change your oil when required, keep your wheels properly aligned, and keep your tires balanced and properly inflated. These are basic auto maintenance steps that will help improve your car's fuel efficiency.
8) Avoid ethanol
We've written here at CK about the deeply irresponsible policy behind ethanol fuel mandates. Let's set aside for now the depressing truth that producing ethanol wastes more fossil fuels than it replaces. The real problem hypermilers have with ethanol is this: ethanol burns so poorly that it makes your car less fuel efficient. In fact, at ethanol/gasoline proportions above 10%, ethanol can even disrupt proper functioning of your engine.
The EPA claims that at 10% concentrations, ethanol will cause your vehicle to lose about 3% in fuel efficiency. However, many drivers have found far more significant efficiency losses with ethanol-blended fuels. Bottom line: if you want to improve your gas mileage, keep ethanol out of your car.
Sadly, however, many states mandate that gas stations sell 10% ethanol blend. Our politicians may not understand the laws of thermodynamics, but we--as environmentally concerned drivers--can try to avoid these fuels as much as we possibly can.
9) Drafting
Here's the one fuel efficiency tactic I'm hesitant to share. Why? Because it can be dangerous if misused. But I'll offer it anyway, with caveats, simply because it's the single most powerful hypermiling technique.
Depending on where you get your facts (and depending on your driving speed) wind resistance can reduce your car's fuel efficiency by up to 50%. If you ever look up and see a flock of geese flying in formation, or if you've ever seen riders at the Tour de France draft off of each other, you can see how enormously helpful it is to have someone else take the brunt of the wind for you.
In the context of hypermiling, then, drafting is essentially following a larger vehicle at a safe but fairly close distance, and using that vehicle as a wind break. A typical example is to follow a semi truck that happens to be traveling at your desired speed.
If you follow a large truck at a moderate distance (say, at a 2-3 second following distance) you'll feel a surprising amount of turbulence as your car passes through the same air the truck passed through moments before. Note however, that if you creep up closer to this truck, the turbulence drops significantly--to the point where you can actually start to feel your car being pulled along in the truck's vacuum. All of a sudden you don't need to use as much pressure on the gas pedal to maintain speed.
This is the drafting sweet spot: not so close to the truck that you risk rear-ending it, not so far back that you're sitting in the truck’s worst turbulence. Here's where you can dramatically increase your car's fuel efficiency.
Once again, I offer this specific tip hesitantly and with disclaimers. To return to the Tour de France example, always keep in mind that when the lead guy suddenly stops, all forty of the other guys in the peloton crash right into him. And that's the problem with drafting: it's riskier--and probably not worth it just to save a few bucks on gas. However, if you choose to do it, make sure you stay alert, drive safely and maintain proper following distance at all times.
10) How to manage heavy traffic
The amount of fuel wasted in traffic jams is enormous and probably unmeasurable. As with idling, if your car is running and you're not moving, your gas mileage will be… a big fat 0 mpg. Thus it makes sense as much as possible to avoid traveling during rush hour--and to especially avoid rush hour in major urban centers known for bad traffic.
Sadly, there's no foolproof way to always avoid traffic, so if you are stuck in a jam, you can use certain anticipatory acceleration and braking techniques to limit the gas mileage damage. For example: don't accelerate rapidly to catch up with the car in front of you and then hit the brakes as you approach. Instead, accelerate gently and then coast. Further, keep your eyes on what's happening several cars ahead of you, and try to anticipate and match the general movement of traffic with as little braking as possible. If you see nothing but brake lights a quarter mile ahead of you, there's even less reason to race up to the bumper of the car ahead of you.
Wait a second: does all this hypermiling stuff really work?
Yes, it actually works. Readers, about a year ago, on a long road trip from New Jersey to Texas, I did a control test: I drove normally for one full tank of gas, and drove a separate full tank's worth of gas using as many hypermiling techniques as I could from the list above.
I'll admit up front: I was cynical about the value of these hypermiling techniques. I didn't think I'd see that big a difference. And yet the improvement I was able to get in gas mileage was substantial--far greater than I expected. Normally, my car (a 2009 Pontiac Vibe) gets about 30-32 miles per gallon in highway driving. Using hypermiling techniques, however, I was able to get my fuel efficiency up to nearly 40 miles per gallon. That's a 25-30% improvement, and it translates directly into a 25-30% savings on gasoline costs.
Yes, this was just one trial, and yes, it was neither exact nor scientific, and yes, your mileage may vary (heh), but I encourage you to try some of these techniques yourself and see if you can see a difference. I'm guessing you will.
One final thought. Individually, many of these tips won’t have much of a noticeable impact on your gas mileage. But use a few--or all--of them and collectively they’ll be significant. It’s not that difficult, for example, to draft off the occasional truck here and there, build better acceleration and braking habits, and drive at a consistent and moderate speed. Just doing these things could improve your mileage by 10-20% with minimal effort. Try it--and reap the savings!
Readers, what do you think? What’s your favorite fuel saving technique?
For Further Reading:
1) MPG for Speed: a simple one-page site that walks though some of the mileage/fuel efficiency losses your car experiences at higher speeds.
2) What increased speed and air resistance does to your car’s fuel efficiency.
3) For the serious math geek: an article that looks at a several different ways to calculate energy loss at high driving speeds.
4) Top Ten Ways To Waste Gas.
5) How Does Ethanol Impact Fuel Efficiency?
6) Interesting and somewhat technical discussion thread on ethanol and fuel efficiency at the Eng-Tips Forum.
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
Easy. Do all your shopping at Amazon.com
via the links on this site! You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.
The Tragic Tale of Peat Village: A Natural Resource Fable
It was Ireland, during the 11th Century, in a tiny little community called Peat Village.
Peat Village was nothing special, just a tiny village on the edge of a huge peat bog. People there lived very simply back then, and life in this forlorn little village was at best brutish and short. Average life expectancy was 24 years, disease was rampant, and famine and hunger were constant realities.
One day in Peat Village a villager stumbled onto a significant discovery. The peat from the bog next to the village could be used as a fuel! Yes, it was a dirty fuel--it was awfully smoky when it burned--and of course it had to be harvested, treated and dried before it would really burn well, but without a doubt it could be used as a serviceable fuel. And there was so much of it! This villager began using peat to heat his home, his food and his water. In the following years, he and his family enjoyed a meaningfully improved standard of living.
Others in Peat Village caught on to the idea of using peat as a fuel, and they began heating their food, water and homes too. Their standard of living also increased. It wasn't long before everyone in Peat Village was burning peat, and as this little community's living standards improved, things changed irrevocably for the better: disease became just a little less rampant, food became a just little more plentiful, and life expectancy became just a little bit longer. Life became a little less brutish and short.
However, there was a very intelligent villager living in Peat Village who began to worry. He wondered about the longer-term consequences if everyone in Peat Village continued to use peat to heat their homes and their food and water. He started to worry about what would happen if Peat Village ran out of peat.
And he was right to worry about this. It was clear--to the point of obviousness--that there was a limited supply of peat. Yet each year, villagers used more and more of it. What would happen when, inevitably, all the peat was used up?
The other villagers considered this nothing more than scaremongering. Some laughed. But this very intelligent villager was absolutely certain he was right. He could see the writing on the wall. After all, when the supply of a resource is fixed and demand is growing, it is only a matter of time before that resource runs out. It could be years, it could be decades, but the logic was inescapable: at some point--probably soon--Peat Village would run completely out of peat.
Clearly, this would be an unmitigated disaster for the Peat Village community. "Peak Peat" was coming, and with it would come a total collapse in the peat-based economy.
Our scaremonger friend traveled throughout Peat Village to spread the word. He created a list of rules and recommendations for peat conservation for all the residents to follow so they could avoid, or at least postpone, the inevitable Peak Peat catastrophe. He encouraged villages to use peat only when absolutely necessary, if at all. He got into many debates with villagers who didn't agree with him. After all, the villagers wanted to keep their heated homes and heated food. These things improved their quality of life and their standard of living. And some of the villagers thought it was silly to just leave the peat sitting there in the bog completely unused when it had brought about such improvements in their community. Finally, the villagers said, it will be a long time before we use up all of our peat. In the meantime perhaps we will discover another fuel source to replace it.
But our scaremonger friend didn't think very much of the intelligence of these villagers. He considered them unsophisticated and naive, and he mocked them by calling them "deniers." He told them they already achieved significant improvements in their standard of living, and it would be impossible (and not to mention irresponsible) to maintain their current living standards in the post-Peak Peat era.
There was another vaguely bothersome thing about this scaremonger villager. It a small thing, but bothersome nonetheless: since he traveled so much throughout Peat Village, he didn't exactly follow all of the peat conservation rules he set down for all the other villagers. When he stayed at inns and homes across the village, he would often enjoy peat fires and peat-heated food. He reduced his peat use slightly in his own home, but because he was so successful speaking, writing and teaching about Peak Peat, his thatched hut was one of the largest in the entire village. It took quite a bit of peat just to heat a small portion of his house! But in any case, he told himself, his personal use wasn't all that important. What was more important was that he get out the word about Peak Peat and the coming catastrophe that would inevitably follow.
Centuries later (our scaremonger friend lived for a very long time, you see), a new and revolutionary fuel came along. It was called "coal." Coal was hundreds of times more efficient than peat, far cleaner, and in every sense a superior energy source. In Coal County, which wasn't very far from Peat Village, homes and industries switched over to this new and advanced fuel. As a result, Coal County began to enjoy a significantly improved standard of living.
But not tiny Peat Village. They were still busy preparing for Peak Peat: conserving peat as much as they could, shivering over their tiny peat fires, huddling around their half-warmed meals, and earnestly following the rules and guidelines as they were told. Their standard of living hadn't increased at all for centuries, and their community never developed sufficient scientific or engineering expertise nor any extra economic capacity to make use of a newfangled energy source like coal.
