Light Emitting Diodes
Published in the Sun February 23, 2013

Kelly and Pam Kimbrel displaying some of their LEDs at Texas Bright Ideas

Thomas Edison did not really invent the light bulb.  Scientists had been tinkering with incandescent electric light for 70 years before Edison devised a proper filament.  But Edison made the light bulb practical for regular people to use and, here’s the real genius that revolutionized the world, he figured out how to sell electricity so his customers could use their new light bulbs.

 

In 1882 the Pearl Street Station of the Edison Illuminating Company in lower Manhattan fired up for the first time.  Edison had 85 customers with a total of 400 light bulbs.  When the power plant turned on at dusk each evening, it might have cranked out enough to power the gadgets and air conditioner of one good-sized house.

 

Edison is reported to have said that “after the electric light goes into general use, none but the extravagant will burn tallow candles.”  At that time, of course, a person had to be extravagant to use the new-fangled light bulbs.  Edison was charging 24 cents per kilowatt-hour.  Adjusted for inflation over 130 years, that is about 50 times more expensive than electricity today.  Even so within two years the Pearl Street Station had over 500 customers lighting their homes with electricity and generating stations began springing up across the nation.

 

Other than a few updates to the filament, the incandescent light bulbs available today are virtually identical to the ones Thomas Edison sold 120 years ago.  Modernization has been slow in the lighting industry.  The biggest problem with incandescent bulbs is that they are not really very efficient at making light.  Ninety percent of the energy they consume is wasted in the form of heat.  In a Texas home why would anybody want to generate heat off the light bulbs?  That just requires more air conditioning to combat the heat, wasting even more electricity.

 

You may have heard that the federal government is trying to ban incandescent light bulbs.  Not exactly.  New efficiency standards for light bulbs require more light to be produced per watt of energy consumed, and some of the old-timey bulbs are not able to meet those requirements.  A few people are upset about losing the inefficient bulbs because they prefer the “warm” quality of incandescent light.  I imagine that in Edison’s time there were people who preferred to stick with romantic candlelight.  Can’t you just hear them: “Turn that danged contraption off, Mabel.  It’s nighttime; it’s supposed to be dark!”

 

I went over to Texas Bright Ideas, a lighting store in Wolf Ranch, to ask owner Kelly Kimbrel about LED lights.  LED stands for light-emitting diode, and they generate light by the movement of electrons in a semi-conductor.  An LED has more in common with your computer than it does with Edison’s bulbs.  Not only can a 10.5 watt LED produce as much light as a 60 watt incandescent bulb, but it will last about 25 times longer, so it is a great choice in a location where it is difficult to change a bulb, like a high ceiling or a streetlight.  When an LED finally does wear out, disposal is not a problem because, unlike compact fluorescent bulbs, LEDs do not contain mercury.  Also in contrast with compact fluorescents, LEDs come on instantly with full brightness, and can be turned off and on frequently without shortening the lifespan of the bulb.

 

At present, LED fixtures make up less than 5% of Mr. Kimbrel’s business, but he believes they are the wave of the future.  When he and his wife built their own home, they installed a wide variety of lights, including both compact fluorescent and LED fixtures to compare for themselves.  They have since replaced all the compact fluorescents with LEDs.

 

One feature of the Kimbrel’s new lights is especially appealing.  LEDs emit very little ultraviolet light so insects are not attracted.  The Kimbrel’s outdoor kitchen has an LED over the barbecue grill and a ceiling fan with an incandescent light over the sitting area.  The bugs swarm around the incandescent and ignore the LED completely.

