I found out about this program a while ago and really thinks its an easy solution to cut down on wasted paper and save you money by using less ink.

The program is called GreenPrint. Once installed on your computer it will analyze everything that you want to print and remove pages that have very little text on them. I mean how many times have you printed mapquest directions and have gotten that last page with just the URL at the top.

Here is a link to a demo to showing how the program works. Demo

GreenPrint states:

• The average user will save about $90 a year in paper and ink.

• If all US households with a computer used GreenPrint over $6 billion would be saved a year.

• If all new computers used GreenPrint greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced by over 117 million tons. That’s the equivalent of removing 23 million cars from the road for an entire year.

• If all new computers sold in 2006 used green print over 36 million trees would be saved every year.

Here are some of environmental impacts of the paper and printing industry from their website just to put things into perspective.

Paper Facts

• 1 ton of paper = 400 reams = 200,000 sheets
• 1 tree makes 16.67 reams of copy paper or 8,333 sheets
• 1 ream (500 sheets) uses 6% of a tree (and those add up quickly)

Printing Facts

• Average cost of a wasted page $0.06
• Average employee prints 6 wasted pages per day, that’s 1,410 wasted pages per year!
• The average U.S. office worker prints 10,000 pages per year

Consumption

• In 2004 the United States used 8 million tons of office paper (3.2 billion reams). That’s the equivalent of 178 million trees!
• The U.S. is by far the world’s largest producer and consumer of paper. Per capita U.S. paper consumption is over six times greater than the world average.
• In the United States, we use enough office paper each year to build a 10-foot-high wall that’s 6,815 miles long. That’s more than the distance from New York to Tokyo!

Growth

• Global paper products consumption has tripled over the past three decades and is expected to grow by half again before 2010.

Energy

• The U.S. pulp and paper industry is the second largest consumer of energy and uses more water to produce a ton of product than any other industry.
• Production of 1 ton of copy paper uses 11,134 kWh (same amount of energy used by an avg household in 10 months)

Water

• Making one single sheet of copy paper can use over 13oz. of water– more than a typical soda can.
• Production of 1 ton of copy paper produces 19,075 gallons of waste water

Waste

• One ton of paper requires the use of 98 tons of various resources.
• In 2003, paper and paperboard accounted for 35 percent of the total materials discarded in the United States.
• Production of 1 ton of copy paper produces 2,278 lb of solid waste

CO2

• CO2 prevented if all Fortune 500 companies use GP= 6,311,610 tons
• One hot-air balloon of 10m diameter contains about a ton of hot air - imagine seeing 6,311,610 hot-air balloons floating over the US - that’s a lot of balloons!
• Production of 1 ton of copy paper produces 5,690 lb. of green house gases (the equivalent of 6months of car exhaust).
• Dumping paper in landfill adds methane to the atmosphere as it decomposes, with 20 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide.

Forests

• In the U.S. we have lost 95 percent of our old growth forests.
• Old growth forests make up 16% of the virgin tree fiber used each year to make paper products.
• 4281 acres of rainforest are lost every hour worldwide
• It takes 3 tons of wood to produce 1 ton of copy paper.

Ink

• If you were to fill up the tank of your car with Hewlett-Packard or Lexmark ink, it would cost $100,000
• If you filled an Olympic-size swimming pool with ink it would cost $5.9 billion.

Tree Facts

• A single mature tree can release enough oxygen back into the atmosphere to support 2 human beings.
• Each person in the U.S. generates approximately 2.3 tons of CO2 each year.
• If every American family planted just one tree, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would be reduced by one billion lbs annually. This is almost 5% of the amount that human activity pumps into the atmosphere each year.
• According to the USDA Forest Service, a tree generates $31,250 worth of oxygen, provides $62,000 worth of air pollution control, recycles $37,500 worth of water, and controls $31,250 worth of soil erosion, over a 50-year life span.

Well, recently I have finally stopped putting it off and went and bought the cruzbike kit and the 700c Kent GMC Denali bike. If you haven’t read my previous post about the cruzbike conversion kit and my idea for using this bike you can check it out here.

Things have gone rather smoothly as far as the conversion goes. I have to say that the instructions that came with the kit were definitely not user friendly, so that was slightly frustrating at times trying to figure out how certain parts went together, especially the fork brackets that came with the kit.