In the meantime, our scaremonger friend continued traveling widely, spending the passing centuries getting the word out on the coming collapse of the peat-based economy. Since he’d already fully convinced everyone in Peat Village of his views (what few remaining "deniers" there were had been totally ostracized by the community), he often found himself traveling into Coal County to give speeches on Peak Peat. Sadly, he couldn't find many people in Coal County who were interested in conserving peat, as hard as he tried. Peak Peat just didn't seem to be a priority there.
One day, however, after giving yet another sparsely attended speech in Coal County, our very intelligent villager stumbled onto a brilliant insight: The supply of coal had to be limited too!
Once again, he could clearly see the inescapable logic: when the supply of a resource is fixed and demand is growing, it is only a matter of time before that resource runs out. It could be years, it could be decades, but the logic was inevitable: at some point--probably soon--Coal County would run out of coal. This would be an unmitigated disaster. A collapse in the coal-based economy was coming, and coming soon.
And he was right to worry about this. It was clear--to the point of obviousness--that there was a limited supply of coal. And yet every year more and more people were burning more and more of it. What would happen when, inevitably, all of it would get used up? Peak Coal was coming. Anyone who doubted so was clearly a denier.
Our scaremonger friend began traveling even more widely (even using coal-based modes of transportation) in order to get the word out. He created a list of rules and recommendations for coal conservation for the residents of Coal County to follow so they could avoid, or at least postpone, the inevitable Peak Coal catastrophe.
By this time, he hardly ever visited his friends back in Peat Village any more. With all of his important work on coal conservation, there was just no time.
Another century or two passed. Coal began to be replaced by a new and even better energy source called "oil." It was far more efficient than coal, hundreds of times less polluting, and all around an infinitely more flexible and useful fuel. In fact, it was such a superior fuel that throughout Oil Nation (which was just few days' journey by coal-powered steamship from Coal County) most homes and industries quickly switched over to this advanced fuel. As a result, Oil Nation enjoyed a much improved standard of living.
The residents of Coal County, however, were still preparing for Peak Coal: conserving as much coal as they could, huddling over their modest coal fires, and earnestly following the rules and guidelines set down by our scaremongering friend, just as they were told. Sadly, however, their standard of living hadn't increased at all for several generations, and needless to say, their community never developed the scientific expertise nor the extra economic capacity to make use of a newfangled energy source like oil.
Our scaremonger friend continued to travel widely, often using coal- and even oil-based energy to the extent he needed to. After all, spreading the coal conservation message was far more important than following a few minor rules, you see.
Interestingly, by this time, he never used peat-based energy at all. Why would he use such a laughably primitive fuel source, especially with such important work to do?
One fine day, while he was speaking to a mostly empty auditorium in Oil Nation (oddly enough, there wasn't very much interest in Peak Coal there), he hit on yet another truth. Admittedly it was a somewhat derivative truth, but it was staggering in its implications: the supply of oil had to be limited!
Once again, he could clearly see the inescapable logic: when the supply of a resource is fixed and demand is growing, it is only a matter of time before that resource runs out. It could be years, it could be decades, but the logic was inevitable: at some point--probably soon--Oil Nation would run out of oil. This would be an unmitigated disaster. A collapse in the oil-based economy was coming. And coming soon.
It was clear--to the point of obviousness--that there was a limited supply of oil, yet every year, more and more people used more and more of it. What would happen when, inevitably, it was all used up? Peak Oil was coming. Anyone who doubted it was a denier.
Our scaremonger friend redoubled his efforts. There was important work to do! He created a list of rules and recommendations for oil conservation for all Oil Nation citizens to follow, so they could avoid, or at least postpone, a Peak Oil catastrophe. He began traveling even more widely, all over Oil Nation and beyond, and his utterly logical and inescapable conclusions became so widely accepted and respected that he began receiving invitations to speak internationally at major conferences like Davos and the World Economic Forum. He became one of the world's wealthy elites, sharing his important and far-seeing knowledge through books, speeches and media appearances.
Needless to say, he never visited Coal County any more. His work on Peak Oil was far too important.
And of course, by this time we'd all but forgotten about the people of Peat Village.
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
Easy. Do all your shopping at Amazon.com via the links on this site! You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.
Peat Village was nothing special, just a tiny village on the edge of a huge peat bog. People there lived very simply back then, and life in this forlorn little village was at best brutish and short. Average life expectancy was 24 years, disease was rampant, and famine and hunger were constant realities.
One day in Peat Village a villager stumbled onto a significant discovery. The peat from the bog next to the village could be used as a fuel! Yes, it was a dirty fuel--it was awfully smoky when it burned--and of course it had to be harvested, treated and dried before it would really burn well, but without a doubt it could be used as a serviceable fuel. And there was so much of it! This villager began using peat to heat his home, his food and his water. In the following years, he and his family enjoyed a meaningfully improved standard of living.
Others in Peat Village caught on to the idea of using peat as a fuel, and they began heating their food, water and homes too. Their standard of living also increased. It wasn't long before everyone in Peat Village was burning peat, and as this little community's living standards improved, things changed irrevocably for the better: disease became just a little less rampant, food became a just little more plentiful, and life expectancy became just a little bit longer. Life became a little less brutish and short.
However, there was a very intelligent villager living in Peat Village who began to worry. He wondered about the longer-term consequences if everyone in Peat Village continued to use peat to heat their homes and their food and water. He started to worry about what would happen if Peat Village ran out of peat.
And he was right to worry about this. It was clear--to the point of obviousness--that there was a limited supply of peat. Yet each year, villagers used more and more of it. What would happen when, inevitably, all the peat was used up?
The other villagers considered this nothing more than scaremongering. Some laughed. But this very intelligent villager was absolutely certain he was right. He could see the writing on the wall. After all, when the supply of a resource is fixed and demand is growing, it is only a matter of time before that resource runs out. It could be years, it could be decades, but the logic was inescapable: at some point--probably soon--Peat Village would run completely out of peat.
Clearly, this would be an unmitigated disaster for the Peat Village community. "Peak Peat" was coming, and with it would come a total collapse in the peat-based economy.
Our scaremonger friend traveled throughout Peat Village to spread the word. He created a list of rules and recommendations for peat conservation for all the residents to follow so they could avoid, or at least postpone, the inevitable Peak Peat catastrophe. He encouraged villages to use peat only when absolutely necessary, if at all. He got into many debates with villagers who didn't agree with him. After all, the villagers wanted to keep their heated homes and heated food. These things improved their quality of life and their standard of living. And some of the villagers thought it was silly to just leave the peat sitting there in the bog completely unused when it had brought about such improvements in their community. Finally, the villagers said, it will be a long time before we use up all of our peat. In the meantime perhaps we will discover another fuel source to replace it.
But our scaremonger friend didn't think very much of the intelligence of these villagers. He considered them unsophisticated and naive, and he mocked them by calling them "deniers." He told them they already achieved significant improvements in their standard of living, and it would be impossible (and not to mention irresponsible) to maintain their current living standards in the post-Peak Peat era.
There was another vaguely bothersome thing about this scaremonger villager. It a small thing, but bothersome nonetheless: since he traveled so much throughout Peat Village, he didn't exactly follow all of the peat conservation rules he set down for all the other villagers. When he stayed at inns and homes across the village, he would often enjoy peat fires and peat-heated food. He reduced his peat use slightly in his own home, but because he was so successful speaking, writing and teaching about Peak Peat, his thatched hut was one of the largest in the entire village. It took quite a bit of peat just to heat a small portion of his house! But in any case, he told himself, his personal use wasn't all that important. What was more important was that he get out the word about Peak Peat and the coming catastrophe that would inevitably follow.
Centuries later (our scaremonger friend lived for a very long time, you see), a new and revolutionary fuel came along. It was called "coal." Coal was hundreds of times more efficient than peat, far cleaner, and in every sense a superior energy source. In Coal County, which wasn't very far from Peat Village, homes and industries switched over to this new and advanced fuel. As a result, Coal County began to enjoy a significantly improved standard of living.
But not tiny Peat Village. They were still busy preparing for Peak Peat: conserving peat as much as they could, shivering over their tiny peat fires, huddling around their half-warmed meals, and earnestly following the rules and guidelines as they were told. Their standard of living hadn't increased at all for centuries, and their community never developed sufficient scientific or engineering expertise nor any extra economic capacity to make use of a newfangled energy source like coal.
In the meantime, our scaremonger friend continued traveling widely, spending the passing centuries getting the word out on the coming collapse of the peat-based economy. Since he’d already fully convinced everyone in Peat Village of his views (what few remaining "deniers" there were had been totally ostracized by the community), he often found himself traveling into Coal County to give speeches on Peak Peat. Sadly, he couldn't find many people in Coal County who were interested in conserving peat, as hard as he tried. Peak Peat just didn't seem to be a priority there.
One day, however, after giving yet another sparsely attended speech in Coal County, our very intelligent villager stumbled onto a brilliant insight: The supply of coal had to be limited too!
Once again, he could clearly see the inescapable logic: when the supply of a resource is fixed and demand is growing, it is only a matter of time before that resource runs out. It could be years, it could be decades, but the logic was inevitable: at some point--probably soon--Coal County would run out of coal. This would be an unmitigated disaster. A collapse in the coal-based economy was coming, and coming soon.
And he was right to worry about this. It was clear--to the point of obviousness--that there was a limited supply of coal. And yet every year more and more people were burning more and more of it. What would happen when, inevitably, all of it would get used up? Peak Coal was coming. Anyone who doubted so was clearly a denier.
