So here's the deal. Phosphates really are a danger, creating runoff that kills fish and plants. And Spokane has a uniquely bad problem with phosphates. And apparently it's entirely possible to create phosphate-free detergents. The industry just didn't feel like doing it.
But now their hands are being forced. And guess what? It turns out they can do it after all. Imagine that.
Er, industry also knew how to make low-flow toilets, which is why every toilet in my recently renovated rental house clogs at least once a week. They knew how to make more energy efficient dryers, which is why even on high, I have to run every load through the dryer in said house twice. And they knew how to make inexpensive compact flourescent bulbs, which is why my head hurts from the glare emitting from my bedroom lamp. They also knew how to make asthma inhalers without CFCs, which is why I am hoarding old albuterol inhalers that, unlike the new ones, a) significantly improve my breathing and b) do not make me gag. Etc.
In fact, when I look back at almost every "environmentally friendly" alternative product I've seen being widely touted as a cost-free way to lower our footprint, held back only by the indecent vermin at "industry" who don't care about the environment, I notice a common theme: the replacement good has really really sucked compared to the old, inefficient version. In some cases, the problem could be overcome by buying a top-of-the-line model that costs, at the very least, several times what the basic models do. In other cases, as with my asthma inhalers, we were just stuck.
That is not necessarily an argument against the switch--if the costs are high enough (and maybe, in the case of phosphates, they are), then we should go ahead and use the more annoying product. But it's well to remember that there are tradeoffs--that indeed, "industry's" reluctance is probably because they are well aware of what those tradeoffs are.
Because the phosphate free dish detergents don't clean very well, the news is full of reports of people smuggling detergents in from other places that sell detergent containing the phosphates. One lady interviewed said that she just couldn't deal with dirty dishes and the phosphate free detergents didn't cut grease.
Have you ever seen an algae bloom?
Leaded gasoline worked really well at preventing engine knock, but we've somehow moved past those days.
Anyhow, phosphates from detergents comprise a tiny minority of our phosphate pollution total. The real concern is fertilizer runoff from agriculture. Until we do a better job at addressing this (i.e. requiring agriculture waste to be stringently regulated like, you know, waste from every other industry), changes in consumer behavior won't really matter much.
Kevin,
"Er..." Are you English or Australian? I didn't see many English idioms like "dodgy" or "Bob's your uncle." Or are you US born? In that case it is "Uh" No one actually says "Er". Either that or since you aren't actually quoting anyone but typing your own words, you can, uh, just delete it.
Anyway, if you think that using 1/6th the energy of a regular, mostly heat producing light bulb (remember Easy-Bake ovens?) is not helping things, then by all means, put a 60 watter near your bed, along with an aspirin bottle, just in case.
Your toilet problem? I have an "econo" low flow toilet, and when I perform an act that might clog it, I simply flush it more than once during the procedure. Yes, this uses more water, but 2 flushes on the new one use still less water than one flush on the old one.
One way to do a nice clean phosphate free wash is to use soap flakes with softened water and rinsed with the addition of vinegar. There are other ways, too.
I notice you use the terms, "sucked" and "annoying" in regards to the newer, more earth sustainable products. To me, unnecessarily aiding the demise of the environment sucks and is annoying.
Kevin, maybe what you could do is search for photos of what 300 million looks like visually. My WUXGA (1920X1200) laptop screen has about 2.2 million pixels on it, give or take. That makes 131 laptops' pixels to equal the no. of Americans using light bulbs, toilet water, and phosphate detergent for something that they wore one day or dried off with once. Now magnify each of those pixels into 15 gallons of water per day, or a cup of phosphate detergent or the fuel to power your heat giving light bulb for a year. For the entire Earth, that would be the pixels of 2,900 WUXGA laptops like mine. Granted, not all people produce the waste that we do, but I would like to do what I can to lean in that direction while not complaining about it. Civilized people produce way too much waste. Now that really sucks, wouldn't you agree, Kevin?
Gee, I didn't know that bellyaching like a spoiled child could get you a job at the Atlantic. I have read it for years and have never seen anything so pathetic.
Kevin Drum,
Please pardon me. It seems M. McArdle is the one bellyaching. I might still not be correct on this.
Just a note on one of those items - there are reasonably priced low-flow toilets that are absolutely great (like the Todo Drake, about $190 when I bought them). I replaced both of the toilets in my house with these, and they haven't ever clogged (over 4 years of use).