 

After visiting with Mr. Kimbrel I headed over to Home Depot to see what kind of LEDs are available to a person who just wants to change a light bulb.  Since an LED is shaped like a computer chip, it can be put into almost any size or shape of device.  It doesn’t have to look like a light bulb, but many of them are made to look bulb-ish so we consumers will recognize them and put them into our lamps.  I found a 60 watt equivalent bulb-shaped LED for $15.  That sounds like a lot, but burning 3 hours a day it will last 18 years, compared to 11 months for an incandescent.  And while the incandescent uses over $7 of electricity a year, the LED gets by on $1.26.  Within two and a half years the LED will have paid for itself.  If it lasts the entire 18 years I will have saved over a hundred dollars in energy costs, which is a pretty bright investment.

Emergency Preparedness Fair
Published in the Sun February 6, 2013

In the event of disaster, do you know how to live without running water or electricity?  If lost in the woods, how long could you live without food or shelter?  What if you called 911, but nobody answered?

Mick Thurber and Emma Winners making arrowheads

We like to imagine that we are completely self-reliant, but modern Americans have become perilously dependent on our wonderful infrastructure of utilities, grocery stores, and emergency personnel.  Without sounding too apocalyptic, it is worth remembering that the infrastructure could fail.  Just ask the people in Haiti, or closer to home, the people affected by hurricane Katrina and superstorm Sandy.

Rudy Bischof with the most important tools in his survival kit, a sturdy knife and a fire starter

On Saturday, the Georgetown Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) hosted an Emergency Preparedness Fair.  In a grove of trees outside the church, members demonstrated techniques that would help a person survive an unspecified disaster for 72 hours.  Rudy Bischof, an experienced survivalist, explained to me that it is simply common sense to develop the skills needed to take care of yourself in the event that you have to evacuate your home.  Shelter would be the first priority, especially in cold weather, because hypothermia can kill in as little as three hours.  The most important tool in Mr. Bischof’s survival kit is a sturdy knife, used to build a rough shelter out of branches.  The second most important tool is a fire starter and he shows me how easily it sparks to ignite dry tinder.  There is no food in the 72 hour kit because a person can live for 3 weeks without food.

A cardboard cutout of a .22 caliber revolver represents the third critical tool in the kit.  No actual guns are present at this fair but Mr. Bischof quite reasonably argues that in an actual life and death emergency a gun would be handy if not essential.

Randy Brinley has dug a solar still to produce drinking water

 A person can die in three days without water.  Randy Brinley reminds people that if the tap water quits running, about 80 gallons of water remain in your water heater.  Another six gallons of pure water is stored in the toilet tank, so don’t be foolish and flush it away.  If all else fails a solar still can be built from a hole in the ground, a sheet of plastic, and a tin can.

Michael Winners and an oven made from a cardboard box and aluminum foil

 A troop of Boy Scouts are building ovens with cardboard boxes and aluminum foil.  A few glowing charcoal briquets in the bottom of the box can bake a pan of biscuits to perfection.  If charcoal and biscuits are not available, Maria Nicholls explains how to make nopalitos from prickly pear cactus, after removing the spines of course.  She likes them boiled with garlic and salt, but in a disaster plain prickly pear would be better than nothing, and there is plenty of it around here.

Maria Nicholls and daughter Danielle Peralta with edible prickly pear

Carl Robertson, a professor of Chinese at Southwestern, is showing his Chrysler minivan tricked out with tarps and cardboard to make an insulated shelter if he were to become lost or stranded in the wilderness while driving.  He has a sleeping bag made from a space blanket.  Too many people abandon their cars and end up dying of exposure in the woods.  Dr. Robertson recommends staying with your car and building some smoky fires to summon help.  Get that fire starter and keep it in the glove box.

Inside the church building the focus is less on disaster preparedness and more on long term self-sufficiency.  Bob and Janine Hall are giving a tutorial on aquaponics, the symbiotic relationship between fish farming and hydroponics.  Bob raises bluegill and catfish, and their waste fertilizes his plants.  I get to taste a delicious cherry tomato picked from Bob’s garden that morning.