Our scaremonger friend began traveling even more widely (even using coal-based modes of transportation) in order to get the word out. He created a list of rules and recommendations for coal conservation for the residents of Coal County to follow so they could avoid, or at least postpone, the inevitable Peak Coal catastrophe.
By this time, he hardly ever visited his friends back in Peat Village any more. With all of his important work on coal conservation, there was just no time.
Another century or two passed. Coal began to be replaced by a new and even better energy source called "oil." It was far more efficient than coal, hundreds of times less polluting, and all around an infinitely more flexible and useful fuel. In fact, it was such a superior fuel that throughout Oil Nation (which was just few days' journey by coal-powered steamship from Coal County) most homes and industries quickly switched over to this advanced fuel. As a result, Oil Nation enjoyed a much improved standard of living.
The residents of Coal County, however, were still preparing for Peak Coal: conserving as much coal as they could, huddling over their modest coal fires, and earnestly following the rules and guidelines set down by our scaremongering friend, just as they were told. Sadly, however, their standard of living hadn't increased at all for several generations, and needless to say, their community never developed the scientific expertise nor the extra economic capacity to make use of a newfangled energy source like oil.
Our scaremonger friend continued to travel widely, often using coal- and even oil-based energy to the extent he needed to. After all, spreading the coal conservation message was far more important than following a few minor rules, you see.
Interestingly, by this time, he never used peat-based energy at all. Why would he use such a laughably primitive fuel source, especially with such important work to do?
One fine day, while he was speaking to a mostly empty auditorium in Oil Nation (oddly enough, there wasn't very much interest in Peak Coal there), he hit on yet another truth. Admittedly it was a somewhat derivative truth, but it was staggering in its implications: the supply of oil had to be limited!
Once again, he could clearly see the inescapable logic: when the supply of a resource is fixed and demand is growing, it is only a matter of time before that resource runs out. It could be years, it could be decades, but the logic was inevitable: at some point--probably soon--Oil Nation would run out of oil. This would be an unmitigated disaster. A collapse in the oil-based economy was coming. And coming soon.
It was clear--to the point of obviousness--that there was a limited supply of oil, yet every year, more and more people used more and more of it. What would happen when, inevitably, it was all used up? Peak Oil was coming. Anyone who doubted it was a denier.
Our scaremonger friend redoubled his efforts. There was important work to do! He created a list of rules and recommendations for oil conservation for all Oil Nation citizens to follow, so they could avoid, or at least postpone, a Peak Oil catastrophe. He began traveling even more widely, all over Oil Nation and beyond, and his utterly logical and inescapable conclusions became so widely accepted and respected that he began receiving invitations to speak internationally at major conferences like Davos and the World Economic Forum. He became one of the world's wealthy elites, sharing his important and far-seeing knowledge through books, speeches and media appearances.
Needless to say, he never visited Coal County any more. His work on Peak Oil was far too important.
And of course, by this time we'd all but forgotten about the people of Peat Village.
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
Easy. Do all your shopping at Amazon.com
via the links on this site! You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.
Could Toxins Be Good For You?
In the 1980s, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) commissioned a study on the health impacts of sustained radiation exposure. They compared two groups of nuclear shipyard workers from Baltimore who had similar jobs except for a single key difference: one group was exposed to very low levels of radiation from the materials they handled, and the other was not. The DOE tracked the workers between 1980 and 1988, and what they found shocked everyone involved.
Radiation made them healthier. The twenty-eight thousand workers exposed to radiation had a 24 percent lower mortality rate than their thirty-two thousand counterparts who were not exposed to radiation. Somehow the toxins that everyone assumed and feared were ruining the workers' health were doing just the opposite.
--from Dr. John J. Ratey's book Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain
Wait, what? Radiation made them healthier?
If nothing else, this shocking anecdote illustrates the complex and counterintuitive biological process of stress and recovery. Who'd guess that nuclear radiation could be good for you?
The answer of course is--duh--radiation isn't good for you. But the central concept here is that we become stronger and healthier thanks to our bodies' reactions to low levels of toxins.
So can we take this concept and apply it to the food we eat? Let's see what Dr. Ratey has to say:
An enormous industry has sprung up to promote the cancer-fighting properties of foods and products that contain antioxidants. Eat more antioxidant-rich broccoli, the logic goes, and you'll live a longer and healthier life. True, perhaps, but not for the reasons the marketing folks would have you believe.
It turns out that these foods are particularly beneficial not only because they contain antioxidants but also because they contain toxins. "Many of the beneficial chemicals in plants--vegetables and fruits--have evolved as toxins to dissuade insects and other animals from eating them... what they're doing is inducing a mild, adaptive stress response in the cells. For example, in broccoli, there's a chemical called sulforaphane, and it clearly activates stress response pathways in cells that upregulate antioxidant enzymes. Broccoli has antioxidants, but at the level you could get from your diet, they're not going to function as antioxidants.
Just as with the nuclear shipyard workers, a mild toxin generates an adaptive stress response that bolsters cells.
Now don't get me wrong: nobody is telling you to drink Roundup or start playing with plutonium rods. But it does make you rethink what it means to be "exposed" to toxins, doesn't it?
Readers, what are your thoughts? I want to know.
Related Posts:
The Problem with Government Food Safety Regulation
Review: The End of Overeating by David Kessler
Recommended Reading for A Good Wine Education
Review: Cooking Green by Kate Heyhoe
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
For those readers interested in supporting Casual Kitchen, the easiest way is to do so is to do all your shopping at Amazon.com via the links on this site. You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.
Radiation made them healthier. The twenty-eight thousand workers exposed to radiation had a 24 percent lower mortality rate than their thirty-two thousand counterparts who were not exposed to radiation. Somehow the toxins that everyone assumed and feared were ruining the workers' health were doing just the opposite.
--from Dr. John J. Ratey's book Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain
Wait, what? Radiation made them healthier?
If nothing else, this shocking anecdote illustrates the complex and counterintuitive biological process of stress and recovery. Who'd guess that nuclear radiation could be good for you?
The answer of course is--duh--radiation isn't good for you. But the central concept here is that we become stronger and healthier thanks to our bodies' reactions to low levels of toxins.
So can we take this concept and apply it to the food we eat? Let's see what Dr. Ratey has to say:
An enormous industry has sprung up to promote the cancer-fighting properties of foods and products that contain antioxidants. Eat more antioxidant-rich broccoli, the logic goes, and you'll live a longer and healthier life. True, perhaps, but not for the reasons the marketing folks would have you believe.
It turns out that these foods are particularly beneficial not only because they contain antioxidants but also because they contain toxins. "Many of the beneficial chemicals in plants--vegetables and fruits--have evolved as toxins to dissuade insects and other animals from eating them... what they're doing is inducing a mild, adaptive stress response in the cells. For example, in broccoli, there's a chemical called sulforaphane, and it clearly activates stress response pathways in cells that upregulate antioxidant enzymes. Broccoli has antioxidants, but at the level you could get from your diet, they're not going to function as antioxidants.
Just as with the nuclear shipyard workers, a mild toxin generates an adaptive stress response that bolsters cells.
Now don't get me wrong: nobody is telling you to drink Roundup or start playing with plutonium rods. But it does make you rethink what it means to be "exposed" to toxins, doesn't it?
Readers, what are your thoughts? I want to know.
Related Posts:
The Problem with Government Food Safety Regulation
Review: The End of Overeating by David Kessler
Recommended Reading for A Good Wine Education
Review: Cooking Green by Kate Heyhoe
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
For those readers interested in supporting Casual Kitchen, the easiest way is to do so is to do all your shopping at Amazon.com
via the links on this site. You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.
A Simple Rule To Make Your Life Environmentally Sustainable and Worry Free
There's a lot of stupid crap out there to worry about. And there's literally an infinity of things to worry about when buying food and consumer goods.
You can worry about everything from the quality of life of your chickens to the quantity of mercury in your fish--and the environmental impact of both. And after worrying about that, you can get even more specific: this kind of fish is overharvested, and that kind of fish is terrible for the environment when farmed. And then you can worry that you're a loser for not knowing the latest about which fish are on or off the "do not eat" list.
You can worry about GMO foods, although it still isn't clear if they are bad for the environment or increasingly necessary to feed a planet with 7 billion people and counting.
You can worry about soy. Or not. You can worry about what chickens, cows and pigs ate for dinner before you eat them for dinner.
You can worry about plastic grocery bag use. Or you can learn that cities and countries with plastic grocery bag bans often see a counterintuitive increase in plastic garbage bag consumption that overwhelms any positive impact of the ban.
Jeez, and then you can worry about that too.
Heck, you can be astoundingly specific about the things you can worry about. For example: do you like asparagus? Well now you have the privilege of worrying that the asparagus you buy might cause severe water shortages in Peru.
I could go on, but I think we can all see the pattern here. We can worry about all of these things, and change our behavior and buying patterns to try to counteract those worries--and then change them back when those worries are proven wrong. The thing is, worry and minor behavior changes might assuage our guilt and make us feel better about ourselves, but they do very little to help our health or the environment. Let's be honest: this is often more about trying to get a sense of control over our lives in what seems like an increasingly uncontrollable world.
Why, then, do so many of us invest so much time and energy doing things that just don't accomplish all that much? Because it gives us the comfortable illusion of having a meaningful impact. Nothing beats feeling better about yourself.
We should be thinking bigger.
In fact, there is an easier way each of us can have a far greater environmental, social and societal impact on the world around us: Get your big-ticket and big footprint decisions right.
In short: buy a lot less big stuff.
A few examples: Don't mindlessly lease a new car every two years, wasting both the money and the enormous carbon footprint of the manufacture of another car. Save money by buying a smaller, fuel-efficient car and driving it for several years. This single action will have a more substantial positive impact on the environment than a lifetime of buying "ethically-grown" asparagus.