But thanks to some helpful posts at the cruzbike forum I was able to eventually figure it out.

I also ran into trouble getting certain parts off the bike, like the bottom bracket for example. The thing just wouldn’t budge no matter hard I tried. So before I totally stripped the thing beyond repair I made my way over to the local community bike shop in my home town, krank it up. With their help, expertise, and bike specific tools I was able to get almost everything put together in just one day. They are really helpful, so if you are ever in need of some bicycle repairs and want to get it fixed for a small donation while learning how to do it yourself for future reference, this is the place to go. All communities should have a place like this.

So here is what it looks like so far. The seat height is 24 inches at its lowest point and 28.5 inches at its highest. This is about two inches higher than I had wanted but its low enough for me to comfortably put my feet on the ground when I am sitting on it.

Here is a list of things that I still need to do:

1. Purchase a 1 1/8″ threadless road stem. I tried to make the threaded stem work with the conversion kit with the use of a shim but the stem still rotates a little when I try to pedal, so I will have to scrap that idea and just go with a threadless stem.

2. Purchase a new front brake since I lost the brake cable clamp screw and apparently its some weird unknown and unavailable size, therefore requiring me to purchase an entirely new brake assembly. Fantastic!

3. Purchase a new front derailleur and rewire shifters. The front derailleur that came with the bike was a bottom pull type and the conversion kit uses a top pull derailleur. This should only put me back a few dollars so its not that big of a deal.

4. Remove decals and paint. I dont know about you but I’m not really a fan of peacock blue. Right now I’m probably just going to buy a can of black spray paint and go over the whole thing. You can’t go wrong with black (unless I ride a lot at night, which in that case it could be bad).

5. Ride!

Look for new posts for updates on my progress.

Well it looks as if Tesla Motors is finally entering production of their Roadster electric vehicle, but all they are already sold out for 2008, and probably will be for some time. So what do you do if you want an electric sports car, an extra 100 grand, but don’t want to be put on a waiting list?

Get a gasoline sports car converted to electric. One company that does this is World Class Exotics located in West Palm Beach, FL. Link

For prices ranging from $60,000 to $100,000 you can have your very own custom electric sports car with ranges from anywhere to 50-200 miles. The car can get 85% of its charge in 40 minutes. It comes with air conditioning, power steering, etc. all the misc. accessories you would find in a regular car. They specialize in Porsche, Rolls Royce, and Lamborghini but you can also have your own exotic car converted by them. With something more along the lines of a 4 week lead time rather than the probably 4 year waiting list for the Tesla. Sounds good to me.

I have wanted an electric vehicle for some time now. There have been a few companies that state that they are going to mass produce an all electric vehicle but most of them disappear or fade away after delaying production for years. I have been waiting for commuter cars to come out for at least three years now. You know the one they sold to george clooney in 2005.

So I after all this waiting and frustration I thought why should I wait for someone to build a economical electric vehicle, why not build it myself.

So my plan is to start small with a motorcycle/scooter conversion and make my way up to a full size car or truck. The reason for this is that I have no real experience in building an electric vehicle, so I’m trying to keep things as simple as possible so that I can easily learn things as I go. With a motorcycle conversion I won’t have to worry about things such as air conditioning/heating, radio, power brakes, power steering, power windows/lock, and all the other additional things that are put into a car. Plus I will be dealing with much lower voltages so it will decrease the chance of me electrocuting myself.

At first I thought I would just buy an electric bike kit, with a top speed of around 25mph. But I decided that I won’t really learn to much about the whole conversion process. It’s more of a plug n’ play kind of deal. I’m still considering purchasing this kit just to have some fun with it.

The next idea was based on John Bidwell’s El Ninja motorcycle conversion. I liked the idea of just stripping the motor out of a used motorcycle and replace it with batteries, motor, controller, and throttle. It seems like it would be a pretty straight forward conversion, with the only difficult part that I could see was the fabrication of the battery mounting trays and the motor mount. The one thing I didn’t like was the type of motorcycle that he used, a sportbike. This really doesn’t seem like the most comfortable choice as the rider is in a very hunched over position. John Bidwell’s El chopper is another design for an electric motorcycle with a relaxed chopper riding position but requires the frame to be extended and rewelded. This isn’t something I wanted to do so I tried to do some more research and come up with a solution that would give me the chopper rider position but not require the frame to be rewelded.

a picture of the motorcycle conversion “El Chopper ET”

What I came up with was a bobber motorcycle that was cheap and won’t need to be rewelded as long as I keep the batteries under a certain size. The donor bike would be a Kikker5150 Hardknock Bobber. And for only $1500 brand new it seems like a really good deal.