Jeannette Cox and her homegrown eggs

Jeannette Cox, a city girl from Chicago, proudly displays a basket full of multicolored eggs from her hens.  Pat Dekay is letting people taste the variety of foods that she preserves herself.  Today she has dried pears, strawberry fruit leather, jerky, and tomato sauce.  She keeps at least 6 months of food in storage at all time, in accordance with her church’s advice to “prepare every needful thing” in case of adversity.

Nobody at the fair appears particularly worried about a specific disaster or a breakdown of society.  Nobody even mentions a “zombie apocalypse.”  This group is just enjoying learning new skills, taking care of themselves, and being prepared for any surprises the future might bring.

Carl Robertson knows the dangers of hypothermia

Child Slavery in the Chocolate Industry
Justice Is What Love Looks Like In Public
Published in the Sun January 27, 2013

Julie Clawson and her daughter Emma enjoy a fair trade s'more

“I don’t doubt that nearly all of us morally oppose forcing children into slavery…  No parent would request the kidnapping, beating, and starving of other children so that they could serve chocolate cupcakes at their child’s birthday party, but nonetheless, this is essentially what happens.”

 

The startling quote above is from Austin author Julie Clawson, in her book Everyday Justice: The Global Impact of Our Daily Choices.  She is referring to child laborers on Ivory Coast and Ghana cocoa farms who are trafficked and forced into slavery to satisfy the enormous appetite for chocolate in America and Europe.  Some of these children are kidnapped; others are sold outright by desperately poor parents in neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali.  The children are not allowed to attend school and often do dangerous work with machetes or apply pesticides without protective equipment.  UNICEF estimates that in Ivory Coast alone nearly 200,000 children are laboring illegally on cocoa farms.

 

Julie’s book doesn’t stop at slavery in the chocolate industry.  She also peels back the sleek marketing campaigns camouflaging some of our other voracious habits.  She discusses unfair wages for coffee farmers, seizure of oil-rich lands from indigenous people by energy companies, and America’s growing propensity to make everything out of plastic and then throw it all away after a momentary use.

 

Ever since I heard Julie speak last year I have wanted to meet with her, and finally the chance arrived.  Her two young children were back in school and Julie’s own studies at Austin Episcopal Seminary had not yet resumed.  In the driveway Julie’s car was plastered with bumper stickers advising that “Peace begins when the hungry are fed” and “Justice is what love looks like in public.”  Julie, who is 6’1” plus high heels, has a tiny stud in the left side of her nose.  On the dining table were two dozen Harry Potter wands in various stages of construction for an upcoming birthday party.  Over tea, I asked what lit her fire for social justice.  Why does an ordinary suburban housewife, even one with magic wands, think she has the power to fight global injustice?

 

Julie has no illusions.  She knows that poverty and injustice will not end just because she buys fair trade chocolate and coffee.  She explains that the end of poverty and injustice is not her responsibility, but she feels obligated to join in the struggle.  “I have to at least start somewhere.”  Living ethically is reward enough.

 

Julie’s mission is to explain to comfortable American consumers that our buying habits affect farmers and children on the other side of the world long after the heady rush from the chocolate bar or double latte has worn off.  It’s like voting with your wallet.  Do you want to vote for African workers to be paid enough to feed their children and send them to school?  Or does the cheapest product get your vote even if it means impoverished farmers and trafficked children?

 

Julie loaded her book with well-researched stories and, what seemed to her at least, common sense suggestions.  She was surprised by some of the reactions the book provoked.  A few readers were really peeved that this nasty information about child trafficking had diminished their rightful enjoyment of chocolate.  Another shock came when Julie was an invited guest on a Christian radio talk show and was admonished by the host that her concern about the living conditions of the child laborers sounded “too socialist.”  Taken aback by such an attitude, she responded that she was just trying to live out Jesus’ commands.