Home builders (especially for rental) will often use extremely cheap components in construction, unless something else is requested (and paid for).
Wow is this lame for something posted on theatlantic. I've pleasantly moved from environmentally unfriendly household products to equally useful ones with no significant cost increase. In addition, I just recently implemented a solar hot water system that both saves money and produces hot water faster to my shower and faucets. So far, every move I've made except light bulbs has been painless and cost efficient. LED bulbs aren't far away, so I'll live with the ugly CFLs for now. I'd hate to see my kids have to give up skiing 20 years from now because my choice of light bulbs was less than ideal.
I have a couple of suggestions for you, Megs (May I call you Megs?
1) your toilet issue...spend a few extra bucks and get one of those super flush assisted Toto models that will pitch a sequoia sized piece of scat half way between Philly and DC. I have one, and it's one flush EVERY TIME. One of the great accomplishments of the last 1/4 century if you ask me.
2) Your Dryer....next time, even if it kills ya, consult Consumer Reports
3)Your CFC free albuterol inhaler....a few suggestions, (despite the fact that the CFC free ones give you 90mcg of albuterol/inhalation just like the old ones, so yeah, it's probably in your head)...a)ask your doctor for a spacer device b) maybe you need additional meds c)get a propellent free one, like Maxair d)get rid of your 6 cats (yeah, I'm figuring you're a cat person)
You are exaggerating too much. You don't have literary licence to say whatever you want in support of an editorial point.
The new inhalers - perfectly fucking fine. I've used the old, and new, inhalers for years. No difference. Energy efficient lights - as bright as the old ones. Lights have ratings for watts, lumens and lifetime...
I think the issue is you probably put as much reasoning into buying products as you did in writing this article.
Just because a product is environmentally friendly doesn't mean the company isn't selling something cheap and nonfunctional to cut costs.
Well-argued rebuttal, folks. Clearly, Megan's argument is shot down by the fact that one can effectively clean clothes with a multi-step process only marginally less labor-intensive than scrubbing your knickers clean on a rock. If that's not enough, it's hard to argue with the convenience of toting a 6" penis-pump inhaler spacer around, particularly if you don't carry a purse.
People who actually care about the environment/energy conservation, as opposed to those who simply enjoy the feeling of moral superiority they glean from adopting the posture, might want to take Megan's point to heart. If they don't, they're going learn their parents' lesson that the Green movement is to a large extent a rich people's fad, highly sensitive to economic cycles. If global warming is half as serious as is claimed, any solution has to move beyond pure guilt as a motivator. It almost certainly has to include nuclear power. A nice start to a more intelligent, less shrill debate on the subject would be a more open approach to legitimate criticism such as this. Just because something is labelled 'green' doesn't mean it doesn't suck.
These problems arise only if you accept all the ecobabble. The greatest threat to all life, and its greatest killer is the environment. Man has reached the top of the food chain because he can overcome the environment not cow-two to it.
I know only a wet baby likes change, but this is just whining.
Sure, not all eco-alternatives are perfect at first and might require a bit of flexbility or sacrifice, but is it worth it?
Once we get water and electricity prices much nearer their true cost to provide people will be only too happy with more efficient devices.
By the way, my office in Switzerland uses no-flow (no water) urinals and I defy anyone to complain about them.
In the new millenium pricesses aren't so much in demand.
Let's be charitable and examine the argument Megan was trying to make: while it's easy to blame industry, in a competitive marketplace they have limited power to offer more efficient products in the absence of regulation, because these products are often at a marketing disadvantage. This is a fair point and a strong argument for stronger regulation. (It would be a fairer point if industry did not make massive expenditures to fight regulation tooth and nail.)
It probably was not a good idea to frame this in a way implying society should bear the enormous externalities of CFCs, reiterated by the recent NASA ozone study (http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/9/2113/2009/acp-9-2113-2009.html), in order to satisfy a preference for a familiar inhaler, even though that preference is entirely psychological. (Sorry, I know it feels like it's not, and due to conditioned response and the placebo effect I don't doubt there's a real difference, but that doesn't mean it's not all in your head.)