The frame on this bike has a nice 8″ wide parallel horizontal downtubes to allow for a battery setup similar to an electric bike I saw called the jackal.

I plan on running the bike at at least 48 Volts and with 3.75:1 gearing this should allow me top speeds of 45mph or more. I don’t really want it to go much faster than that considering that I would only use it as a commuter vehicle.

I would like to purchase a kit from electric vehicles USA. link This kit includes the Perm PM132 motor along with a throttle, programmable controller, and other wiring needed to convert the bike. The one thing I would still need to purchase would be the batteries. I have looked at plenty of various typed of batteries but right now for the price and safety nothing beats sealed lead acid batteries. I like the reputation of B&B batteries so would probably choose them as a supplier. I am considering using the 33Ah batteries which would easily fit in a 2×2 stack on the bottom of the frame and would give me a range of at least 25-30 miles, but I would definitely need to do some more calculations to figure out a better estimate of the range. The good thing is that the Hardknock motorcycle is only 200lbs heavy with the motor so this would be a better choice than a 400-500lb full size motorcycle as increased weight decreases the available range for the vehicle.

All in all this seems like an interesting project to try out. For under $5000 I could have a custom made electric motorcycle with zero tailpipe emissions. And if used in conjunction with a solar panel kit as described in my post here. it would be a totally emission free vehicle.

This is another post that stems from my visit to Boulder, Colorado, where I saw many restaurants, and even the university using biodegradable, compostable plant based utensils, cups, and straw, etc. link

It made me think about if it is possible to live everyday without using or interacting with a single piece of plastic or any synthetic material. I honestly don’t think it is possible. Plastic is everywhere and used in almost everything. Yet it seems it hardly any of it is recycled, so much is thrown away that there is now a floating garbage patch in the sea west of CA, that is twice the size of Texas. link

I have begun to think of all the things that I use that contain plastic in some way and if there is any natural alternative.

my computer/television/electronic gadgets

I don’t have an alternative for this one except to make the ones I own last as long as possible, buy refurbished ones when possible, and get rid of all the things I don’t really need such as a TV, printer, multiple phones/mp3 player/alarm clocks and other gadgets.

my car

My only thought on this one is to get rid of it completely and use a bike and mass transit for transportation. See my post about the cruzbike here. One type of car that seems to cut back on the amount of plastic with the addition of recycled materials is the aptera. As they state on their site “To reduce the ecological footprint of construction, recycled materials will be used for the seats and flooring, and the dashboard and the door panels will be free of heavy metals and plasticizers.” link

processed food packaging

This is where I think alot of the small plastic items that go overlooked, add up to the main part of my disposable plastic use. Hopefully one day have my own garden to grow most of my own food using a technique such as the square foot raised bed garden. link But in the meantime I will try to buy as much of my food as I can that is unprocessed and in bulk to minimize on packaging.

tupperware/plastic wrap

This can sort of be attached to the previous item since much of my plastic tupperware comes from reusing plastic earth balance and tofutti ice cream containers. Glass seems to be an alternative but usually come with plastic lids and are really expensive to buy a whole set. Using tin foil instead of plastic wrap is another alternative but seems to be wasteful to me since it really isn’t reuseable even though it can be recycled.

Clothes

The obvious alternative to polyester would be to just purchase only cotton clothing with an emphasis on organic fabrics, even ones made from hemp or bamboo, considering the environmental impacts of non organic farming methods. here is a link to a site that has a large selection of organic clothing. link But the selection for men’s organic clothing is for one: very expensive ( I can’t really justify spending $40 on a hemp t-shirt) and two the styles and fit of the clothing that they do offer are not really up to date. One thing I am considering is learning to make my own clothes, therefore I can use my own organic fabrics and make things that I truly would want to wear.

