Walmart has been making some environmental news of its own. They have vowed to be “good steward of the environment” by being more energy efficient and cutting down on waste among other things. Walmart has also made news with its product offerings from organic food and clothing to compact fluorescent light bulbs.

All that good press is one thing, but what does it actually translate to? What about your average Super Walmart in North Augusta, SC?

I went into the North Augusta Walmart looking for a few specific things that are available at Publix and what I considered good indicators for green shoppers. I included food and regular household items. Here’s the list:

• organic milk
• organic produce
• veggie burgers
• natural peanut butter
• “green” cleaners
• recycled paper products
• compact fluorescent light bulbs

The results were disappointing. The only areas I were impressed in were natural peanut butter and compact fluorescents. Walmart stocked my favorite brand of natural peanut butter and had it at a lower price than Publix. They also carried CFL’s at a reasonable price. They had organic milk but it was more expensive than Publix and they had a little organic produce but it was all pre-bagged and looked pretty pathetic. That was it. Walmart struck out on everything else. I was especially let down by the lack of recycled paper products.

Here’s the breakdown:

• organic milk – yes
• organic produce – yes
• veggie burgers – no
• natural peanut butter – yes
• “Green” cleaners – no
• recycled paper products – no
• compact fluorescent light bulbs – yes

Now how much of this is dependent on location? The Walmart in a place like Asheville, NC would probably have a better stock of green products. This doesn’t even take into account other factors like shopping into pleasure either. It could be a nice, quiet day outside or a nasty thunderstorm; either way every Walmart I have been into felt like chaos. Once I get inside one I immediately want to leave. In contrast I could spend all day in a traditional grocery store. For the time being I’m a Publix man.

Related posts:

1. “Green” Living?
2. Compact Fluorescents
3. Seventh Generation products

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The Greenwise products are 100% recycled paper with no added dyes, fragrances, or inks. They look like normal paper products and perform quite the same. The toilet paper is soft and easily as good as the comparable store brand or cheaper bathroom tissues. If you’re already buying the high end, aloe-filled, super quilted types you won’t be impressed. However, if you’re buying whatever is cheapest this might just be an upgrade. Like the toilet paper, the paper towels are just as good as the typical store brand. I’m something of a paper towel snob usually but I’m very happy with the recycled ones.

While using recycled paper products certainly makes a difference (especially for someone like myself that uses them a lot), the best way to save paper is to just reduce use altogether. I use a dish towel when possible to clean up in the kitchen and I’ve cut up old cotton t-shirts to use as small towels. Toilet paper will not be replaced anytime soon at my home (hygiene and sanitation take priority over the environment) but I’m trying hard to reduce my paper towel consumption.

I highly recommend the Publix Greenwise toilet paper and paper towels. They’ve replaced normal paper products in my home as long as the price stays the same or lower. Reducing paper use would be the simplest solution though. It would also be an easy transition for someone who buys the higher end paper towels or toilet paper since they could focus on simply cutting consumption.

Related posts:

1. Green shopping at Walmart
2. Seventh Generation products
3. “Green” Living?

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

First let’s look at some of the properties of tin. Tin has a low melting point, 505 K. For reference, aluminum melts at roughly 933 K and carbon steel at roughly 1800 K. This low melt point is tin’s biggest weakness compared to structural metals but it is also its more important characteristic. Liquid tin does not boil until 2900 K. It also has a very low viscosity and wets the surface of most materials.

Given the characteristics described above it makes sense that most Sn-alloys are used for solders. Tin-lead (Sn-Pb) alloys have historically been solder but more environmentally friendly options such as Sn-Ag-Cu (tin-silver-copper) alloys do exist and are becoming more widespread.

Ok, so solder and foil aren’t that interesting, I know. Remember what I said earlier about tin’s high boiling point and low viscosity? Well, the surface of molten tin is also perfectly flat. Using these properties, molten tin can be used to create large, flat sheets of glass, called “float glass”.

Imagine a continuous river of molten tin, now pour molten glass onto the tin. Tin is a good head conductor and it has a perfectly flat surface so it conducts the heat quickly and uniformly allowing for a perfectly flat piece of glass with a uniform thickness to form on the molten tin surface. Pretty cool, right?

The idea of float glass has been around for awhile but it was not successfully implemented commercially until the 1950s. Sir Alastair Pilkington, a British engineer, gets the credit for the process that is still used to produce about 90% of flat glass today. There are a few other details to the process but the basics of it are pretty simple. Thickness can range from around 0.1″ to 0.6″ so the float glass process can be used for a wide range of large, flat glass panels.

Think about it the next time you go window shopping. How were those large, flat windows manufacturing? Odds are it was using the float glass process.

No related posts.

Your basic incadesent lightbulb gives off about 90% of its energy in the form of heat. This heat is emited in the form of infrared radiation. So what? Light bulbs get hot, everyone knows this. What if you could use this heat to generate more light? You could get more light out of the bulb without increasing the wattage.

General Electric figured out a way to do this and patented the concept in 2000. They call the technology, Halogen Infrared. Basically, using a special IR reflective coating and a spherical shape to the bulb, the infrared radiation can be redirected back to the filament making it burn hotter and thus producing more light. The benefits: more light, same wattage, and less heat. Using an IR reflective coating is nothing new, the key for GE was they figured out to keep the costs down and use the coating to its maximum optical efficiency.

Kudos to GE for figuring this out and giving me better lighting for my car (even though my bulbs were technically manufactured by Toshiba, it’s still GE technology)!

(Thanks to Daniel Stern Lighnting for pointing me in the right direction and recommending these bulbs to me.)

Ref:

http://www.gelighting.com/na/business_lighting/faqs/halogen.htm

http://www.danielsternlighting.com

Related posts:

1. Compact Fluorescents
2. Green shopping at Walmart
3. Atlanta to LA in a 91 Accord

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.