 

In 2001, US Representative Eliot Engel and US Senator Tom Harkin introduced a bill that would have created a “slave-free” certification process for chocolate products.  The industry was vehemently opposed, because to have a few chocolate products certified slave-free would expose the others as not slave-free.  To make a long story short, we ended up with a voluntary, non-binding agreement (the Harkin-Engel Protocol) that the chocolate industry would cut back on the “worst forms of child labor.”  So it’s not surprising that twelve years later very little has changed under the voluntary program, except that child trafficking is more secretive because it is now illegal in every country in which it occurs.

 

Since we don’t yet have a slave-free certification process for chocolate, Julie recommends buying chocolate that is at least certified fair trade.  A trip to HEB reassured me that there are several fair trade chocolate bars easily available:  Dove, Green and Black, and Newman’s Own.  There are also numerous sites on the internet to order fair trade chocolate.

 

Does a “Fair Trade” label absolutely guarantee that no children were exploited to make your chocolate bar?  Unfortunately, the system isn’t perfect yet.  As long as poverty and greed exist there will be people who cheat.  In 2010 a BBC crew went undercover in Ghana and found some children working illegally even on farms that were supposedly certified fair trade.  The journalist offered one skeptical little worker a Kit Kat bar and, as the boy took a tentative bite, a big smile spread across his face.  After years of harvesting cocoa beans, it was his first taste of chocolate.

 

 

Wind Energy at TECO-Westinghouse
Published in the Sun January 13, 2013

Turbine blade at TECO-Westinghouse

 Driving past the TECO-Westinghouse plant on Interstate 35, I always look for the two longhorns in the pasture in front of the rusty brown building, a small oasis of rural tranquility alongside the main artery of Central Texas.  Two weeks ago, instead of driving past, I was privileged to visit the plant to meet with Richard Fesmire, Director of Operations at the only TECO-Westinghouse facility in the United States, right here in Williamson County.  We met to talk about wind energy.

In 2006, TECO-Westinghouse teamed up with DeWind, a successful German company, to bring wind turbine production to the US.  Since that partnership was formed, TECO-Westinghouse has built and installed 110 of the enormous turbines, whose blades sweep a circle in the sky bigger than a football field.  Most of these turbines have gone to the Novus Wind Project in the Texas-Oklahoma panhandle area.  A few have been sold to projects in Chile and Canada, and one turbine was installed in Sweetwater, Texas for a wind technology training program at Texas State Technical College.  (Think green jobs of the future.)

About 3% of US electricity comes from wind power.  Texas has more installed wind capacity than any other state, and more than twice as much as Iowa, which is number 2.  On November 10, 2012 at 10:21 AM, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas set a new record for wind energy production.  At that moment 8521 megawatts of wind energy generation provided the state-wide grid with 26% of its total electricity.  From 2006 to 2010, wind energy generation in Texas quadrupled to 26 million megawatt hours, partially stimulated by the federal wind energy production tax credit, which essentially subsidizes wind energy producers 2.2 cents for every kilowatt-hour of electricity produced.  (The retail price for electricity in our area is 10 to 11 cents per kilowatt-hour.) 

The production tax credit was created in 1992 and has expired several times, but was always renewed.  It was raised to its current level in 2005, creating a boom in private wind energy investment to the tune of about $15 billion per year.  A law passed by the Texas legislature in 2005 began construction of 2300 miles of high voltage transmission lines to bring even more wind energy electricity from West Texas and the Panhandle, where the wind blows, to Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio, where people use it.

Mr. Fesmire shows me the hubs and rotor shafts for the D9.2 DeWind turbine, which is rated to produce 2 megawatts of power under optimal conditions.  His eyes light up when he tells me about the peak of TECO-Westinghouse’s turbine production last year.  After spending millions of dollars to develop the assembly process, his workers had the capacity to put an 80 ton turbine on a truck every 8 hours, each turbine requiring about 1000 man-hours of work.  “That was a lot of fun,” he admits.  So why is he speaking in past tense?  Why was nobody working on the assembly line on the day of my visit?

