Many Americans assume it is. We feel guilty for using disposable diapers. That environmental quiz someone recently posted penalized people if they used convenience foods. Etc.
But is all this convenience really harmful the earth? I've read studies that found that the amount of garbage produced by an average American today is no greater than the amount produced by an average American in Victorian times. It's just a different kind of garbage. While we fill up our landfills with disposable diapers and microwave pizza boxes, Victorians filled up their landfills with more food waste. For example, instead of throwing out one empty orange juice carton, they'd throw out rinds of the dozen oranges they had to squeeze to make OJ. (While of course the factories that produce OJ today also produce rinds, they are used for other purposes, and don't end up in landfills.)
But isn't organic waste like orange peels better for the earth than plastic waste? Not necessarily. The anaerobic conditions of the average landfill mean stuff doesn't rot. The orange peels looked like they'd been thrown out last week. Newspapers that were buried 100 years were still readable.
(BTW, the item that takes up the most space in landfills is...telephone directories. Because every year, every house gets a new one - businesses get several - and the old ones are discarded.)
Anyway, I wonder if something similar may apply to energy use. Does using disposable diapers really consume more energy than cloth diapers, which must be washed in hot water, with bleach? Does grabbing plastic-encased convenience foods that can be warmed in a few minutes consume more energy than cooking from scratch?
I thought about this because I made old-fashioned oatmeal for breakfast last weekend. The really old-fashioned kind, that looks like actual oat grains when you open the can. It took about an hour to cook! While it was certainly processed less than the rolled oats we are more used to, I wonder if it was really lower-energy. Factories producing in bulk are likely more efficient than individual users at home, so if the bulk of the cooking can be done in a factory, maybe that's actually more efficient?
PeakOil is You
Is convenience evil?
Is convenience evil?
by Leanan » Mon 23 Aug 2004, 10:33:34
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Leanan - News Editor
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excellent questions
by gnm » Mon 23 Aug 2004, 10:59:11
I am no expert here but I would suspect that the production of even the simple parts of packaged good (plastic wrap for instance) use a great deal of energy and approach the cos tof the actual food being wrapped. Oats are cheap to grow relatively speaking. I suspect the packaging and the SHIPPING match the cost of the actual contents. So I would think that samll individually packaged items would therefore be less efficent energy wise. I think shipping is a big one - how can it cost less to make a 50 cent piece of plastic cr*p in china and send it halfway around the world than to make it here? It boggles the mind.
-G
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- gnm
Re: Is convenience evil?
by trespam » Mon 23 Aug 2004, 11:07:05
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Leanan', 'M')any Americans assume it is. We feel guilty for using disposable diapers. That environmental quiz someone recently posted penalized people if they used convenience foods. Etc.
But is all this convenience really harmful the earth?
But is all this convenience really harmful the earth?
You raise some valid points that should be seriously considered. Suppose everyone ate processed foods and stopped buying ovens and microwaves. The factories that produce these foods can be very energy efficient. We no longer use cooking energy in our homes and the energy and resources necessary to create the ovens and microwaves is no longer necessary. Perhaps this is more efficient.
As energy prices increase, we will become more aware of the answers to the above questions. Because energy is so inexpensive, it does not play a significant role in the pricing and therefore in the decisions.
Where I think great inefficiencies do exist in our way of life: (1) eating far too much meat instead of more basic foods--waste of energy and croplands and (2) transportation. People would use mass transportation more if it wasn't so darn inconvenient.
I'm increasingly convinced that energy should be taxed and income (labor) taxes reduced. The end result would be equivalent taxation but the signals on how much energy is used would be more apparent to the consumer--because prices on items using more energy would increase.
PS: Try microwaving the oatmeal. That's what I do. Takes 5 minutes and uses much less power than stove heating element.
{touch up; EE}
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trespam - Tar Sands
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by Soft_Landing » Mon 23 Aug 2004, 11:52:36
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Leanan', 'I')s convenience evil?
Many Americans assume it is. We feel guilty for using disposable diapers. That environmental quiz someone recently posted penalized people if they used convenience foods. Etc.
But is all this convenience really harmful the earth?
Many Americans assume it is. We feel guilty for using disposable diapers. That environmental quiz someone recently posted penalized people if they used convenience foods. Etc.
But is all this convenience really harmful the earth?
I'll suggest something out of left field.
Perhaps the convenience=evil is a dogma that merely fails to correctly specify the correct underlying target.
In other words, people see bad things going together with modern convenience, and find it too easy to associate the two.
Although I may well be making the same error, I'd like to suggest a different construct that may underlie the popular convenience=evil relationship.