shopping bags/trash bags

I do use reusable shopping bags (chico bags) even though I think they are made of nylon, but they are much more compact than the usual canvas ones that I have seen, so this makes them much easier to remember to bring with you rather than not wanting to carry around a large canvas bag with you all the time.For trashbags I have been considering using the compostable trash bags called biobags that are biodegradable but haven’t made the plunge just yet. A side thought would be to not use trashbags of any kind but that would go into having a good compost system to cut down on the amount of “messy” trash that would be thrown out. That also reminds me that my trashcan itself if made from plastic, I don’t have an alternative to that either.

water bottles

Ideas here are Voss glass water bottles, and sigg water bottles. I had a voss water bottle at one time but it was rather heavy and hard to carry with you all the time. In order for this to work I need to come up with a way of easily carrying my water bottle with me wherever I go.

non food item packaging

An idea here is just to consume less. Most of the time if it comes in a package it means that its not really necessary. Also bulk items as well as homemade items will cut down on the number of needed items, such as homemade cleaners, soaps, shampoos, etc.

toothbrush

I know this isn’t a big one but its still something that I use and an alternative to at least cut down on the amount of plastic is to use a toothbrush with a removable head. I like the new radius toothbrush called the source, where the base is made from completely renewable sources.

disposable utensils when eating out

I think it would be a smart idea to carry around a set of reusable utensils, maybe made out of bamboo or some other renewable material. This would eliminate the need to ever have to use any of those plastic forks again. link

I’m sure there is more that I can add, and I will update this as new alternatives arise.

I am just finishing my master’s degree in mechanical engineering and soon to be continuing my studies to complete a Ph.D. as well and have noticed that most of the “Sustainable Energy” research in universities is with fuel cell technology. In my opinion this technology is far from sustainable, mainly due to the common method of hydrogen production, steam methane reformation.

It seems everyone is touting fuel cells as the answer to all our problems, including global warming and foreign oil. Yet if steam methane reformation or is used to produce the hydrogen the result will still give off emissions of carbon monoxide or if you want to extract all the hydrogen you can you will get carbon dioxide as a by product, which is exactly what I thought we didn’t want. Plus the whole process operates at extremely high temperatures, requiring additional energy to produce the hydrogen. Researchers have said that we only have 60 years of natural gas supplies left if used at the current rate. So how will this technology work if companies like honda and other working on fuel cell cars say they are decades away from being able to mass produce these vehicles economically. How is this an answer to our oil and envirmental problems which need an immediate solution.

I know that hydrogen can be produced from solar energy through electrolysis as well as being produced from organisms such as algae. Both these systems are rather inefficient with the first being redundant in my opinion. Why go through all the inefficiencies to go from solar to electricity to hydrogen to electricity. Why not just use the electricity in the first place? With the algae it seems that they need to be genetically altered in order to produce any significant amount of hydrogen, and personally I would rather stay away from genetically altering anything if I had the choice.

Additionally, there are also problems with hydrogen storage and its low energy density per volume, the expensive catalyst (platinum) needed in the fuel cells, as well as the expensive infrastructure that would have to be created in order to be able to fill up all these hydrogen powered cars. So the source of the hydrogen is not the only problem.

In my opinion it just seems like a terrible waste of time and money for all this research being done on an idea with so many flaws. It could be spent on so many other technologies that in my mind would benefit society much more than fuel cells ever could. Ideas such as electric cars, WVO diesel plug in hybrids, fuel from recycled materials, building smaller more aerodynamic vehicles, designing better communities (getting rid of the suburbs), building more efficient mass transit systems, etc.

Why support a technology that doesn’t support a sustainable future?

For a state that averages around 6 hours of good sunshine per day and calls itself the “Sunshine State” it sure does lack in residential PV (solar panel) systems.

During my recent visit to Colorado a few weeks ago I was excited and somewhat bewildered that I saw so many solar panel and solar hot water heaters installed on residential homes. I mean I even saw a single wide trailer with solar panels. Yet not once in my travels through northern FL over the past 5 years have I seen one solar panel or solar water heating system installed on a residential home. And no solar lawn lights and gate openers do not count.

It just baffles me that even with the great state rebate for solar energy along with the federal rebate program, no one has jumped in and taken advantage of it. It’s not like its going to last forever. The current rebate program for Florida ends in 2010, after that with the economy the way it is who knows what will happen.