On December 31 the production tax credit was set to expire.  As the “fiscal cliff” approached, investors were afraid that this time the credit might not be renewed, so they waited.  Orders for wind turbines slowed to a trickle.  Mr. Fesmire had predicted that without the tax credit TECO-Westinghouse could build as few as ten turbines in 2013.  He hasn’t had to lay anybody off, because they are still building lots of motors for the oil and gas industries, but he had hoped to hire 35 more people to build turbines and wasn’t able to.

Fortunately, the fiscal cliff bill passed by Congress on New Year’s Day extends the wind energy production tax credit for another year, allowing Mr. Fesmire to feel optimistic, although he would like to see a longer range plan.  On-again, off-again policies are terrible for business.

Some people argue that wind energy should be able to stand on its own two feet without government support.  Sounds good, but the tax credits for oil and gas have been in place since 1916 and are permanently built into the tax code, so those industries are not plagued by uncertainty.  Also, the price we pay for electricity from a coal or natural gas plant does not include the long-term costs to society of carbon dioxide emissions and other air pollution, making those fuels look cheaper than they really are.  Burning coal for electricity is sort of like eating fast food:  it’s easy and cheap if you don’t count the cost of the heart attack down the road.

Richard Fesmire with rotor shafts for D9.2 turbine

Chevy Volt
Published in the Sun January 2, 2013

 “If you have a bathtub full of water, and you start emptying it one teaspoon at a time, eventually you are going to get it empty.”  Biology professor Mary Griffith used that metaphor to teach her community college students that petroleum is a finite resource.  No matter how much remains underground right now; someday the oil will be gone.  Petroleum is so important to the chemical and plastics industries, it doesn’t make sense to burn it up motoring around town.

 

Mary believes that her faith requires her to be a good steward of the environment, so when electric vehicles became available she wanted one.  But Mary has family in Colorado and takes frequent road trips.  At this point in time, long road trips are not practical in a pure electric car, so she decided on a Chevy Volt, a plug-in hybrid.  The Volt has a lithium ion battery, and Mary can drive about 44 miles around town on a dollar’s worth of electricity.  But if she wants to go to Dallas or Colorado, off she goes.  When the electricity runs low a gasoline engine kicks on automatically and takes over without her having to do a thing except drive.

 

Mary insists I take her Volt for a test drive.  I settle into the leather seat and hit the power button.  Some other-worldly music plays like a spaceship booting up.  The dashboard displays the range remaining for both battery alone and gasoline.  Over the lifetime of the car Mary is getting 73.4 miles per gallon.  She apologizes for the 73 mpg number; it would be higher if she hadn’t gone to Colorado so many times.  In less than a year she has put 17,000 miles on the car.  The only maintenance has been to rotate the tires.  Sometime in the next 2 years she will need to get the oil changed.  I back out of the driveway with the guidance of the rear view camera.  We head out to Hwy 195 and Mary urges me to floor it.  She has had it up to 85 mph and knows it could go faster.  She claims the Volt is the most powerful car she has ever had, but I just take her word for it.  Electric cars do have amazing acceleration – sort of like turning on a circular saw.  We discuss the purchase price of a Volt.  She points out that a wide array of luxury cars (and trucks) cost far more.  Mary’s preferred luxury is the reduction of her personal greenhouse gas emissions.

 

When Mary first got her Volt, she wrote a letter to the editor of the Sun extolling the virtues of her new car.  She wanted to share her enthusiasm.  In response she received an anonymous letter in the mail.  Someone banged out an angry diatribe on a small piece of paper, photocopied it, and sent her the photocopy as if he (or she) was some sort of secret agent.  The writer accused her of using batteries that would someday end up in a landfill, and berated her for not paying her fair share of the road tax.  (In reality batteries that are no longer adequate for an automobile still have 70% of their capacity remaining, and can be used to store energy for household solar arrays.  When completely depleted, they can be recycled.)  Until receiving the letter, Mary had no idea that electric vehicles had political opponents.  I asked if she is afraid this column will provoke another letter.  She hesitates, but finally decides she doesn’t care.  She enjoys driving a low emission vehicle and likes saving money on gasoline.  Mary believes electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids are the wave of the future, and she is proud to be an early adopter of an innovative technology.