I suspect that the real problem is when people lose perspective of the amount of energy they consume, and the amount of waste they produce. In general, anything that increases the perceptual distance between a person and what sustains them could be this (though I truly loathe the word, I'll conform for the purposes of this discussion) 'evil'. And probably, modern conveniences, be they more or less energy or waste efficient on a case by case basis, have a near universal effect of distancing the consumer from awareness of his/her sustainence or consequences.
I have found this approach useful when introducing people to peak oil. At first, I had something of a dismal track record, people didn't take kindly to the message. Now, I prefer to be playful and coy, inviting others to tell me how much oil the human race extracts from the earth each day.
Needless to say, EVERYONE underestimates, even very worldly people. It seems to make them think, sets off the imagination. I frame the problem as a problem of ignorance, not a problem of geology or economics, which tends to allow one to get too bogged down in little details, missing the main point. Anyway, I have decided myself that the main problem is one of ignorance. If everybody the world over understood peak oil, there would be a much greater chance of getting through peak oil transition without unthinkables. The challenge is motivating the masses. I'm not really sure how it can be done.
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Soft_Landing - Lignite
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by smiley » Mon 23 Aug 2004, 11:55:35
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')ut is all this convenience really harmful the earth? I've read studies that found that the amount of garbage produced by an average American today is no greater than the amount produced by an average American in Victorian times.
But you also have to account for the amount of Americans, Chinese or Europeans that are inhabiting the earth nowadays. In relative terms the amount of waste may not have changed much. In absolute terms it certainly has.
Another problem is that the type of waste has changed. In victorian times I expect that the waste was mostly organic and degradable. We are currently designing materials which last longer and longer. Therefore our current waste will be around a lot longer.
The example of oranges is in my opinion wrongly chosen. Under the right circumstances even flesh will not decay. But when you're talking about normal conditions, oranges will decay and plastics won't. For paper it depends what kind of paper you're referring to. Modern paper has an higher polymer content to give it the glossy appearance and to make it discolor and decay slower.
Furthermore we have gotten much more efficient in polluting the environment. We could destroy the ozone layer in a couple of years if we wanted to, which is something the Victorians did not have the technology for. We even managed to make our own private waste more harmful by our addiction to anti-depressiva and other prescription drugs (The fish have never been so happy to swim in our sh*t).
On your question on the efficiency of mass production. I'm not sure that that argument holds. For a lot of applications, energy makes up a relatively small part of the production costs. Labour costs are much bigger an issue. When a company looks for a convenient location for its factories, usually labour costs are the first things they look at.
Trading labour costs for energy costs by either mechanizing the production or by offshoring the production and shipping the parts is still a lucrative business. If energy was the primary motivator you wouldn't get the constructions, which you have now, where components are produced in Asia, assembled in Eastern Europe and sold in Australia.
As this delocalisation is still going on, I doubt that the industry has a very strong motivation to look at their energy usage. Although the industry has undoubtedly become somewhat more energy efficient, I think there is still a lot of room for improvement.
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by Leanan » Mon 23 Aug 2004, 11:56:41
Even if it is more energy-efficient to cook everything from scratch, I suspect we'll find it's not the huge energy savings we think it is. Just because "from scratch" foods must be cooked for so much longer. Though perhaps if we did it more often, we'd learn to do it more efficiently at home, too.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')'m increasingly convinced that energy should be taxed and income (labor) taxes reduced. The end result would be equivalent taxation but the signals on how much energy is used would be more apparent to the consumer--because prices on items using more energy would increase.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')'m increasingly convinced that energy should be taxed and income (labor) taxes reduced. The end result would be equivalent taxation but the signals on how much energy is used would be more apparent to the consumer--because prices on items using more energy would increase.
Interesting idea. Though I could see that setting up conflicts. When I was in college, my roommates and I lived in a three-story apartment building. We were cheap, so we wouldn't turn on the heat all winter. This in a very frigid part of the northeastern U.S. The first year, we were on the first floor, so it was really cold. The upstairs neighbors were quite annoyed with us, because it made their floors very chilly. The next year, we moved to the 3rd floor, because we knew that heat rises. We sucked heat from our downstairs neighbors all winter. Not that we told them about it. They just couldn't understand why their bills were so much higher that year.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')S: Try microwaving the oatmeal. That's what I do. Takes 5 minutes and uses much less power than stove heating element.
I've got a very small microwave. It's suitable for warming, not actual cooking.
Cooking whole oats reminds me of cooking raw rice, actually. Which I can't imagine doing in the microwave. However, one way to speed up the cooking time of rice is to soak it in the cooking water overnight (or all day while you're at work, if it's for dinner). That would probably work for oatmeal, too.
I know many people use slow-cookers for whole grains. Turn it on at night, and it's ready by breakfast. Though I wonder how much energy that uses.
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This simple task can save more energy than millions of cloth diapers... dried in the drier!!! 
