Saint Elsewhere

Normally, I read about “green” celebrities with a lot of cynicism.  These people do all they can to make their $400,000 Bentleys get just over 15 miles to the gallon, or install compact fluorescent lights in all five of their 10,000 square foot homes.

I recently read, however, of a friendly competition between the actor Ed Begley Jr. and Bill Nye the Science Guy.  Apparently, Bill moved into Ed’s neighborhood and started to meddle with his new home in order to make it as energy efficient as he could.  Obviously, Bill had some catching up to keep up with the Begley’s.  Ed already powered his house with wind and solar power, composted nearly all of his own waste, and most impressively to me, the Emmy nominated actor does it all in 1,585 square foot home.

Bill has technology on his side, however.  Solar panels, for instance, are far more efficient today than they were 20 or 30 years ago.  As for Ed’s current solar panel, how would you justify throwing his current solar panels into a land fill when the currently produce “free and clean” energy, just not as much as new ones.  Even with such an advantage, it would seem to me that The Science Guy will have to work hard to match the Begley’s measly $300 per year electricity bill.

The fact that Bill and Ed are trying to out do each other in this arena instead of trying to “out-bling” each other was refreshing to me.  Yet it is in California of all places, where even several former governors were movie stars.  And while these two guys are a bit nerdy, maybe, you can count on them to be good, solid, American capitalists.  You can purchase cleaning solution from Ed Begley Jr.’s website and know you are helping to pay for Ed’s electric bill.

Here Comes the Sun

I’ve had this one calculator since the late 1980’s.  It is lightweight, thin and has never malfunctioned in the twenty years I’ve carried it around.  It does everything in need it to do, and several functions on it that I haven't used since I had a calculus class.  Here’s the kicker – I have never had to replace the battery.  It is solar powered.  Check that – it even works under a light bulb.

The solar cell on it is just a tad more than 1 square inch.  The overall thickness of the entire housing is a quarter inch at its thickest.  I’ve had this durable and dependable technology since the tenth grade, yet I still have to heat the water in my house with petroleum products.  You would think that the implementation of this power would have advanced in this generation, but it seems to me that much of the solar energy hitting the earth is just plain wasted, short of the solar calculator on my desk.

I’ve often wondered about other kinds of wasted energy.  What about the kinetic energy exerted at the gym?  It seems that the treadmills and stair climbers could easily be harnessed to run the lights inside the facility.  Where does all that energy go, other than being converted to heat, which makes the operator run their air conditioner more in the summers?  There has been a renewed effort into placing buildings to passively exploit the energy of the sun, but when I was in school, many of us dismissed this as “hippie talk”.

I am guessing that many people have seen the children’s experiment where the chemical properties of the potato can be harnessed to run a small clock mechanism.  Or how about placing a mint candy into a diet cola that produces a huge release of carbon dioxide (I guess this is not a great thing for the environment, but let’s use it as an example).  Having been raised in Lancaster County, I’ve learned not to waste things.  I’ve got to think that there are more things we can do as the designers of the built environment that capture the spirit of my Casio Scientific Calculator. 

On a slightly off kilter note, I purchased a rotary mechanical calculator, “the Addometer”, which works only on the power of the user, from EBay.  I had seen some of the more experienced guys using these in the office.  These babies have the lifespan of a giant tortoise, and can add fractions much more quickly (than in my head, not by a tortoise – I don’t have any empirical data on the tortoise).