Don't rip out your kitchen every five years because you're sick of the decor. Instead, work with what you have and defer the cost and waste of materials. Is it really going to kill you to have that matching olive-green oven and fridge for a few extra years? (A trick question for astute readers: where do you think those old appliances, countertops and cabinets go once you toss 'em?)
Here's another idea: Don't buy a huge house. Especially if it has an olive green oven. And please don't follow in Al Gore's carbon footprints and build a 10,000 square foot mansion with 8 bathrooms and a $30,000 annual energy bill. Again, get the big stuff right.
Here's yet another idea that the vast majority of us can do to great effect with little or no effort: cut your meat intake in half. In half. You'll save money, save calories and have an enormous impact on the carbon footprint of your diet. And you won't miss it.
My father, in one of his most enduringly useful sayings about money, used to tell me (uh, repeatedly) that if you get your big-ticket spending decisions right, you won't have to worry at all about the small-ticket stuff. Another way of thinking about this is if you save $40,000 by skipping the Hummer and opting for small car, or if you save 75 grand by buying a smaller house, that single decision has a greater financial impact than 20+ years of "saving money" by brown-bagging your lunch or skipping your daily latte.
Guess what? The exact same logic holds for decisions about our health, our food and our environment. Get the big stuff right. Spend more time worrying about the major things that you can control, and stop worrying pointlessly about the minor things that you can't.
We can't all be experts about overpriced organic food, fisheries, plastic bags and asparagus. But we can reduce the biggest sources of waste in our lives and actually have a meaningfully positive impact on our world.
Readers, what do you think?
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!
You can worry about everything from the quality of life of your chickens to the quantity of mercury in your fish--and the environmental impact of both. And after worrying about that, you can get even more specific: this kind of fish is overharvested, and that kind of fish is terrible for the environment when farmed. And then you can worry that you're a loser for not knowing the latest about which fish are on or off the "do not eat" list.
You can worry about GMO foods, although it still isn't clear if they are bad for the environment or increasingly necessary to feed a planet with 7 billion people and counting.
You can worry about soy. Or not. You can worry about what chickens, cows and pigs ate for dinner before you eat them for dinner.
You can worry about plastic grocery bag use. Or you can learn that cities and countries with plastic grocery bag bans often see a counterintuitive increase in plastic garbage bag consumption that overwhelms any positive impact of the ban.
Jeez, and then you can worry about that too.
Heck, you can be astoundingly specific about the things you can worry about. For example: do you like asparagus? Well now you have the privilege of worrying that the asparagus you buy might cause severe water shortages in Peru.
I could go on, but I think we can all see the pattern here. We can worry about all of these things, and change our behavior and buying patterns to try to counteract those worries--and then change them back when those worries are proven wrong. The thing is, worry and minor behavior changes might assuage our guilt and make us feel better about ourselves, but they do very little to help our health or the environment. Let's be honest: this is often more about trying to get a sense of control over our lives in what seems like an increasingly uncontrollable world.
Why, then, do so many of us invest so much time and energy doing things that just don't accomplish all that much? Because it gives us the comfortable illusion of having a meaningful impact. Nothing beats feeling better about yourself.
We should be thinking bigger.
In fact, there is an easier way each of us can have a far greater environmental, social and societal impact on the world around us: Get your big-ticket and big footprint decisions right.
In short: buy a lot less big stuff.
A few examples: Don't mindlessly lease a new car every two years, wasting both the money and the enormous carbon footprint of the manufacture of another car. Save money by buying a smaller, fuel-efficient car and driving it for several years. This single action will have a more substantial positive impact on the environment than a lifetime of buying "ethically-grown" asparagus.
Don't rip out your kitchen every five years because you're sick of the decor. Instead, work with what you have and defer the cost and waste of materials. Is it really going to kill you to have that matching olive-green oven and fridge for a few extra years? (A trick question for astute readers: where do you think those old appliances, countertops and cabinets go once you toss 'em?)
Here's another idea: Don't buy a huge house. Especially if it has an olive green oven. And please don't follow in Al Gore's carbon footprints and build a 10,000 square foot mansion with 8 bathrooms and a $30,000 annual energy bill. Again, get the big stuff right.
Here's yet another idea that the vast majority of us can do to great effect with little or no effort: cut your meat intake in half. In half. You'll save money, save calories and have an enormous impact on the carbon footprint of your diet. And you won't miss it.
My father, in one of his most enduringly useful sayings about money, used to tell me (uh, repeatedly) that if you get your big-ticket spending decisions right, you won't have to worry at all about the small-ticket stuff. Another way of thinking about this is if you save $40,000 by skipping the Hummer and opting for small car, or if you save 75 grand by buying a smaller house, that single decision has a greater financial impact than 20+ years of "saving money" by brown-bagging your lunch or skipping your daily latte.
Guess what? The exact same logic holds for decisions about our health, our food and our environment. Get the big stuff right. Spend more time worrying about the major things that you can control, and stop worrying pointlessly about the minor things that you can't.
We can't all be experts about overpriced organic food, fisheries, plastic bags and asparagus. But we can reduce the biggest sources of waste in our lives and actually have a meaningfully positive impact on our world.
Readers, what do you think?
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com
via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!
Why Reducing Food Waste Is Harder Than it Looks
It's difficult to think of a more pointless practice than to go through all the effort of growing, harvesting, transporting, storing and selling food--only to waste it by throwing it away.
Unfortunately, consumers, and the food service industry we buy from, waste food preposterously. In fact, a 2004 study from the University of Alabama claims Americans waste nearly half of their food. And a highly detailed recent study of UK consumption habits suggests that as much as 25% of UK consumers' food is avoidable waste.
However, it also shouldn't surprise Casual Kitchen readers to find that, sometimes, studies capitalize on fear and alarmism at the expense of calm and rational analysis. The fact is, there are often serious tradeoffs involved when we try to recapture food that otherwise might be "wasted."
In fact, in some instances it can be downright dangerous to attempt to reduce food waste.
Let's go over a couple of examples in the data (and prepare yourself, because these waste numbers are truly disturbing). The UK study claims in one example that 210,000 tons of "processed vegetables and salads" is wasted each year. The study further claims the majority of this waste occurred because the food was "not used in time," which simply means the food passed a sell-by date label (see page 4, and then pages 41-42 of the study).
The study calculates the cost of this waste (what I call "date-label waste") to be a shocking £240 million per year (about US$350m--and this is just in the UK!), and it further claims that practically 100% of this waste is completely avoidable. Sheesh.
Another disturbing example: a full 96% of the waste in the category of "coleslaw and hummus" is due to date-label waste, and, you guessed it, this study claims that this waste is also totally avoidable. It's obviously a smaller category, and the dollar value of that waste is "only" £71 million (about $US100m), but to me, it's the nature of that waste that seems so shocking.
Wow. Okay. If this is all true, then why don't we just add three or four days to the sell-by date on all food products that have a high propensity to be wasted? Usually foods never go bad by the sell-by date anyway. Why wouldn't that dramatically reduce waste?
Here's where things get a little tricky.
If you read my article that exposed the inappropriate alarmism of the so-called "Ten Riskiest Foods" study, you know that despite the impressions we get from the media, food-borne illnesses are actually quite rare in this country, and deaths from food-borne illnesses are shockingly rare.
However, the odds of contracting a food-borne illness would increase meaningfully if we were to eat more expired food, or, more specifically, if we were to eat food that was dated with less conservative sell-by dates.
Yes, we could change the sell-by dates on our food and we would definitely reduce our food waste. But it would be at the risk of increasing occurrences of food borne illness.
The CSPI, the organization that I lampooned in my Who's Watching the Watchdogs? post, wrote an inflammatory and fear-mongering report based on a food-borne illness rate of just 2.4 thousandths of a percentage point, and a death rate so low that it rounds to zero.
If that is enough to generate a flood of mindlessly alarmist media stories (which it did, sadly), imagine the media firestorm that would erupt if that illness rate ticked up even slightly. And that would likely cause regulators to step in and force the food companies involved to recall and destroy (in other words: waste) all related food products that might be at risk.
None of this changes the fact that we can and should try to reduce our own sources of food waste in our homes. We can all do our best to by purchasing only as much perishable produce as we need, by freezing or using meat or dairy products in a safe and timely manner, and being smart about our purchasing and cooking habits.
Here's my point: Our food regulators have put in place certain safety measures that definitionally create waste because they want to do the best they can to insure our safety. And if food companies or food retailers were to try to reduce food waste by dating their foods using even slightly less conservative standards, they would get crucified by the media and by so-called watchdog groups like the CSPI.
So, let me ask a difficult question: Who is being wasteful?
Readers, what are your thoughts?
Update: The debate that follows below in the comments led to a follow-up article: When Do You Throw Out Food? A Question For Readers. Have a look!
Related Posts:
Brand Disloyaly
Who Really Holds the Power in Our Food Industry?
The Worst Lie of the Food Blogosphere
Survivor Bias: Why "Big Food" Isn't Quite As Evil As You Think It Is
The Problem with Government Food Safety Regulation
Who's Watching the Watchdogs? Ethical Problems in the "Ten Riskiest Foods" Report By the CSPI
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me from your own blog, or by subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!
Unfortunately, consumers, and the food service industry we buy from, waste food preposterously. In fact, a 2004 study from the University of Alabama claims Americans waste nearly half of their food. And a highly detailed recent study of UK consumption habits suggests that as much as 25% of UK consumers' food is avoidable waste.
However, it also shouldn't surprise Casual Kitchen readers to find that, sometimes, studies capitalize on fear and alarmism at the expense of calm and rational analysis. The fact is, there are often serious tradeoffs involved when we try to recapture food that otherwise might be "wasted."
