The Great Copy Machine Epidemic

A friend, Kenny Luna, is working to create a day of action in schools with "The Great Copy Machine Epidemic of 2008"...and he's hoping you can help get schools in your area involved...Here's a link to his announcement on TreeHugger as well to their website...

If you’re a regular visitor here or at other green blogs, then you’re sure to have heard of Kenny Luna. Kenny teaches science at Robert Moses Middle School in North Babylon, N.Y...

Last year, Kenny and his grade 8 science students tried get Oprah to back their plan to see every kid (Pre-k - 12) in the US get a compact fluorescent light bulb to help raise awareness of and fight global warming. According to their calculations, if 50 million kids in the US replaced one incandescent in their home with a CFL, the US as a whole could realize $2.3 billion in energy savings, not to mention eliminate many tons of carbon emissions. this would fight global warming by reducing carbon emissions from power plants, and help put America on the path to environmental sustainability.

CFL light bulbs are 75% more efficient than incandescent light bulbs. This means less energy is needed and less harmful greenhouse gases are emitted!

His video "A Bright Idea..!" is a permanent part of this blog and can be found on the right sidebar next to this posting...Their mission was to get Oprah to give away something more practical than a bunch of cars that the recipients can’t afford to pay the taxes and insurance on. Kenny and his students wanted Oprah to use her super media powers to make this a reality... He succeeded in giving every child in North Babylon one thanks to Home Depot..!

Last year on Friday May 4 while I was the Co-President of the the Parents Association of Elizabeth Blackwell Middle School 210 in conjuction with Kenny's plan - we arranged for a visit by Ms. Kasey Jacobs a Program Coordinator at the Citizens Campaign for the Environment.

Kasey presented the original slide show of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth"... Kasey had gone to Tennessee to train with Al Gore to show the slide show....She put on a fabulous presentation of the material...The kids were fascinated and had lots of question..

Kasey is committed to educating the public on the climate crisis, so please consider scheduling a CCE presentation on the climate crisis in your commutnity. And, for more information about global warming and how to reduce your carbon footprint, visit them online at
www.citizenscampaign.org/campaigns/global_warming.htm.

We also had Chris Neidl, the IT/Development Associate and Education and Outreach Coordinator for Solar One, who with his team brought 100 CFL bulbs to the presentation at the school. The PA distributed the 100 bulbs free of charge to all participants...

So we did our little bit to help solve the global warming problem...my thanks go out to Ruth Ann Farmer, Edwin Natal, Lali Estrada, Judy Chetri, Claudia Gleim, Maria Ferrer and Nadege Trenard for their helping to make this a successful event for all involved...

What's the Crisis?

The Great Copy Machine Epidemic

With confirmed cases in New York and Florida, and with rumors coming out of California, Texas, and Maine about possible outbreaks there, it’s clear that what experts are calling the Great Copy Machine Epidemic has struck schools across America. The symptoms include the tendency of school photocopy machines to chew up trees at an amazing rate, and furthering the use of enormous amounts of energy to create the paper on which they print, contributing to global warming.

Of course, the students and faculty on the crisis team at the Robert Moses Middle School where symptoms of the disease were first observed are working feverishly to uncover the cause. And they’re asking schools across America to join them in a national day of action to help stop global warming on April 17th by putting their school photocopier under quarantine for the day, and asking teachers and students not to make or use any photocopies in class.

Now that may help cure the problem but it won’t uncover precisely what disease is striking the machines. Fortunately there’s a great, fun way that you can help do just that by putting together a crisis team in your school to creatively demonstrate what you believe is making your photocopier sick. Then taking a photograph and emailing it to copy crisis headquarters for further analysis by the deadline of April 19th to help solve the crisis.

The most creative entries that convey the message that the use of excess paper contributes to global warming will be chosen as finalists and posted on the site where everyone is invited to come and vote.

The winning school will win the title of “Copy Crisis Team of the Year” along with a $100 grant to plant a tree on school grounds that's being provided by teacher and crisis team coordinator Mr. Luna, who points out that “There is no better time than now to get schools involved in a positive way in the fight against global warming. Unfortunately, the world will not stand still if we sit by and do nothing.”

To get involved head over to www.greatcopyepidemic.com and find out how easy it is to get your school on-board.

That Newfangled Light Bulb - New York Times Editorial

Read original...

Across the world, consumers are being urged to stop buying outdated incandescent light bulbs and switch to new spiral fluorescent bulbs, which use about 25 percent of the energy and last 10 times longer. In Britain, there is a Ban the Bulb movement. China is encouraging the change. And the United States Congress has set new energy efficiency standards that will make Edison’s magical invention obsolete by the year 2014.

Now, the question is how to dispose of these compact fluorescent bulbs once they break or quit working.

Unlike traditional light bulbs, each of these spiral bulbs has a tiny bit of a dangerous toxin — around five milligrams of mercury. And although one dot of mercury might not seem so bad, almost 300 million compact fluorescents were sold in the United States last year. That is already a lot of mercury to throw in the trash, and the amounts will grow ever larger in coming years.

Businesses and government recyclers need to start working on more efficient ways to deal with that added mercury. Ellen Silbergeld, a professor of environmental health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, is raising the cry about the moment when millions of these light bulbs start landing in landfills or incinerators all at once. The pig in the waste pipeline, she calls it.

Even when warned, public officials are never great at planning. The Environmental Protection Agency now focuses mostly on the disposal of one bulb at a time. If you break a fluorescent bulb, there is no need to call in the hazmat team, the agency says. Just clean it up quickly with paper (no vacuuming or brooms), keep the kids away and open the window for a 15-minute douse of fresh air. Tuck the debris into a plastic sack and, if there is no special recycling nearby, discard it in the regular trash.

Interestingly, one of the main reasons to use these bulbs is that when they cut down on energy use, they also cut down on mercury emissions from power plants. And even with their mercury innards, these bulbs are still better for the environment than the old ones.

For all that good, the dangers are real and growing. It is time to find more efficient ways of recycling these fluorescents or, better yet, to invent light bulbs that don’t leave a toxic hangover.