In some cases it's possible to price in externalities directly by looking at the cost of reparative measures, in some cases it's not (CFCs can continually annihilate ozone for 100 years, which is hard to reasonably estimate or counteract). If a dose of CFCs does $100 of damage, and we can repair that damage for $100, I have no problem with charging you $105 for an inhaler (in theory, although that's much harder to enforce). There are differing forms of regulation. But it's important to remember that the cost of the top-of-the-line model is probably a lot like the cost of the old model, just with environmental and public-good externalities priced in.
Megan:
Did they teach you about externalities in your Econ 101 class or did you cut that day?
Unbelievable. Used to write for the Economist. Now Business editor of the Atlantic. Doesn't get something a high school sophomore understands.
When an individual action is rational at the individual level but irrational at the collective level, it requires collective intervention. If we hadn't had this issue arise in dozens of ways across the last thirty years at least, on everything from California's emission standards to the congestion pricing in London, you might have an excuse. But it has and you don't.
Neither blanket bashing nor enviro koolaid drinking is helpful. And I would hope that economists would add a level of analysis of cost efficiency.
For each of these types of alternatives there are rational choices. Something described as "green" is not always good, but is neither always lame. What is lame is advocating any old crap because someone calls it "green" or alternatively dismissing the same out of hand.
My pet peeve: stupid gawdammed flimsy shopping bags made of recycled plastic. These things made of whatever garbage plastic got thrown in the hopper lack any strength, so you triple bag and still your groceries fall through onto the pavement.
But...
Low Flow toilets. Yes they are evil and the regs requiring them for new construction are too. But in europe every toilet i see has two buttons. I call them #1 and #2. You figure it out. Works fine.
I have always despised fluorescent light and in my office I work in the dark rather than turn on those nasty tbes. The flicker and sickly green light make me queasy and the first gen of the CFL bulbs were terrible. I bought some and then refused to buy for a couple of years. But the product got improved. Choice of colour temperature improved. lack of discernable flicker. You should give them a second chance.
Efficient washer and dryer. I don't know what you have but my modern 2006 era Whirlpool mid price things are way better in every way than their predecessors except perhaps in washing speed. But is 15 minutes extra in the wash in a totally automated process that big a deal if energy use got cut by 60%? And my new dryer is faster than my old one.
Phosphate free detergent? Where I live it has been about 20 years since I have seen a detergent that had phosphates. The world hasn't ended.
CFCs in medical inhalers. The dangers of CFCs were overstated and the blanket ban is not helpful. With the green zealots it is hard to make the argument that CFCs should be available for medical use but not air fresheners or shaving cream. The difficulty is enforcement. To a certain extent if the uses were so restricted that production was expensive it might self limit: only overpriced prescription medicine dispensers could afford it and furniture polish would use something cheaper.
So I agree we need to cut through the hype of any product deemed green, (or "organic" or "safe" or any other descriptor popular among the NaderGoreWarmedoverHippi worshipper set) but we can be rational abut it.
I just watched Doubt last night, and I got a good kick out of Meryl Streep's character complaining about ballpoint pens. Seems you're treading similar ground. I'm surprised you didn't throw in a bit about how great lead paint was!
Part of the reason businesses drag their feet on moving to green products is because of the up-front investment costs and because the consumers who care about these things are already tied up by brands like Burt's Bees, so they're less likely to buy from Clorox (just one example).
As for all of your complaints about poor quality products, I think the problem is either your attitude or poor consumption habits! We've bought inexpensive, but quality eco-friendly products and haven't had any of your bellyaches. Some eco-friendly products do have some growing pains to go through, but to say that these products "really, really suck" compared to the old version is an exaggeration of pretty epic proportions.
When government-imposed bans don't make sense (see Cuban cigars) a thriving black market will arise. Funny that I haven't had any friends let me know where they can score me an old-school dryer, offer to rig my toilet up so I can flush a Chihuahua, or offer to break me off a few incandescent bulbs from the palette he brought down from Canada. :-P
@Duffster: "...the consumers who care about these things are already tied up by brands like Burt's Bees, so they're less likely to buy from Clorox (just one example)."
Interesting example, since Clorox purchased Burt's Bees in 2007.
At any rate, it would be a wonderful world indeed if free-market libertarianism had a chance of succeeding for anyone but the privileged. But in the real world, the ecological impacts of Ms McArdle's consumer choices won't ever reach her or her family; instead, it will be absorbed by those who are (physically or metaphorically) downstream and downwind. Ms McArdle has no reason to factor those impacts in her purchasing decisions; indeed, the human mind is not capable of that amount of factoring for every decision. This is why governments exist, and why regulations are necessary.