In fact, in some instances it can be downright dangerous to attempt to reduce food waste.
Let's go over a couple of examples in the data (and prepare yourself, because these waste numbers are truly disturbing). The UK study claims in one example that 210,000 tons of "processed vegetables and salads" is wasted each year. The study further claims the majority of this waste occurred because the food was "not used in time," which simply means the food passed a sell-by date label (see page 4, and then pages 41-42 of the study).
The study calculates the cost of this waste (what I call "date-label waste") to be a shocking £240 million per year (about US$350m--and this is just in the UK!), and it further claims that practically 100% of this waste is completely avoidable. Sheesh.
Another disturbing example: a full 96% of the waste in the category of "coleslaw and hummus" is due to date-label waste, and, you guessed it, this study claims that this waste is also totally avoidable. It's obviously a smaller category, and the dollar value of that waste is "only" £71 million (about $US100m), but to me, it's the nature of that waste that seems so shocking.
Wow. Okay. If this is all true, then why don't we just add three or four days to the sell-by date on all food products that have a high propensity to be wasted? Usually foods never go bad by the sell-by date anyway. Why wouldn't that dramatically reduce waste?
Here's where things get a little tricky.
If you read my article that exposed the inappropriate alarmism of the so-called "Ten Riskiest Foods" study, you know that despite the impressions we get from the media, food-borne illnesses are actually quite rare in this country, and deaths from food-borne illnesses are shockingly rare.
However, the odds of contracting a food-borne illness would increase meaningfully if we were to eat more expired food, or, more specifically, if we were to eat food that was dated with less conservative sell-by dates.
Yes, we could change the sell-by dates on our food and we would definitely reduce our food waste. But it would be at the risk of increasing occurrences of food borne illness.
The CSPI, the organization that I lampooned in my Who's Watching the Watchdogs? post, wrote an inflammatory and fear-mongering report based on a food-borne illness rate of just 2.4 thousandths of a percentage point, and a death rate so low that it rounds to zero.
If that is enough to generate a flood of mindlessly alarmist media stories (which it did, sadly), imagine the media firestorm that would erupt if that illness rate ticked up even slightly. And that would likely cause regulators to step in and force the food companies involved to recall and destroy (in other words: waste) all related food products that might be at risk.
None of this changes the fact that we can and should try to reduce our own sources of food waste in our homes. We can all do our best to by purchasing only as much perishable produce as we need, by freezing or using meat or dairy products in a safe and timely manner, and being smart about our purchasing and cooking habits.
Here's my point: Our food regulators have put in place certain safety measures that definitionally create waste because they want to do the best they can to insure our safety. And if food companies or food retailers were to try to reduce food waste by dating their foods using even slightly less conservative standards, they would get crucified by the media and by so-called watchdog groups like the CSPI.
So, let me ask a difficult question: Who is being wasteful?
Readers, what are your thoughts?
Update: The debate that follows below in the comments led to a follow-up article: When Do You Throw Out Food? A Question For Readers. Have a look!
Related Posts:
Brand Disloyaly
Who Really Holds the Power in Our Food Industry?
The Worst Lie of the Food Blogosphere
Survivor Bias: Why "Big Food" Isn't Quite As Evil As You Think It Is
The Problem with Government Food Safety Regulation
Who's Watching the Watchdogs? Ethical Problems in the "Ten Riskiest Foods" Report By the CSPI
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com
via links on this site, or by linking to me from your own blog, or by subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!
A Few Thoughts on McDonald's and the McItaly Burger
I'm sure most of you have heard about the controversy surrounding McDonald's and its recent efforts to embrace regional food in Italy.
I thought I'd share a few thoughts on this story, and then throw it out to readers for your thoughts.
To me, the idea that Italy is selling out its cuisine to a big corporation is simply laughable. Sure, nobody will ever confuse McDonald's food with quality homemade Italian cuisine. But how does securing a large, local customer for foods grown by domestic Italian farmers equate to selling out? In my view, it's an act of support, during a time of deep economic stress no less, for a critically important domestic industry.
It's more typical of governments to create confusing food pyramids, or worse, create enormous bureaucracies which, ironically, fail to regulate the very industry they are designed to regulate. Italy's Agriculture Ministry deserves some credit for not getting in the way of a good idea.
Keep in mind that Italy has some 60 million people, and it's the world's 10th largest economy. Therefore, when a large company in Italy makes a relatively sound environmental decision, and then scales that decision across the entire country, it can make an enormous difference--both for the environment and for the local agriculture movement. Let's not instinctively bash McDonald's just because it's some big corporation.
Here's a rare example of a private sector company doing something surprisingly sound from an environmental standpoint.
As far as what the culinary impact might be, well, we might have to keep our expectations a bit low on that front.
Readers, what's your take?
Related Posts:
Survivor Bias: Why "Big Food" Isn't Quite As Evil As You Think It Is
How Food Companies Hide Sugar in Plain Sight
How to Give Away Your Power By Being a Biased Consumer
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!
I thought I'd share a few thoughts on this story, and then throw it out to readers for your thoughts.
To me, the idea that Italy is selling out its cuisine to a big corporation is simply laughable. Sure, nobody will ever confuse McDonald's food with quality homemade Italian cuisine. But how does securing a large, local customer for foods grown by domestic Italian farmers equate to selling out? In my view, it's an act of support, during a time of deep economic stress no less, for a critically important domestic industry.
It's more typical of governments to create confusing food pyramids, or worse, create enormous bureaucracies which, ironically, fail to regulate the very industry they are designed to regulate. Italy's Agriculture Ministry deserves some credit for not getting in the way of a good idea.
Keep in mind that Italy has some 60 million people, and it's the world's 10th largest economy. Therefore, when a large company in Italy makes a relatively sound environmental decision, and then scales that decision across the entire country, it can make an enormous difference--both for the environment and for the local agriculture movement. Let's not instinctively bash McDonald's just because it's some big corporation.
Here's a rare example of a private sector company doing something surprisingly sound from an environmental standpoint.
As far as what the culinary impact might be, well, we might have to keep our expectations a bit low on that front.
Readers, what's your take?
Related Posts:
Survivor Bias: Why "Big Food" Isn't Quite As Evil As You Think It Is
How Food Companies Hide Sugar in Plain Sight
How to Give Away Your Power By Being a Biased Consumer
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com
via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!
10 Ways to Rethink Water Use in Your Kitchen and Home
(photo credit: darkpatator)Today's post will give you ten easy ideas on how to use water more efficiently in your kitchen and home. Water is one of cooking's most important ingredients, yet the wide availability of safe drinking water throughout the developed world can make it easy to take this precious resource for granted. It's not surprising, then, that water is one of our biggest sources of preventable waste.
By rethinking your water use, you can help the environment and save money too.
Optimizing Tap Water and Hot Water Use:
1) By installing a simple aerator onto your faucets you can reduce your tap water use by as much as 50% with little sacrifice in functionality.
2) When you let your hot water faucet run until the water heats up, don't let that excess water go to waste. Consider capturing it for other uses, like watering your plants or for cleaning.
3) Briefly turning on the hot water tap is a no-no. If you turn on the hot water and let it run for a few seconds, you are still wasting hot water--even if no hot water comes out of the tap. For every drop of cool water that runs out of the faucet, an equal amount of hot water flows from your heating tank into the pipes. That hot water never makes it to the tap: it just sits in the pipe, cooling its heels, while your hot water tank draws in new cold water to heat up again! It's a double whammy of energy waste.
4) Bonus tip for kitchen sinks with single, uni-directional faucets: if you intend to draw cold water from your faucet, take care to push the faucet handle all the way over to the "cold" side. If you push the handle straight back, you'll pull a mix of hot and cold water, wasting heat and energy for no reason.
5) Using your dishwasher doesn't just save time, it saves water too: hand-washing dishes in the sink can use twice the water of an average dishwasher--as long as you make sure to run it with a full load.
6) Most homes are fitted with conventional tank-style hot water heaters that use energy to keep a large reservoir of water heated at all times. If you use hot water infrequently and in small quantities, consider installing an on-demand hot water heater instead.
Saving Energy While Cooking With Water:
7) You can heat a pot of water more efficiently by covering it with a lid, trapping heat and steam that would otherwise escape.
8) An Electric
Tea Kettle
(two typical examples on Amazon) is by far the most efficient household tool for boiling water. These handy gadgets boil water much faster and with far less energy than a traditional stovetop tea kettle. Also, once the water comes to a boil, most electric kettles automatically shut off, reducing energy waste further.9) Water is exactly the same temperature at a vigorous boil as it is at a gentle boil, and no matter how much additional heat or energy you apply to boiling water, the temperature will never exceed 100 degrees Celsius. Once your food begins boiling, consider turning the burner down significantly. You can maintain a slow or moderate boil with considerably less energy.
10) Furthermore, you can turn the burner off entirely during the last few minutes of boiling pasta or vegetables, using the water's passive heat to finish cooking your food. Water holds heat extremely efficiently, so this technique can save a lot of energy without compromising food quality.
A final note of thanks: I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Kate Heyhoe and her exceptional book Cooking Green
for inspiring me to write this post.Without changing your politics, or completely disrupting your routine, you can reduce greenhouse gases simply by rethinking what you do every day: consume food.
--Kate Heyhoe, from Cooking Green
Related Posts:
Review: Cooking Green by Kate Heyhoe
Defeat the Diderot Effect in Your Kitchen and Home
What Have You Given Up That You Don't Miss?
Stacked Costs and Second-Order Foods: A New Way to Think About Rising Food Costs
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com
via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!
Finding Inspiration In an Uncluttered Kitchen
What percent of your kitchen cookware and dishware could you get rid of and not miss? Could you do most of your cooking with a fraction of the stuff you own?
