Whats with the lighting issue?

When you break a CFL you are exposed to mercury, not so with conventional bulbs.

The article you linked to recommends that the bulbs are taken to a recycler, not tossing them in the trash. Or, at least double bagged in plastic.

Now you know people are going to be lazy and toss them in the trash anyway. If CFLs are the product used in most applications the amount of mercury leaking into the air and water around landfills will be significant, obviously not a good thing.

A "problem" that would be easily solved with a deposit, much in the same way soda cans are handled in MI.

Did I mention they pull all of the recyclable crap out of your trash in my county? :)

What does that have to do with anything? The process of seperating recyclables is NOT done by hand. It is all handles by "machine". It this machine delicate enough to not break the light glass of the CFL? If the machine would break the CFL glass there would then be mercury all over the place.

Actually, if we can find a way to sort all the recyclable stuff out of the trash, we can find a way to improve that machine to be able to pull the CFLs out as well. It may not be able to handle them currently, but it will in the future, someone will find a way.

Plenty of times, CFLs and the like have fallen or broken in my office and we've never done anything about it. I'm still ali

cpcoasterhaven said:
What does that have to do with anything? The process of seperating recyclables is NOT done by hand. It is all handles by "machine".

Wrong. Have you been in the facility? I have, and those things covered with flesh wearing gloves sure look like people to me.

How much does that actually cost? Pretty good idea, but sounds like a trashy (ha ha ha...) job.

Pretty costly and inefficient. Just who would want to go through someone elses garbage (tons of it) all day to seperate out the recyclables?

I pay $40.50 quarterly for trash pickup. If some portion of my property tax goes toward it out of the general fund, it's pretty insignificant.

That's pretty reasonable, actually. I think generally trask pick up is around 30-35 quarterly as it is.

You guys think that being "green" for the average American consumer is a trendy status movement, just be glad you're not a mid-sized business owner looking for an engineering firm to design them a new facility. More and more buildings are being touted as being LEED certified to a certain level. Basically the higer the level, the more money it costs and the more smug the owner must be to justify it. We're talking a 10-15% price increases on multi-million dollar buildings that will never recoup that extra cost over its life-cycle. Sure there is a level of cost-savings involved, but the impact (or non-impact) on most of these buildings with respect to the environment is marginal at best. Not to mention, the ones certified Platinum are some of the most unconventional, ugly, & alien looking structures you will find. What's worse, is that you're almost looked down upon as the owner if you don't have any desire to get that LEED plaque in front of your building.

As for Prius owners' feeling all warm and fuzzy about thier lowered cost of operation, but more importantly, their lowered carbon footprint output from their car...

In my Environmental Sustainability course I took prior to graduating, it was brought to the attention of the class that the highly polluating manufacturing processes it takes to produce all those batteries for each Prius actually gives it an equal total carbon footprint to that of an 8mpg H2 all those selfish people drive.

Naturally, that's not something Toyota is going to come out and tell the consumer with all the profit it's been banking them and whatnot. Enjoy! :^D

Please, that's unsubstantiated crap. Battery manufacturing has come a long way since the days of early laptops, when rechargeable batteries first started to see widespread use. To suggest that the manufacture of any object in a car of any model is more polluting than the lifetime operation of any vehicle is absurd.

wow jeff, that is incredibly high for your quarterly trash pickup. I pay 29$ per quarter.

The difference isn't even one decent meal in three months. Who cares? I don't have to separate my trash like everyone else.

never said it was a big deal just wondering why there would be an 11$ difference

I pay about twenty a quarter myself...it sucks that I have to go the extra mile to place my recyclables in a seperate bin...I mean, it's a lot of work to have to think about that stuff.

Please, we consider such things like someone seperating our trash (because we're either too inept or lazy to do it ourselves) a luxury. I can't wait until someone starts brushing my teeth for me...

Like today, I'm driving behind a jerk who has one of the superduty Ford trucks..anyways the bed of the truck had a miniature landfill, and guess what? Once he got up to 55mph, the landfill got smaller and smaller. People like that piss me off, laziness and ignorance is really at an all-time high in this nation.

I don't know who has cheaper trash collection...I just got my bill for $85 for the quarter, but that's officially for "water and sewer services". It just happens to also pay for trash collection. Unfortunately we are incredibly backward here in Columbus. We have single-stream recycling (all recyclables in one bin, all garbage in another) but you either have to pay extra to have the recyclables collected, or drive them to a collection center. That's real popular...to fill your vehicle with garbage and drive it across town. So participation in this city is, iirc, under 20%, which seems awfully high to me considering how difficult and expensive they make it here...

But then that's one of the many ways Columbus is a little different. We have to pay for curbside recycling because it is expensive when it is not subsidized (it does not generate enough revenue to cover its own expenses). But then, we also managed to get not one, but two very nice sports venues built WITHOUT any public money, too.

Anyway, Gannon understands what's going on. "Green" stuff is trendy right now, and the only real payoff is in the smugness of the practitioners and the income of the companies smart enough to cash in.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

When did recycling and caring about the environment have to do anything with being smug? And even if it did, who cares? I'll take that over pretentious jerks driving giant cars to soccer practice.

What's wrong with driving a giant car to soccer practice? With the cost of gas these days I really don't think anyone is walking into a car dealership saying, "give me the car with the worst gas mileage so i can waste the most gas." Fact of life is big cars still provide benefits over smaller cars to drivers. Small sedans just don't work for some people. And sure there's the whole, "well buy a hybrid SUV" or "buy a small, fuel efficient sedan to complement your SUV when you aren't taking long trips". But the fact is not everyone can afford that. In today's economy sometimes it boils down to: spend money to be nice to the environment on over-priced hybrids, etc, or take a family vacation. I realize there are a lot of people that would choose the energy efficient route, which is great. But I don't think that those people should decide that everyone else needs to go that route too.

The new "green" products are great for the environment, but they still have a long way to go. There are just too many downsides to many of them to make it a viable option for a lot of people. I put two compact fluorescent light bulbs in my kitchen, and every morning I had to wait 5 minutes for them to turn on; no thanks. I don't think anyone is opposed to helping the environment, but they need to be up to reasonable standards before a lot of people are going to switch to them.

Anyways, on the topic of lighting, does anyone know what's going on with Maverick's lights? I've noticed that on most of my visits substantial portions of the lift hill and brake lighting were removed (sorry if this has been talked about but its a longer thread).