This rant is here mostly to make you think and probably piss you off so here it is.
(The spelling and grammar will probably suck too)
NO ONE (or a VERY small few) ACTUALLY WANT TO BE "EARTH FRIENDLY"
THIS INCLUDES YOU!
I'm sick of hearing how you should do this to save the earth or that to stop global warming or this to protect the animals.
Now there are a few special interest groups who are excluded from this but for the most part no one cares.
If people really cared they would make it easy cheap and painless for people to do it. People aren't going to go out of their way to recycle or be earth friendly without any immidiate benifit to themselves.
Lets take some examples.
Recycling. How many of you have recycling bins buckets containers? How many of you think its a hassle and cost in effective for you. Well I sure do. Even though I have single stream recycling its still is annoying beyond belief. First you want me to checking packaging for little numbers and decide if it’s on your list. They you want me to use to use my water that I have to PAY to use (ether electricity or water/sewer bill) to clean out food items so you can come along and collect it and not have to sort it. If someone(like the town) really cared enough they would let me throw it all in my trash and have someone (Like the lazy bastards collecting welfare and contributing NOTHING to society) go sort through garbage, find recyclables, clean it and put it some place to be recycled. Instead they decide to burden me with the inconvenience. If someone cared enough for it to happen it would be painless and transparent to the general public.
Light bulbs, Solar Energy, and other BS that will cost you more that it’s worth.
This new initiative with the light bulbs is just the dumbest thing I have ever seen. Now I'm all for technology and going forward and using less power and rainbows and sunshine but it has to be cost effective. I saw some comparison about for 50,000 hours of light (the rating for 1 LED "bulb" ) how it was so much more cost effective than standard incandescent bulbs (rated at about 1000 hours life each bulb) It discussed Total Cost Of Ownership (TCO) and look pretty promising on the surface. Basically it says over the 50,000 hours it will cost you $550 to operate the old incandescent bulbs and only $54+ cost of the bulb (so lets round it an even $80) to use the LED bulb. Not to mention it has some comparison about green house gases. On the surface it seems like a no brainier. The LED bulb must be better because it cheaper in the long run. There must be people who care! Well lets look at something referred to Return On Investment (ROI)
How long would you say a light is on at you house average per day? I like to pick 5 hours. It’s a nice round number for this equation.
50,000 Hours / 5 Hours per day is 10,000 days
So this duration is for a total of 10,000 days or just over 28 Years.
So the cost difference is $550 - $80 =$470.
So after 28 years you have saved your self $470 by spending $30 on a light bulb up front. There are better to save $470 that doesn't take 28 years to come to fruition. Now if the LED bulb were to die prematurely you would be out the cost again and the savings would be even less.
Let’s talk solar panels.
The average Photo Voltaic system costs $12K-$15K to install to power an average sized house. Now les say that house uses $100 a month in electricity on average.
So after 1 year they have saved $1200. Sounds pretty good right? So the ROI for this system is 10 – 12.5 years and they you are free and clear right? WRONG! After about 10 years a majority of they system will need to be completely replaced (Solar panels and batteries) incurring that cost all over again. Basically the best you could hope fore is to break even without building a super sized system and selling the electricity yourself, worst case you are in the hole a few thousand dollars.
Paperless billing.
Every month I get bills in the mail and they tell me how much greener I could be by going to paperless billing. “Going paperless would be the equivalent of planting 2 trees and letting the grow for 10 years” Well I planted 10 trees last years so leave me alone :P I don’t hate the environment. When I have a paper bill in my hand I have proof. You mailed me this item and there is no way you can take it back. When you go all paperless you are relying on the very people you might have a fight with to keep your records for you to access. They have no requirement to keep them for any reasonable (10’s of years) length of time. I tried this once when paperless firs came out. I had Sprint for my cell phone. My 2 year contract had ended and I was sick of them so I switched to Verizon. A month or so later I got a termination fee for early cancellation. I tried to log back on to my sprint account where is stated in black and white that I was NOT under contract but alas I was no longer a sprint customer and there for could not access that information. Long story short I bitched them out and did not have to pay the fee, but if I had a paper bill in hand it would have been no contest instead it cost me time an aggravation all because it was greener for the earth. It cost nothing for me to get paper bills and saved them the stamp but it could have cost me $175 if I couldn't prove I didn't break my contract.
So just remember next time you her about being environmentally friendly ask you self do they really mean it. Chances are they don’t because if they really did then would make it cheap easy and convenient for the rest of us and it wouldn't be the money sucking, time consuming, aggravation inducing hassle it is today.
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