This is a question I'm thinking about while we are neck-deep in the process of moving to a new home. It occurred to me yesterday morning when I opened a cupboard and, for once, didn't see forty coffee mugs of various sizes jammed every which way. Instead, I saw just two. Our two favorite coffee mugs, plus one backup mug just in case. Laura had boxed up everything else the night before.
I'd normally have a series of choices to make at this point (Hmmm, let's see: the Hawai'i mugs? The Somerset Eye Care Mugs? The "You're 40!" mugs?), but on this morning, I didn't have to agonize at all over which mugs to use for our morning coffee. I literally had no choice! It was a relief.
This was tantalizing, so I opened another cabinet. And there, instead of our stash of twenty wine glasses, I saw only two. Our two favorites.
Amazingly, 70-80% of our stuff is gone, yet nearly everything I need is within arm's reach and easy to get to. There's got to be a lesson here, if I could just put my finger on it.
And it can't be just a coincidence that my desire to cook--which has gone AWOL for the past few weeks--instantly reappeared in this now-uncluttered kitchen.
(Permit me a brief tangent: before this move I smugly thought of myself as quite the minimalist. Sadly, that notion was horribly, horribly flattened under an infinity of boxes I personally lugged over to our new townhouse. Moving doesn't just suck, it crushes your illusions too.)
A final point. I've talked before about how there's an 80/20 Rule at work in cooking. Most of us do the majority of our cooking and eating on a small fraction of our equipment and dishes. The rest of our stuff collects dust, takes up space, or just gets in the way.
I guess I never thought how much further I could go to exploit this rule, and how much of a relief it could be to get rid of even more stuff in my previously-thought-to-be-minimalist kitchen. Of course, like any idea, it can be carried too far, but every household is highly likely to have plenty of items that are rarely or never used. Why not give them away to someone who will use them?
Which brings me back to my original question: What percent of the items in your kitchen could you get rid of--and not miss?
Today, when I opened my kitchen cupboards, I discovered that it was a much higher percentage than I thought. How about you?
Related Posts:
How to Give Away Your Power By Being a Biased Consumer
Scarred For Life By a Food Industry Job
Guess What? We Spend Less Than Ever on Food
A Few Thoughts on Habits and Food
Overpriced and Overengineered: Kitchen Gadgets for the Non-Frugal
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!
This is a question I'm thinking about while we are neck-deep in the process of moving to a new home. It occurred to me yesterday morning when I opened a cupboard and, for once, didn't see forty coffee mugs of various sizes jammed every which way. Instead, I saw just two. Our two favorite coffee mugs, plus one backup mug just in case. Laura had boxed up everything else the night before.
I'd normally have a series of choices to make at this point (Hmmm, let's see: the Hawai'i mugs? The Somerset Eye Care Mugs? The "You're 40!" mugs?), but on this morning, I didn't have to agonize at all over which mugs to use for our morning coffee. I literally had no choice! It was a relief.
This was tantalizing, so I opened another cabinet. And there, instead of our stash of twenty wine glasses, I saw only two. Our two favorites.
Amazingly, 70-80% of our stuff is gone, yet nearly everything I need is within arm's reach and easy to get to. There's got to be a lesson here, if I could just put my finger on it.
And it can't be just a coincidence that my desire to cook--which has gone AWOL for the past few weeks--instantly reappeared in this now-uncluttered kitchen.
(Permit me a brief tangent: before this move I smugly thought of myself as quite the minimalist. Sadly, that notion was horribly, horribly flattened under an infinity of boxes I personally lugged over to our new townhouse. Moving doesn't just suck, it crushes your illusions too.)
A final point. I've talked before about how there's an 80/20 Rule at work in cooking. Most of us do the majority of our cooking and eating on a small fraction of our equipment and dishes. The rest of our stuff collects dust, takes up space, or just gets in the way.
I guess I never thought how much further I could go to exploit this rule, and how much of a relief it could be to get rid of even more stuff in my previously-thought-to-be-minimalist kitchen. Of course, like any idea, it can be carried too far, but every household is highly likely to have plenty of items that are rarely or never used. Why not give them away to someone who will use them?
Which brings me back to my original question: What percent of the items in your kitchen could you get rid of--and not miss?
Today, when I opened my kitchen cupboards, I discovered that it was a much higher percentage than I thought. How about you?
Related Posts:
How to Give Away Your Power By Being a Biased Consumer
Scarred For Life By a Food Industry Job
Guess What? We Spend Less Than Ever on Food
A Few Thoughts on Habits and Food
Overpriced and Overengineered: Kitchen Gadgets for the Non-Frugal
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com
via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!
41 Ways You Can Help the Environment From Your Kitchen
This blog has mainly focused on making cooking at home fun, easy and affordable, and until now, I haven't really addressed any environmental issues here at Casual Kitchen.
Don't worry, I'm not going to turn into Al Gore, narrating global warming documentaries from my 10,000 square foot Tennessee mansion.
But I do want to make the case that every one of us can adopt an ethic of conservation by thinking about what we can do, in our own small way, to help reduce our impact on the environment.
In that spirit, then, today's post is a list of 41 things you can do to make your kitchen greener and more environmentally friendly. I've broken the tips out by category and included brief explanations and details where appropriate.
One final note before we get into the list: I'll be the first to admit that this list is in no way exhaustive or complete, and I hope you will share your own ideas in the comments section below. Let's tap into the wisdom of crowds
to save money and reduce our environmental footprint!
*************************
DIET AND FOOD
1) Eat more local foods
The further your food has to travel to get to you, the heavier the carbon footprint that food makes.
2) Know the origins of your food
Good environmental stewardship involves knowing where your food comes from and knowing something about that country's general environmental standards. Visit Cheap Healthy Good for an informative post on country of origin labeling.
3) Scale your meals
A common refrain here at Casual Kitchen is when you make a double batch of many recipes, you get 2x the food for only 1.2x the work. You can use this same logic to quantify the savings of energy applied toward making scalable meals.
4) Become a vegetarian, or better still, a vegan:
We're neither vegetarians nor vegans here at Casual Kitchen. However, the option of going entirely meat-free exists if you want to pursue it, and the environmental savings of giving up meat can be compelling (although please, let's for once set aside the nauseating jokes about cow flatulence). According to the UN, "livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions as measured in carbon dioxide equivalent." And researchers at the University of Chicago concluded that you can reduce your carbon emissions more by becoming vegetarian than by switching to a hybrid car.
5) Adopt part-time vegetarianism
If full-time vegetarianism isn't for you, consider adopting part-time vegetarianism, something we do practice at Casual Kitchen. Replace one, two, three or more of your weekly meals with vegetarian dishes. It's a great cuisine to explore, it's healthy, and it will save you money too.
6) Avoid prepackaged snacks
I recently read somewhere that a 2-ounce pack of Twix candy bars contains the saturated fat equivalent of eleven slices of bacon. Energy-dense, yet oh-so-delicious treats like these are not only wasteful in terms of health, nutrition and cost, they are worst offenders in terms of packaging waste.
7) Emphasize basic staples in your diet
Staple foods, like rice, oats, brown rice, and other grains are an inexpensive and environmentally sound way to satisfy human nutritional needs. You'll also save money and packaging by buying these foods in bulk.
8) Avoid second-order foods
The opposite of basic staples, second-order foods are made from staple foods. For example, corn only gets turned into a bag of Doritos after quite a bit of processing, transportation costs, branding and marketing costs, and so forth. Every one of these steps uses energy and costs money. And guess who bears those costs? You do. That's why a non-biodegradable plastic bag filled with Doritos can cost up to $4.00. I've written an entire essay on this for any readers who are curious about this subject.
9) Go simple with sugars, flour and fats
Another idiosyncrasy about the food processing industry is this: the more energy and refinement you apply to a food staple, the less healthy it is to eat. Fats that have been hydrogenated (e.g., Crisco, margarine) are far worse for you than simpler liquid fats like corn oil or olive oil. Sugar is better for you in its more unrefined form. And the less processed your flour is, the more fiber and nutrients it contains. And in each case, the refinement process is highly energy-intensive. So by staying "unrefined," you simultaneously help your wallet, your health and the environment.
10) Avoid Most Branded Cereals
Branded cereals tend to be the perfect storm of heavily processed and heavily refined foods combined with bulky, inefficient and non-biodegradable packaging. And with the price of branded cereal approaching $5.00 a box, the environment and your wallet will thank you. Try a simpler food for breakfast, like fresh fruit or oatmeal.
11) Grow your own food
I've written at length about you can defeat the spice industry by growing your own spices. It's surprising how many different herbs, greens and vegetables you can grow at home, even if you have limited space.
12) Go raw
If you really want to get away from foods with embedded energy-heavy process steps, there's no better way than make raw foods a bigger part of your diet. Yes, the produce still has to be trucked to your local store, but that's pretty much it. A diet focused on fresh, raw foods is an extremely energy-light and environmentally-friendly diet. I'll be exploring this subject in more detail in the coming months.
13) Eliminate non-obvious sources of food waste
Often we waste food without even really thinking about it. Did you make an inefficient grocery list this week and buy food that ended up rotting in your fridge? Did you overindulge at your last restaurant meal and miss a chance to take home leftovers for tonight's dinner? Did you read the recipe twice so that you wouldn't screw up dinner and have to throw it all out? Wasted food is wasted energy.
FOOD PREPARATION AND STORAGE
14) Prepare your food safely
There are few things more wasteful than feeding your family or your guests improperly cooked meat or improperly washed produce, and thus spreading food-borne illnesses. Don't transform an otherwise great dinner into multiple cases of projectile diarrhea.