If I owned my own house here is the system I would buy.

http://www.solarhome.org/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=2226

Its a 3kW grid tie system, which means you don’t have to hassle with a battery backup system and will work well as long as your utility company offers net metering. The kit comes with all the mounting hardware, inverter, and wiring all you need is a licensed electrician to install it to your meter. It comes to around an average of 500kWh of electricity produced per month. Which in my case is more than I use, meaning I would get a check from the utility company rather than paying them. The cost according to what I have seen would be as follows:

System cost: $17,000

Florida rebate @ $4 per watt for 3000W = $12,000

Federal rebate = $2000

So the total system cost would be only $3000.

Now assuming the 500kWh per month and $0.13 per kWh cost of electricity, the payback time is under 4 years. And considering these systems have a 25 year warranty that means many years of free power.

Now I don’t really know exactly how all the rebate programs work so please correct me if I’m wrong or add any other details that I left out.

Here is my idea for a cheap but quality semi home built recumbent bike, a cruzbike. Here is an example conversion.

 

They are what’s known as moving bottom bracket fwd recumbent bikes. They claim to hold some advantages over the more common types of recumbent bikes such as better climbing ability, smaller turning radius, easily adjustable for different size riders, full suspension (front and rear), adjustable angle ergonomic hard shell seat. And all for a conversion kit selling at ~$400. Here is a link to their site.
http://www.cruzbike.com/kit.html

With the cost of comparable recumbent bikes priced at anywhere from $1500 to $3000 this seemed to be a good deal, at least so that I could get my feet wet in the recumbent world.

Now cruzbike also sells a carbonfiber frameset called the Silvio so that you can build your own ultralight cruzbike based on roadbike geometry and able to use road bike parts. I really like the looks of this frame, the low seat height, extremely light, large 700c wheels, etc. The downside is its hefty $2000 price tag. A little bit out of range for me and my student budget.http://www.cruzbike.com/silvio.html

This led me to my decision to build a bike similar to the Silvio but using their conversion

kit and a donor bike. The bike I decided on is a Kent GMC Women’s 19.5″ Denali Road bike.

 

 

Specifications:

• Frame: Aluminum 7005 straight gauge
• Fork: GMC Series 7000 steel
• Chain: KMC Z 51
• Crankset: Prowheel Alloy 335P6 28X38X48 170mm
• Front Derailleur: Shimano FD-TZ 31 Index
• Rear Derailleur: Shimano RD-TZ30GS 7SPD
• Shifters: Shimano Revo SIS L2/R7
• Brake levers: Promax BL-250AP Aluminum
• Brakes: Promax 501A Alloy Caliper Brake
• Rims: Vitesse Alloy black 700CX14GX36H
• Tires: Kenda Black With Grey Band 700X28C
• Stem: Aluminum black EXT:100mm 0D.
• Handlebar: Maesbend W: 430mm D:22.0mm
• Saddle: Cionlli Black
• Seat post: HL Aluminum Micro Adjust 27.2 X 300mm
• Pedals: VP-990S plastic body with steel cage
• Weight: 29.0 lbs
• Price ~$150

I hope to use the Cruzbike conversion kit on this frame to turn it into a bike with a similar geometry to the Silvio. The one thing that is missing on the GMC Denali bike is suspension. I am hoping that this will prove to not be a significant problem but if it does a solution will be to use extra seat padding to absorb the impact that would normally be absorbed with a rear suspension along with a new 700c suspension fork.

http://www.nycbikes.com/item.php?item_id=606

Also, if the top tube turns out to be too high I will cut the tob tube off the bike and reweld another piece of aluminum tubing further down on the frame to allow for a seat set up closer to the silvio. But as long as I can easily put my feet on the ground when I stop then I will be happy.

I plan on purchasing some new parts to improve the comfort of riding the bike.Some nashbar moustache handlebars. I will flip these around so that I can use the inner “U” secion for normal riding putting my hands/wrists in a more natural position while still allowing me to use the outer straight sections for use during climbing hills.

 

With some rapidfire 7 speed shifters so that I can get rid of the horrible grip shifters (in my opinion anyways) that come with the bike.

The total cost for this project is a little under $700. At about the third of the cost of building up a Silvio bike and at least half the price of purchasing a new recumbent I am hoping this is a good budget recumbent bike that I will be able to improve as my budget allows. Hopefully one day replacing my car as my main mode of transportation.