Nissan Leaf - A Perfect Urban Ride
Published in the Sun December 15, 2012

Lisa Davis loves her Leaf

Fellow eco-nerds with similar buying habits, Lisa Davis and I met at HEB stocking up on Seventh Generation recycled paper towels.  Lisa had seen my column about driving my Nissan Leaf to the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center (a trip former editor Ben Trollinger referred to as “Toad’s Wild Ride”) and introduced herself as a fellow Leaf driver.  I asked if she has had adventures with electric driving, but she denied any drama.  “It’s a regular car.  People need to know that.”  Her Leaf was a Christmas present last year, and the thrill has yet to wear off.  An electric car is the ideal vehicle for driving around town.  There are no tailpipe emissions of carbon monoxide, particulate matter, or ozone to smog up our urban air.  In addition to being good for the environment, Lisa loves her Leaf because it is loaded with amenities and big enough to hold her husband and two sons, all over 6 feet tall.  The Leaf is quiet and smooth, but when she steps on the pedal it takes off like a rocket.  Curious people ask her how fast it will go, but she doesn’t know.  She’s had it up to 80 mph.  She wonders if maybe I’ve gone faster, but alas, I am a boring driver.

 

Lisa admits that when she first got the Leaf she suffered from a bit of charge anxiety; the fear of running out of electricity before getting home.  The first time she took the car to Austin, she stopped at the Nissan dealer in Round Rock and topped up her charge.  She needn’t have worried; she had plenty of juice for the return trip.  I have taken my Leaf to the Austin airport and back on one charge, but that is about the limit of range at highway speeds.  Driving around town at 30 to 40 mph it will go 100 miles, but since people rarely drive 100 miles around town, it’s not really an issue.  When you get home you just plug it in and charge up again.

 

The electricity to run the car costs about 2 ½ cents a mile.  (Gasoline costs 8 to 20 cents a mile, depending on whether you drive a gas sipper or a gas hog.)  No gasoline engine also means no oil changes.  About the only maintenance required is rotating the tires.  And cleaning the windshield.  Lisa and I both noticed that when you never go to a filling station, your windshield gets really, really dirty.

 

A curious person, Lisa once tried to deliberately run down her battery, just to see what would happen.  With about 8 miles of range left the dashboard started flashing warnings and the nice GPS lady offered directions to a charging station.  If a careless driver ignores the warnings and keeps driving, the Leaf will eventually enter what is called “turtle mode,” in which speed and acceleration are limited for one last mile, allowing a safe exit off the road.  Lisa tried to reach turtle mode in her neighborhood, driving round and round the block, but she got bored before the car ran out of charge.  Finally she just drove into her garage and plugged it in.  Sometimes she charges up at the Georgetown Recreation Center charging station, where the electricity is complimentary.

 

Lisa is sold on electric driving, but what about the general population?  Jerry Crider, the electric vehicle specialist at Round Rock Nissan, told me that hesitation about the new technology is being overcome by an attractive new lease deal from Nissan.  You can now lease a Leaf for 36 months with $2000 down and $249 a month.  That is a pretty good deal considering it costs about $200 a month just to keep an SUV fueled up.  A lease avoids the hefty purchase price of the Leaf, and after 3 years the customer can trade up to what will surely be new and improved electric technology.  Jerry has leased four Leafs in the last month alone.  So far nobody has come back to say they really prefer gasoline.

 

My next column will be about a delightful lady, Mary Griffith, who wanted to drive electrically but needed a car that could take her back and forth to Colorado.