15) Wash your hands
While some might quibble on minor details like whether to leave the faucet running or not when washing your hands, the larger point is this: unclean hands can spread all sorts of disease. See tip #14 for potential outcomes of not following this tip.
16) Consider canning rather than freezing
If you think about it, freezing is convenient, but highly wasteful, way to store food: keeping food frozen requires a consistent, year-round application of energy. Canning food, on the other hand, involves only one application of energy to briefly heat and then vacuum-pack the cans; after that canned food can sit at room temperature for a very long time without spoiling.
17) Pay attention to food expiration dates
If you are buying food, especially meat, close to its expiration date, be sure to consume or freeze the food immediately. Once again, wasted food is wasted energy.
EATING OUT, OR NOT
18) Replace one (or more) weekly dinner out with cooking in
You'll avoid a drive, and you'll save money too.
19) Reduce takeout meals
What kind of restaurant food uses the most non-biodegradable packaging per unit of food? You guessed it: takeout food.
20) Encourage low-impact packaging use
If you see high-impact packaging like styrofoam used at your favorite restaurants or takeout joints, say something to the manager or write a letter to the company's headquarters.
21) Invite neighbors and friends over rather than going out to eat
Not only will you save money and save the incremental energy involved in all of you travelling to a restaurant, you'll get to spend quality time at home cooking great food.
REDUCING TRASH AND WASTE
(A brief side note: for an interesting look at one man's efforts to minimize his household trash generation, have a look at 365 Days Of Trash.)
22) Buy kitchen products in bulk
What's the difference between an 8-ounce jug of dish detergent and a 32-ounce jug of dish detergent? About a 50% savings in total plastic packaging per unit of product. Plus, you'll save money on the detergent too, because the per-unit costs will be lower for the larger-sized jug. That's less plastic that ends up in a landfill and more money in your pocket.
23) Ban bottled water from your home
Bottled water can cost up to 100 times more than tap water, and worse, some eight out of ten plastic water bottles end up in landfills. For more on this subject see Lighter Footstep's thought-provoking post on five reasons not to drink bottled water.
24) Eliminate plastic wrap and aluminum foil from your kitchen
Use reusable plastic containers instead, or cover your food with a (clean) reused grocery bag, or reheat your food using another plate or dish as a cover.
25) Eliminate paper towel use
Use a sponge, dishrag or dishtowel instead.
26) Compost
Composting is a nearly cost-free way to dramatically reduce the trash output of your kitchen, and it has a great side benefit: compost can be a nutrient-rich, natural fertilizer for your vegetable or herb garden. Even if you live in a small apartment, you can still compost. Look for a community garden nearby, or if you have a small balcony, you can use a tiny corner of it for a small composting container.
KITCHEN APPLIANCES
27) Skip the dishwasher drying cycle
Heck, the dishes come out broiling hot anyway. Just open the dishwasher door, let the steam fog up your glasses, and let the ambient heat warm up your home.
28) Run your dishwasher only when full
If you have just a few dirty dishes to wash, you'll use a lot less water and energy by doing them by hand. Dishwashers are only good for the environment when they are used at scale.
29) Run high energy-use appliances during off-peak hours
During peak hours of energy demand, power companies will turn to less efficient fuel sources and less-efficient plants to top off their generating capacity. If you run your dishwasher at night, rather than during afternoon peak hours, not only will you save money, but your power company will face less demand for energy during peak times.
30) Don't use your oven during hot weather
During the dog days of summer, bias your menus toward summer salads or sauteed dishes. Save the baking and roasting for the cooler weather, so your air conditioner doesn't have to fight it out with your oven.
31) Keep your oven door closed
As tempting as it can be to peak in at those cookies, opening the oven door, for just a few seconds, can waste the energy of several minutes of oven baking time.
32) Turn down the temperature settings for your freezer and refrigerator
You don't need to have your refrigerator set at the coldest possible setting. You'll want to experiment with this a bit until you find the ideal temperature, but if done right, this is the kind of tip that keeps on giving--one simple action can drive savings for years on your electric bill. [A side note: for years, Laura and I have debated the semantics of refrigerator temperature settings; in her view, the proper way to phrase this tip is: Turn UP the temperature settings for your freezer and refrigerator. I hope you understand what I'm trying to say here, regardless of the word choice.]
33) Unplug kitchen appliances when not in use
There are studies that claim that as much as 10% of your home's electricity use is in the form of "vampire load"--electric current pulled from devices that are plugged in but not in use. This tip may be a problem for obsessive-compulsive cooks who need their programmable coffeemaker to tell the correct time.
34) Don't buy electric gadgets when human power will do
Do you really need an electric can opener, when a manual can opener will be cheaper, smaller and use less power--and in the long run, will probably be less likely to break?
35) Try sharing appliances and kitchen tools
Most of the tools and gear in your kitchen will spend most of their time sitting in the cupboard, unused. What if you could get together with your (trustworthy) friends or neighbors and share the purchase and the use of some of the most expensive, and least commonly used items? Pricey products like food processors, pressure cookers or even a grill could be shared among two, three or more friends. Everybody will save plenty of money, and your tools will get a lot more regular use. In theory, this sharing approach can even be broadened to include big-ticket household items like lawnmowers or snowblowers.
36) Hold off on renovating your kitchen
This tip is a bit counterintuitive because people generally focus on the incremental efficiency gains that they might get when they buy new appliances, but they ignore that the incremental gains from those new appliances may pale in comparison to all of the waste generated by the renovation itself. Your old refrigerator and oven need to go somewhere, and so do the counters, cabinets, and flooring that you replace. Everything will likely end up in a landfill. Unless your kitchen is a truly horrible shade of 1960s-era dark green, the world might be better off if you held off on gutting your kitchen.
WATER USE
37) Never turn on the hot water for brief use
When you run the hot water tap in your kitchen, most of the water you actually heat never makes it out of the tap--it just stays somewhere in the pipes and then cools back down again. That's energy you've paid for and wasted.
38) Use cold water for almost all of your kitchen tasks.
Cool or even cold water is sufficient for washing most produce. Add a little detergent and you can use cool water for washing many dirty dishes. We make a point of using hot water only for cleaning utensils and cutting boards that have been in contact with meat.
39) Soak dishes before washing
This helps dissolve food residue on your pots and pans and saves you time doing dishes.
40) Consider installing a tankless hot water heater
Traditional hot water heaters work by heating a big tank of water somewhere in your house, and keeping that tank hot at all times, even when you're not using any hot water. In contrast, tankless hot water heaters use a just-in-time heating system to heat only the water you use when you use it. Depending on the nature of your hot water usage, a tankless system could be far more efficient, saving you money and using much less energy. If you have a big family and there are people taking showers at all hours of the day, don't bother, but if your household hot water use is fairly low and sporadic, you may want to consider one of these systems.
41) Never leave the faucet running when performing kitchen tasks
Water that simply runs down the drain is obviously water wasted. But it's also worth thinking about all the energy used by your municipal water supplier to make that water potable--it takes quite a bit of energy to filter, process, and treat tap water to make it safe. Worse, water rinsed down your drain simply goes directly to your sewage treatment facility, wasting resources there too. When you think about it in this way, wasting tap water is really a triple waste.
Readers, what have I missed? What would you add to this list?
****************************
This post was inspired by a recent visit to Berea College, in Berea, Kentucky.
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!
Don't worry, I'm not going to turn into Al Gore, narrating global warming documentaries from my 10,000 square foot Tennessee mansion.
But I do want to make the case that every one of us can adopt an ethic of conservation by thinking about what we can do, in our own small way, to help reduce our impact on the environment.In that spirit, then, today's post is a list of 41 things you can do to make your kitchen greener and more environmentally friendly. I've broken the tips out by category and included brief explanations and details where appropriate.
One final note before we get into the list: I'll be the first to admit that this list is in no way exhaustive or complete, and I hope you will share your own ideas in the comments section below. Let's tap into the wisdom of crowds
to save money and reduce our environmental footprint!*************************
DIET AND FOOD
1) Eat more local foods
The further your food has to travel to get to you, the heavier the carbon footprint that food makes.
2) Know the origins of your food
Good environmental stewardship involves knowing where your food comes from and knowing something about that country's general environmental standards. Visit Cheap Healthy Good for an informative post on country of origin labeling.
3) Scale your meals
A common refrain here at Casual Kitchen is when you make a double batch of many recipes, you get 2x the food for only 1.2x the work. You can use this same logic to quantify the savings of energy applied toward making scalable meals.
4) Become a vegetarian, or better still, a vegan:
We're neither vegetarians nor vegans here at Casual Kitchen. However, the option of going entirely meat-free exists if you want to pursue it, and the environmental savings of giving up meat can be compelling (although please, let's for once set aside the nauseating jokes about cow flatulence). According to the UN, "livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions as measured in carbon dioxide equivalent." And researchers at the University of Chicago concluded that you can reduce your carbon emissions more by becoming vegetarian than by switching to a hybrid car.
5) Adopt part-time vegetarianism
If full-time vegetarianism isn't for you, consider adopting part-time vegetarianism, something we do practice at Casual Kitchen. Replace one, two, three or more of your weekly meals with vegetarian dishes. It's a great cuisine to explore, it's healthy, and it will save you money too.
6) Avoid prepackaged snacks
I recently read somewhere that a 2-ounce pack of Twix candy bars contains the saturated fat equivalent of eleven slices of bacon. Energy-dense, yet oh-so-delicious treats like these are not only wasteful in terms of health, nutrition and cost, they are worst offenders in terms of packaging waste.
7) Emphasize basic staples in your diet
Staple foods, like rice, oats, brown rice, and other grains are an inexpensive and environmentally sound way to satisfy human nutritional needs. You'll also save money and packaging by buying these foods in bulk.