Megan, if your point is that corporations are not evil, but rather make decisions based on the bottom line, then, fine, you are right.
But as others have mentioned you could have at least discussed the issue of externalities and how to capture the larger environmental costs of these products.
Also, I agree that these products are marginally less inferior, but very marginally. I like my CFC lightbulbs; I know others have a bigger problem, and I hope this can be resolved with better bulbs etc. But the energy savings should be a factor in buying a bulb--maybe electricity is too cheap. Now with the phosphate free detergent I would have joined in the rant a few months ago after trying a name-brand phosphate version (can't remember the company): it really sucked. But I am completely satisfied with my Seventh Generation detergent. Completely. But I have a good dishwasher. In any case, I live in DC and my phosphates end up in the Chesapeake Bay--as do yours Meghan.
1. There is no such thing as an "energy efficient dryer". None. The only ones that do exist are bench-scale demo models and if you had one you would not need to run it twice.
2. When you buy CFL's, buy the right color temperature light. If you need help, Home Depot has a really nice display showing you how to choose appropriate.
3. When renovating, factor in price v. cost. B/c you but crappy (pun intended) toilets, you now have a maintenance problem. Not a low-flow issue, a bad product issue.
What nonsense.
There are low-flow toilets in my home (3 of them), 2 in my parents house, 2 in my brother's house and 4 in my sisters house and we have not had any problems with clogging. Maybe you should check your plumbing.
As for lightbulbs, CFLs produce a whiter light and last much longer.
You might want to put a sock in your rah-rah corporate cheerleading unless you can come up with a better argument than these lame-o anecdotes.
So, you may indeed have had these negative experiences with environmentally friendly products, but you are still committing a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy in your reasoning, which is to say that you argue we don't have more green products because they must "suck," or else more people would want them.
Maybe, but maybe it's also the case that they don't "suck," and there aren't more of them out there because of imperfect markets, or industrial inertia, or high fixed costs, or distorted incentives for making environmentally unfriendly products, or any other number of perfectly plausible reasons.
Besides, how can you generalize your own crappy experiences with these items to the rest of the population (that is, without again committing pheph)?
Many good points here, but I thought I would list some "greener" products that are very high-quality and have been very successful:
- Toyota Corolla gets 15% better gas mileage than similar American cars and has a better reliability record
- Hybrid cars have also turned out to be popular and reasonably reliable
- Have Energy Star appliances been a big disaster?
- Cell phones have been constantly reducing their power consumption while simultaneously offering more features
- How long does your iPod charge last compared to the initial models?
- Fiberglass insulation is a lot better than newspaper or air
ok, I could go on. The idea that technological improvement only leads to crappy products in nonsense.
Change can be hard, but here are a couple of practical tips to ease the adjustment to low-flow toilets:
--When you do something clog-worthy, try holding the handle down for just a couple of seconds when you flush. This allows more water from the tank into the bowl. It's the poor man's version of the #1 and #2 buttons in Europe that neumann mentions above.
--Check your toilet paper. Seriously. (Plumbers blog about this.) We had frequent clogs (roughly one a week) with Charmin two-ply. We've had no trouble since switching to White Cloud and Charmin Basic a couple of years ago. The current Consumer Reports has a ranking of TP brands that includes info on how well they disintegrate.
Those who criticize Ms. McArdle are like devotees of a religious cult harassing others for not praying sufficient times per day or bowing low enough to the cult leader. Everyone should be allowed to assess how much time and expense to devote to the environmental gods, based on their own values.
Not really all that complicated. The valid point I get from Megan's comments is that people being the way they are, there's only a finite amount of additional real or perceived cost that we're willing to incur, when the benefit of a green product is remote. In that old cost/benefit analysis, the warm fuzzy feeling of making the world a little bit better for everyone, or slowing down the global warning, won't carry much weight, and what weight there is, obviously depends on how much the buyer, say, believes that global warming is a problem.
Energy saving appliances, and CFL bulbs, save energy cost and thus don't have the perceived extra cost.
The message is really not a bad one: green products have to compete in the market and provide a decent immediate value. Incentives have a role, because in the long run it's necessary to get the technology to a critical mass. Hybrid cars, at first, were huge loss leaders.