What's Up with the Yellow Bags?
Published in the Sun December 1, 2012

“Bag the Bag” it’s called; a bright yellow stuffer bag designed to hold plastic bags, six pack rings, cellophane, and other film plastics for Georgetown’s new single stream recycling.  When the bag first showed up with my 96 gallon recycling bin I was incredulous.  Surely we didn’t have to buy special bags just to recycle other bags?  Couldn’t we just stuff all our bags into an old grocery bag?  The idea of a special bag just seemed so wrong to me that I made an appointment to speak with Verna Browning, a representative of Texas Disposal Systems, and Rachel Osgood and Gary Hertel from the city of Georgetown to learn the reason for this apparent travesty of sustainability.

 

It turns out there is method to their madness.  Plastic bags cannot be thrown loose into the recycling cart for two good reasons:  they fly everywhere on the slightest breeze creating litter, and they jam up the mechanism of the sorting machines.  So bags must be bundled together into a package big enough to stay put.  Unfortunately, a regular grocery bag filled up with other bags will tear open when it is compacted in the truck, and then you are right back where you started, with loose plastic bags.

 

The stuffer bags are tough enough to stand up to the collection process.  When properly tied shut, tiny perforations in the bottom of the bag allow air to escape so they don’t explode when compacted.  Upon arrival at the recycling center, workers can easily recognize the bright yellow bags and pull them off the conveyor before they go into the sorting machine and cause mechanical problems.  The yellow stuffer also identifies the bag as recycling.  A tied off grocery bag could just as easily be filled with diapers or doggie poo.

 

My original “Bag the Bag” has been hanging in my kitchen for over a month and it is still not even half full.  It now contains 22 bread and newspaper bags, the plastic wrapper from a bundle of paper towels, and some Saran wrap.  There are no grocery bags because I have reusable bags for the grocery store, and the few bags I do get line my small trash cans.  When it is finally full, new stuffers are available (for free) at the municipal utility office at the corner of Industrial Drive and Leander Road, at the Garden-Ville outlet near the soccer fields on Walden Drive, and at the Sun City Social Center Monitor’s desk.  Yes, they are free.  The original plan was to charge 25 cents a bag, but apparently citizens were on the verge of mutiny, and in a spirit of cooperation the city decided to absorb the cost.

 

If you remain skeptical about the yellow bags, you do have alternatives.  You can still take grocery bags, bread bags, and newspaper bags back to the grocery store.  I went to HEB incognito (which is easy for me) and asked two separate employees who were taking out trash if the grocery bags that get collected actually go to recycling.  Both assured me that they really do.  Unfortunately the grocery store will not take other kinds of plastic wrappers or cellophane, nor will they take those turtle-strangling six pack rings.  Another alternative is just to trash your plastic bags.  Recycling is, after all, voluntary.  Just remember that whatever goes into your trash bin ends up in the landfill.  It does not get diverted to recycling at the dump just because it is recyclable.

 

Several choices exist for yard waste as well.  If you continue to put yard waste in black plastic bags it will go into the landfill, no exceptions, where it uses up space and squanders a valuable resource.  If, however, you would prefer your yard waste to be composted and turned into mulch, bundle it into four foot lengths or place it in compostable bags and set it on the curb on your yard waste day.  I went to Home Depot to check out the bag situation.  Jim Glennan, a Home Depot employee and a recent transplant from the Chicago area, showed me a huge box in the Garden Center where you can get 5 compostable bags for $1.88.  He says this time of year they sell like hotcakes.  He also pointed out that in Illinois recycling was free but he had to put a sticker costing $2.80 on each and every yard bag or garbage bag that he discarded.  He liked that method because he could save money by not throwing anything away.  True, but it seems like an awfully pricey sticker to put on a bag of garbage.

 

For people who really don’t want to buy yard bags, Ms. Osgood suggested using a large generic trash can that looks different from the TDS bins and labeling it “YARD WASTE” in giant letters.  Your leaves will be composted au naturel.

 

For answers to almost any question that you could possibly have about Georgetown’s single stream recycling, go to http://recycle.georgetown.org/.