8) Avoid second-order foods
The opposite of basic staples, second-order foods are made from staple foods. For example, corn only gets turned into a bag of Doritos after quite a bit of processing, transportation costs, branding and marketing costs, and so forth. Every one of these steps uses energy and costs money. And guess who bears those costs? You do. That's why a non-biodegradable plastic bag filled with Doritos can cost up to $4.00. I've written an entire essay on this for any readers who are curious about this subject.
9) Go simple with sugars, flour and fats
Another idiosyncrasy about the food processing industry is this: the more energy and refinement you apply to a food staple, the less healthy it is to eat. Fats that have been hydrogenated (e.g., Crisco, margarine) are far worse for you than simpler liquid fats like corn oil or olive oil. Sugar is better for you in its more unrefined form. And the less processed your flour is, the more fiber and nutrients it contains. And in each case, the refinement process is highly energy-intensive. So by staying "unrefined," you simultaneously help your wallet, your health and the environment.
10) Avoid Most Branded Cereals
Branded cereals tend to be the perfect storm of heavily processed and heavily refined foods combined with bulky, inefficient and non-biodegradable packaging. And with the price of branded cereal approaching $5.00 a box, the environment and your wallet will thank you. Try a simpler food for breakfast, like fresh fruit or oatmeal.
11) Grow your own food
I've written at length about you can defeat the spice industry by growing your own spices. It's surprising how many different herbs, greens and vegetables you can grow at home, even if you have limited space.
12) Go raw
If you really want to get away from foods with embedded energy-heavy process steps, there's no better way than make raw foods a bigger part of your diet. Yes, the produce still has to be trucked to your local store, but that's pretty much it. A diet focused on fresh, raw foods is an extremely energy-light and environmentally-friendly diet. I'll be exploring this subject in more detail in the coming months.
13) Eliminate non-obvious sources of food waste
Often we waste food without even really thinking about it. Did you make an inefficient grocery list this week and buy food that ended up rotting in your fridge? Did you overindulge at your last restaurant meal and miss a chance to take home leftovers for tonight's dinner? Did you read the recipe twice so that you wouldn't screw up dinner and have to throw it all out? Wasted food is wasted energy.
FOOD PREPARATION AND STORAGE
14) Prepare your food safely
There are few things more wasteful than feeding your family or your guests improperly cooked meat or improperly washed produce, and thus spreading food-borne illnesses. Don't transform an otherwise great dinner into multiple cases of projectile diarrhea.
15) Wash your hands
While some might quibble on minor details like whether to leave the faucet running or not when washing your hands, the larger point is this: unclean hands can spread all sorts of disease. See tip #14 for potential outcomes of not following this tip.
16) Consider canning rather than freezing
If you think about it, freezing is convenient, but highly wasteful, way to store food: keeping food frozen requires a consistent, year-round application of energy. Canning food, on the other hand, involves only one application of energy to briefly heat and then vacuum-pack the cans; after that canned food can sit at room temperature for a very long time without spoiling.
17) Pay attention to food expiration dates
If you are buying food, especially meat, close to its expiration date, be sure to consume or freeze the food immediately. Once again, wasted food is wasted energy.
EATING OUT, OR NOT
18) Replace one (or more) weekly dinner out with cooking in
You'll avoid a drive, and you'll save money too.
19) Reduce takeout meals
What kind of restaurant food uses the most non-biodegradable packaging per unit of food? You guessed it: takeout food.
20) Encourage low-impact packaging use
If you see high-impact packaging like styrofoam used at your favorite restaurants or takeout joints, say something to the manager or write a letter to the company's headquarters.
21) Invite neighbors and friends over rather than going out to eat
Not only will you save money and save the incremental energy involved in all of you travelling to a restaurant, you'll get to spend quality time at home cooking great food.
REDUCING TRASH AND WASTE
(A brief side note: for an interesting look at one man's efforts to minimize his household trash generation, have a look at 365 Days Of Trash.)
22) Buy kitchen products in bulk
What's the difference between an 8-ounce jug of dish detergent and a 32-ounce jug of dish detergent? About a 50% savings in total plastic packaging per unit of product. Plus, you'll save money on the detergent too, because the per-unit costs will be lower for the larger-sized jug. That's less plastic that ends up in a landfill and more money in your pocket.
23) Ban bottled water from your home
Bottled water can cost up to 100 times more than tap water, and worse, some eight out of ten plastic water bottles end up in landfills. For more on this subject see Lighter Footstep's thought-provoking post on five reasons not to drink bottled water.
24) Eliminate plastic wrap and aluminum foil from your kitchen
Use reusable plastic containers instead, or cover your food with a (clean) reused grocery bag, or reheat your food using another plate or dish as a cover.
25) Eliminate paper towel use
Use a sponge, dishrag or dishtowel instead.
26) Compost
Composting is a nearly cost-free way to dramatically reduce the trash output of your kitchen, and it has a great side benefit: compost can be a nutrient-rich, natural fertilizer for your vegetable or herb garden. Even if you live in a small apartment, you can still compost. Look for a community garden nearby, or if you have a small balcony, you can use a tiny corner of it for a small composting container.
KITCHEN APPLIANCES
27) Skip the dishwasher drying cycle
Heck, the dishes come out broiling hot anyway. Just open the dishwasher door, let the steam fog up your glasses, and let the ambient heat warm up your home.
28) Run your dishwasher only when full
If you have just a few dirty dishes to wash, you'll use a lot less water and energy by doing them by hand. Dishwashers are only good for the environment when they are used at scale.
29) Run high energy-use appliances during off-peak hours
During peak hours of energy demand, power companies will turn to less efficient fuel sources and less-efficient plants to top off their generating capacity. If you run your dishwasher at night, rather than during afternoon peak hours, not only will you save money, but your power company will face less demand for energy during peak times.
30) Don't use your oven during hot weather
During the dog days of summer, bias your menus toward summer salads or sauteed dishes. Save the baking and roasting for the cooler weather, so your air conditioner doesn't have to fight it out with your oven.
31) Keep your oven door closed
As tempting as it can be to peak in at those cookies, opening the oven door, for just a few seconds, can waste the energy of several minutes of oven baking time.
32) Turn down the temperature settings for your freezer and refrigerator
You don't need to have your refrigerator set at the coldest possible setting. You'll want to experiment with this a bit until you find the ideal temperature, but if done right, this is the kind of tip that keeps on giving--one simple action can drive savings for years on your electric bill. [A side note: for years, Laura and I have debated the semantics of refrigerator temperature settings; in her view, the proper way to phrase this tip is: Turn UP the temperature settings for your freezer and refrigerator. I hope you understand what I'm trying to say here, regardless of the word choice.]
33) Unplug kitchen appliances when not in use
There are studies that claim that as much as 10% of your home's electricity use is in the form of "vampire load"--electric current pulled from devices that are plugged in but not in use. This tip may be a problem for obsessive-compulsive cooks who need their programmable coffeemaker to tell the correct time.
34) Don't buy electric gadgets when human power will do
Do you really need an electric can opener, when a manual can opener will be cheaper, smaller and use less power--and in the long run, will probably be less likely to break?
35) Try sharing appliances and kitchen tools
Most of the tools and gear in your kitchen will spend most of their time sitting in the cupboard, unused. What if you could get together with your (trustworthy) friends or neighbors and share the purchase and the use of some of the most expensive, and least commonly used items? Pricey products like food processors, pressure cookers or even a grill could be shared among two, three or more friends. Everybody will save plenty of money, and your tools will get a lot more regular use. In theory, this sharing approach can even be broadened to include big-ticket household items like lawnmowers or snowblowers.
36) Hold off on renovating your kitchen
This tip is a bit counterintuitive because people generally focus on the incremental efficiency gains that they might get when they buy new appliances, but they ignore that the incremental gains from those new appliances may pale in comparison to all of the waste generated by the renovation itself. Your old refrigerator and oven need to go somewhere, and so do the counters, cabinets, and flooring that you replace. Everything will likely end up in a landfill. Unless your kitchen is a truly horrible shade of 1960s-era dark green, the world might be better off if you held off on gutting your kitchen.
WATER USE
37) Never turn on the hot water for brief use
When you run the hot water tap in your kitchen, most of the water you actually heat never makes it out of the tap--it just stays somewhere in the pipes and then cools back down again. That's energy you've paid for and wasted.
38) Use cold water for almost all of your kitchen tasks.
Cool or even cold water is sufficient for washing most produce. Add a little detergent and you can use cool water for washing many dirty dishes. We make a point of using hot water only for cleaning utensils and cutting boards that have been in contact with meat.
39) Soak dishes before washing
This helps dissolve food residue on your pots and pans and saves you time doing dishes.
40) Consider installing a tankless hot water heater
Traditional hot water heaters work by heating a big tank of water somewhere in your house, and keeping that tank hot at all times, even when you're not using any hot water. In contrast, tankless hot water heaters use a just-in-time heating system to heat only the water you use when you use it. Depending on the nature of your hot water usage, a tankless system could be far more efficient, saving you money and using much less energy. If you have a big family and there are people taking showers at all hours of the day, don't bother, but if your household hot water use is fairly low and sporadic, you may want to consider one of these systems.
41) Never leave the faucet running when performing kitchen tasks
Water that simply runs down the drain is obviously water wasted. But it's also worth thinking about all the energy used by your municipal water supplier to make that water potable--it takes quite a bit of energy to filter, process, and treat tap water to make it safe. Worse, water rinsed down your drain simply goes directly to your sewage treatment facility, wasting resources there too. When you think about it in this way, wasting tap water is really a triple waste.
Readers, what have I missed? What would you add to this list?
****************************
This post was inspired by a recent visit to Berea College, in Berea, Kentucky.
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com
via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!
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